I’m obsessed with collecting pretty collections of books, mostly classics, I have quite a beautiful and vast collection. But for some reason I have neglected a fairly ubiquitous and worthy collection, and I don’t know why. Nearly ever booklover has at least one of the Penguin Clothbound Classics. They are beautiful and I just don’t know why I haven’t been collecting these. I only have five of them, which for me is strange.
I collect series of books and I get a little obsessed about it, but this series has not driven me crazy like some of the others. Trying to get the last two books in a certain series over the last few days had completely consumed me after my fourth attempt (every bookseller cancelled my order saying the books weren’t in stock) to purchase them. I was acting like a crazy person. I was seriously distressed about not being able to have that full set. I actually get quite upset about it if I had the opportunity to buy the book at one point but put it off for whatever reason. This is strange, I’ll grant you, but we each have our obsessions, and there are far worse things than books. So I’m not too worried about it. To me, my bookshelves are my equivalent to art, only better because each one is like it’s own little masterpiece. Anyway, I digress.
This series, however, hasn’t had that effect on me and I’m not sure why. It’s definitely not that I don’t want them. Maybe it’s because there are so many of them that I can’t possibly hope to own them all. Maybe it’s because they seem to be everywhere and so I don’t have that ‘if I don’t buy it now it will go out of print and I’ll never have the whole set’ mentality. Either way, I don’t really have a strong ambition to own every book in this series and that’s kind of nice. I mean I absolutely need Alice in Wonderland in this series, and The Illiad, and The Odyssey, and Inferno… oh dear.
So is anyone else out there as crazy as me about owning every book in a series? And do you have a favourite of the Penguin Clothbound Classics?
you can get these ones here:
Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Jabberwocky, Metamorphoses, Madame Bovary.
Read the Bloody Book 
I feel like these are pretty in a simple, comfortable way. But some of your other editions are pretty in a way that makes my head hurt? I don’t know how to explain it but I think I feel the same way about these editions as you do.
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I think I get exactly what you mean.
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I’m absolutely that way, too! My favorite series is The Lord of the Rings trilogy and I refused to buy a “formal set” (tattered paperbacks and audiobook versions don’t count) until I found matching hard cover versions. Books are decorations when they’re not being read, so caring about the look makes total sense!
Lindsay
https://untamedshrews.wordpress.com/
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There are lots of matching hardcover sets out there. Unfortunately the ones I have (which are stunning) are out of print but there are some other really nice ones.
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