The nyrb game

I love great books, reading great, physical books.

And I love browsing books in bricks-and-mortar stores. When you know exactly what you want, buying books online can make sense, but nothing beats discovering books and authors by physically browsing racks of books.

But browsing in a decent bookstore can be overwhelming, because there are so many titles and the only way to meaningful filter them is using very broad categories (fiction vs. nonfiction and categories within nonfiction, e.g., health, business, art, music, computers, etc.).

Until recently the vast majority of my reading had been nonfiction, nerd stuff. Earlier this year though a good friend turned me on to the NYRB Classics series. While it includes both fiction and nonfiction, it is heavily weighted to the former (browse titles).

The books in the series are both extremely well written and underappreciated, out of print before becoming part of the series. The NYRB curates the titles and then reprints them. Hence, the NYRB Classics imprimatur is a wonderful way to discover great books and authors--the books are, in a word, superb.

I read 10 while taking this summer off:

• Kingsley Amis - Lucky Jim
• Elaine Dundy - The Dud Avocado
• J.G. Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur
• J.G. Farrell - The Singapore Grip
• J.G. Farrell - Troubles
• Gabriel García Márquez - Clandestine in Chile
• Ernst Jünger - The Glass Bees
• Raymond Kennedy - Ride a Cock Horse
• Elizabeth Taylor - Angel
• Christina Stead - Letty Fox: Her Luck

They're some of the best books I've ever read, and I'd never even heard of most of the authors.

The game is finding the NYRB Classics titles in physical bookstores. Each title has this distinctive logo on its spine:

This makes scanning bookshelves to find these diamonds in the rough both easy and fun.

My favorite variation of this game is at used bookstores where you can frequently find used-but-new (remaindered) NYRB Classics titles very inexpensively (~$7). I scan the entire fiction section and buy all the NYRB Classics titles that I don't already have. I've done this a few times, and walked out with 8, 9, 10 books and spent well under $100!

I find it sad that such wonderful books are remaindered in the first place--not more in demand--but finding these used-but-new titles makes for a very enjoyable game nonetheless. 

And, who knows? Maybe if lots of people start playing the used bookstore NYRB game and get hooked on the series, they'll start looking for and buying new NYRB Classic titles and fewer will get remaindered.