Ask HN: You've got $300 to fill an empty library. What do you choose?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24619733

by samcgraw • 6 years ago

22 31 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm looking to put together a modest home library and am particularly interested in the classics. I've budgeted $300 for the task. What would you deem a 'must-have'?

uberman• 6 years ago

Some additional context would be helpful

samcgraw• 6 years ago

Edited- apologies for the vagueness :) Thank you!

turtlegrids• 6 years ago

If this is to simply fill the shelving space, do what some attorneys do - Books by the Foot! https://www.booksbythefoot.com/

You should be able to fill over 40 feet of bookshelf with your $300 budget.

tosh• 6 years ago

check out Reclam, Harvard Classics and Stripe Press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reclam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics

https://press.stripe.com

(edit: obviously non-comprehensive but a starting point for further exploration, I'd love to learn of similar curated collections if any come to mind!)

paulrpotts• 6 years ago

Don't try to buy all your books at once. Purchase them over time as your tastes evolve and you discover what you like.

That said, if you want to start out with a very nice set of "classics" to dive into, consider getting a set of the Harvard Classics. I've got a very nice set that I picked up for a couple hundred. There are several editions. For example, on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Harvard-Classics-1980-Collector...

You might also consider Brittanica's Great Books of the Western World. I don't have a set of these yet, but would like to get one, at some point. Again, there are several editions, but you can pick up an older one within your price range: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Britannica-Great-Books-of-the-Weste...

If you mean _classic_ classics, as in the classical Greek and Latin canon, search eBay for "Loeb Classical Library lot." Those will definitely give you some challenging works to sink your teeth into.

Get a subscription to the Library of America and get great writing by American authors for $30.90 per volume delivered according to whatever schedule you want. The books are very nice small boxed hardcovers. I've got almost 100 now.

If you like things a little flashier and don't mind trade paperbacks, I recommend the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition trade paperbacks. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/254/penguin-classi...

I read and collect books from the New York Review Books Classics series. It's an amazing series of reprints of mostly 20th Century literature, some that has fallen unjustly into obscurity, and a lot of it in translation.

I also pick up used sets from the Folio Society, for example Orwell's "Reportage" boxed set: https://www.ebay.com/itm/GEORGE-ORWELL-REPORTAGE-5-VOLUMES-I... which is a very nice edition that I love to hold in my hands and read. Watch prices for a while and get a sense for them, save some searches, then jump on one when an exceptional deal pops up.

Your library should reflect your mind and personality as it grows and develops over time!

wryoak• 6 years ago

Dude go to half priced books or your local secondhand bookstore and just clean house. Classics in particular are a dime a dozen. Here's a list of "classics" to give you some ideas:

* A Hundred Years of Solitude

* Crime and Punishment

* East of Eden

* Moby Dick

* Shakespeare's collected works

* Bible, Koran, etc - keep as many sacred tomes as you can

* Plato's Republic, maybe some other philosophy classics like Thus Spoke Zarathustra

* Midnight's Children (how old does it have to be to be a classic?)

* Paradise Lost, Iliad, Odyssey

* The God of Small Things

bear8642• 6 years ago

Second hand bookshops are amazing things - sometimes goldmines can be found!

scott312• 6 years ago

Bible, Koran, etc - keep as many sacred tomes as you can

what makes them sacred?

muzani• 6 years ago

Even if you're not a religious person, a lot of effort have been put into writing and preserving them. They were all done from a time when the written word was expensive and rare, and words of gods could not be amended or revised in a future version.

There's something sacred in preserving exact words of something over thousands of years, through many languages.

curi0usttt2• 6 years ago

Both books are a treasure trove of information and history. They are both well written and even for non religious folk can serve as guidance on how to best organize their daily life or at the very least you would want to read them to be more knowledgeable about what the majority of people around you believes in.

swiley• 6 years ago

Math books are very cheap and very information dense. I'm going through Mendelson's "Introduction to Topology" right now. It's very good and cost only $10.

Harmony by Walter Piston (and also "Twenty First Century Harmony," the book it inspired) is IMO one of the better books I've read on western music theory. I got my copy used for $20.

SICP is nice to loan out (and also nice to read, it covers some pretty weird and advanced topics near the ends of the chapters), my girlfriend is going through my copy. ~$20.

A couple Oreily books for whatever you're doing at work ~$120 (although double check, believe it or not there are a couple duds.)

UML distilled by Martin Fowler is very good. ~$20?

The art of electronics is a great book, I personally learned a lot from this kind of weird book titled "Basic Pulse Circuits" I found at a used book store for ~$10.

