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

Quick Script + Gutenberg?

[Angry Toad]

I wonder how long it will take for someone to put together a quick script to take the book list and put the same collection out of Gutenberg?

Needed

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an ex sotware engineer in my fifties who did exactly this. In my 20's I collected about 2000 core classics so they could always be at hand. I've read most of them too.

I can't say whether they have "improved my life" since the substrate of my perspective now depends upon them. For example, because of them I decided that engineering is too limiting.

But if you have faith that generating interconnections in the brain between sense, experience and imaginitive possibilities is a good thing, then this is the way to go.

Do the math...

[egburr]

At the discount price, this is roughly $7 a book. While I may not be able to get them all at once, I sure can get them a lot cheaper other ways. That is the price of new books by well-known authors, and I have a very hard time bringing myself to pay that (I can't help but think of scrimping to save $1.50 to go buy a brand new book each week just 15 years ago). I can't imagine paying those prices for these "classics". No wonder the shipping is so cheap.