Amazon's 1,082-volume Classics Collection: $7,989

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Who would buy 828 feet worth of books, for nearly $8,000, that would take 20 years to read at the rate of one title per week? And how much does it cost to ship? The Real Time columnists at the Wall Street Journal Online ponder these and other deep questions raised by Amazon's The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection, whose sheer jaw-dropping enormity reminds them of e-tailers' wacky offers during the dot-com boom. 'We think the collection is a perfect fit for more than a few software engineers we've known -- smart, self-directed people who are eternally curious, yet abhor wasting time intellectually and can't hide their impatience with the fuzziness of liberal arts,' Jason Fry and Tim Hanrahan write. 'For them, here's a pre-selected, pretty comprehensive list of Western classics, assembled for purchase with a single mouse-click -- and available in a form that eschews frills for portability and ease of use. Think of it as Humanities In a Box. OK, a Very Big Box.'"

Comments

The math is wrong

[tomhudson]

1 title per week for 20 years is just over 1,000 titles - there is NO way that this comprises 828 feet of shelf space.

My personal library is about the same size, including lots of thick computer manuals, and it takes up less than half that.

They probably dropped a decimal point.

Might still be a good choice for a new library

[Diakoneo]

OK, they're paperback which means the popular ones would wear out quickly. But if you were feeling philanthropic and wanted to give an otherwise sparse school library a boost, I could see it.
You should probably ask them first, though. I'm picturing Monday morning at the hometown library. The UPS rep knocks on the door to get a signature, and the librarian looks up to a couple semi-loads of books starting to be unloaded in their front yard!

Who would buy this?

[MAXOMENOS]

How about a school looking to get some new books? Or a library looking to get some new titles?

Just sayin', it isn't unthinkable for an institution to purchase something like this.

Too much money!

[barryfandango]

Most (all?) of these titles are in the public domain, so the publisher's only cost is printing. And they're paperbacks. Penguin is making a pretty good margin on these.