NYRB Classics discussion

The Red Thread: 20 Years of NYRB Classics



Publication Date: September 24, 2019
Pages: 376
Edited by Edwin Frank

Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the NYRB Classics series, a collection of twenty favorite selections.

Come the fall of 2019 the NYRB Classics series will be twenty years old, and to mark the occasion we will publish an anthology of twenty selections from the more than 500 books in the series. The NYRB Classics series is known for translating great books from throughout the ages and all over the world; for rediscovering neglected geniuses such as Eve Babitz, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and John Williams; and for its wideranging eclecticism. The series ranges through time and space and through a multiple literary genres, from the novel and the short story to memoirs, diaries, essays personal and impersonal, works of history, philosophy, and criticism, poems and polemics and how-to books. After all, writing that is truly alive may turn up anywhere.

What can a great book be, and what else can a great book be? What connects the books in the Classics series is wonder at the ways literature continues to surprise and advise us. The Red Thread, edited by Edwin Frank, the founder and editorial director of the NYRB Classics series, offers a stop-time image of a publishing project that aspires to perpetual motion.

Can't wait for this!!

I’m curious about what it will be.

Will this be like The Penguin Classics Book that came out a few months ago?

They have posted a description, and I've added it above. It looks interesting, but mostly like a, say, flashback episode of a sitcom show. I'm hoping it will have a lot more context and some write-ups about particular events in the history.

I hope this isn’t the Sept subscription book. I’m sure it will be interesting, but I don’t want to read 500 selections from excellent books, I’d rather one entire very good book, but I won’t judge it until I see what they actually do with the selections they chose.

Does anyone happen to know which NYRB classics are the all time best sellers? Just curious

I don’t know how accurate this is but when you go on www.nyrb.com you can sort the classics. Apparently our very own book club selection, Berlin Alexanderplatz is tops on the list. Trevor would know best though...

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/clas...

Stoner has to be up there, no? I’d also expect The Door to be up there, considering it made the NYT top ten list the year NYRB released it.

If you sort the list by Best Selling there are 9 pages of books. I bet most of us have or have read a number of them already.

Did anyone else pick this up? It's a lot of fun. Many of the pieces are from published books, but it's wonderful to see the work NYRB Classics has done. Also, at the end is a nice full list of everything they've published up to The Red Thread.