Then leave the extra $100 for whatever interesting thing you find at good book stores (I've had the best luck in college towns in Appalachian Virginia.)

easytiger• 6 years ago

A tablet with access to project Gutenberg

Jtsummers2• 6 years ago

They only publish US authors, and their books aren't cheap ($30-50), but Library of America [0] has a great collection. Each book is actually a collection of writings, so the value proposition is the high quality binding, paper, and substantial collection in one book with each purchase. They have fiction starting from the colonial days to the recent past, along with a lot of non-fiction content (essays, journalism, political speeches, etc.).

[0] https://loa.org

thegjp2102• 6 years ago

In this vein, ‘The Everyman’s Library’ collection excellently assembles classics on thick acid-free paper, cloth bindings, and essays introducing/contextualizing the work

Jtsummers2• 6 years ago

Thanks. I’d not heard of them before, and looking at some of their collection I think I’ll be adding them to my list of books I want to buy.

jelliclesfarm• 6 years ago

asimov

helph67• 6 years ago

Consider creating a Street Library that way you will have a constantly evolving book collection and probably make lots of connections with your neighbours. https://streetlibrary.org.au/

NKosmatos• 6 years ago

Well depends on what you consider classics :-) Go to a second hand shop, bookstore where they sell used books and get whatever you like. Here is a small list that IMHO would appeal to many HN readers: - Isaac Asimov (foundation trilogy, robot series, short stories compilations) - William Gibson (nauromancer, bridge trilogy) - Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) - Alfred Bester (The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination) - Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon) - Orson Scott Card (Ender’s game, Speaker for the Dead) - Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and punishment, the idiot, notes from the underground and many more) - Plato (apology, the republic) - Bible, Torah, Quran and any other sacred text - Mythology (Greek, Indian, Norse and o5hers) And a last one, completely unrelated... - Clive Barker (Hellraiser series, books of blood)

scott312• 6 years ago

Get pg's essays printed in hardcover, its one of my favourites in my bookshelf (though its missing some of the more recent ones)

fileoffset• 6 years ago

30 copies of Dune

dragonwriter• 6 years ago

What is the purpose of the library? Display? Reading material for you? Reference material for cultural standards? Something else?

trykondev• 6 years ago

I'd recommend something by Ray Bradbury -- one of my favorite short story collections of all time is his "The Illustrated Man".

Also a big fan of Asimov's "Robot Dreams".

darepublic• 6 years ago

Include a copy of The NeverEnding Story by Michael Ende

fiftyacorn• 6 years ago

I'd add John Steinbeck grapes of wrath, and mice and men

cafard• 6 years ago

I upvoted somebody else's recommendation of NYRB, which has many excellent books. On the other hand, buying them new will get you twenty or twenty-five for $300. And as somebody else says, what do you consider the classics--Plato in Greek with a good critical apparatus, or SICP?

Oxford University Press's World Classics paperback series has very many good books at prices comparable to NYRB's.

One caution though: when much younger, I thought that I had accomplished something when I bought a book, and I wrote the date of purchase on the flyleaf. Eventually, I learned that the purchase, even if it took half or more of an hour's wage, was the least of the investment. That might argue for your stocking up more gradually.

2rsf• 6 years ago

Libraries (at least here in Stockholm) give away their used books once in a while, I have a few shelves filled with great books already in a "rustic" condition. Can I get the 300$ now ?

tmaly• 6 years ago

I was going to suggest the set Great Books of the Western World.

I have a set from more than 20 years ago, but I just checked and it is quite expensive now.

However, that being said, it has all of the classics.

curi0usttt2• 6 years ago

This a very personal opinion based on some popular classic book lists like those found on 4chan /lit/ etc. (Note: All books are new and I calculated the price from Book Depository [0], you might be able to purchase more from Better World Books [1]):

- The Holy Bible - Moby Dick by Melville - The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky - The Master And Margarita by Bulgakov - Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - The Iliad by Homer - The Odyssey by Homer - Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandra Dumas - The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler - The Qur'an - The Prince by Machiavelli - The Art of War by Sun Tzu - Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky - The Confessions by Saint Augustine - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo - We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - The Book Of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi - The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric - Bosnian Chronicle by Ivo Andric - Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun - Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger - All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque - The Divine Comedy by Dante

--- This list totals out at 311.14EUR and has 23 books. [0] - https://www.bookdepository.com/ [1] - https://www.betterworldbooks.com/

dave_sid• 6 years ago

Lots of plastic balls.

gotadollar• 6 years ago

I would include the "Gulag Archipelago" Trilogy by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in any library.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/solzhenitsyns-th...

Ask HN: You've got $300 to fill an empty library. What do you choose?

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