OT: NYRB Summer Sale

For those who may be underwhelmed by the offers in the current Folio sale, the NYRB Summer Sale is in full swing, with up to 40% off of their entire catalog (with the purchase of four books or more), plus free U.S. shipping.

https://www.nyrb.com/

If you’re not yet familiar with the New York Review Books (NYRB), they publish meritorious fiction and nonfiction from around the world and across the ages, under several imprints that include NYRB Classics, New York Review Books (modern fiction and criticism), and kid’s books, comics, and poetry, most in stylish paperbacks but some hardcovers as well.

Here you’ll find the works you were hoping FS might publish, like Dino Buzzati’s “The Tartar Steppe”, recently released by NYRB in a new translation as “The Stronghold”, or Vasily Grossman’s WWII masterpieces “Stalingrad” and “Life and Fate”; as well as works that FS DID publish and you missed out on, including all NINE of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travel classics, Chateaubriand’s memoirs, “In Parenthesis”, "Rogue Male", and at least 600 other titles from ancient classics to modern noir. They’re all on sale. It's also a book club.

Of course I have no association with this seller or (hmmph) tradesmen of any kind.

The sale ends tomorrow (Sunday) midnight. Their entire catalog is on sale from 10-40% off depending on how many you buy. Buy 4 or more books and get 40% off. Shipping is free within the U.S. on purchases over $50.

NYRB puts out a lot of great titles, even moreso now that they also publish the Dorothy line. I highly recommend In Hazard, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, Picture, That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana, and Henri Duchemin and His Shadows. And anyone looking for a strange science-fiction title might wish to check out The Slynx.

Well, now I know where my book money is going this summer. I'll have to dig through their offerings. If anyone is considering Dino Buzatti's The Stronghold (AKA The Tartar Steppe), I consider it to be a masterpiece, though I haven't read the new translation offered by NYRB.

How's the paper quality and binding on these?

>5 Inceptic: Extremely nice acid free paper, but perfect bound and glued, so they will never lie flat. Content and paper quality are the two most important things for me, so I make an exception for NYRB and Persephone paperbacks as the content is rarely otherwise available and they are nice enough objects that I don't need to reach for my Kindle.

Many thanks to the OP for posting about this sale. I just ordered eight books: Vasily Grossman's Stalingrad, Everything Flows, and Life and Fate; the two volumes of Chateaubriand's Memoirs from Beyond the Grave; Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus; Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen's Diary of a Man in Despair; and Seduced by Stories by Peter Brooks.

>7 CJDelDotto: Thanks for the notice! Just put my order in for 12 books. I own probably 150-200 titles from them and they hardly disappoint. Vasily Grossman is superb but Stalingrad was a huge disappointment and embedded with so much Russian and Communist propaganda that it was painful to read and I had to put it down after 200-300 pages. NYRB published Life and Fate more than 10 years before Stalingrad even though it is the second book. Although Stalingrad reviews on Amazon are very favorable my expectations were so high after reading Life and Fate that I was expecting something much better. Life and Fate is one of the best Russian novels written in the 20th century and I'm certain you'll love it. If you like Stalingrad, great, but if you're like me and have difficulties don't fret and you're not missing out on anything if you skip it and start with Life and Fate.

Over the past year or two NYRB also published in two volumes the complete stories by Varlam Shalamov which are exceptional. If memory serves me right he spent 15 years in labor camps and Solzhenitsyn even wanted him to co-author the Gulag Archipelago but Shalamov declined.

They have some of the best world literature out there in wonderful translations.

I do wish their hardbound edition of The Secret Commonwealth was still in stock, it's one of my favorites from them. I really like the design aesthetic of it too.

>8 Joshbooks1:

"They have some of the best world literature out there in wonderful translations."

That pretty much says it all and their NYRB Classics series is unique and beyond peer. Similar to the FS they publish works that are not otherwise available anywhere else in attractive soft cover editions, often in fresh new translations. For my part, I ordered the following:

1. Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant. A collection of Gallant's finest short stories selected by Peter Ondaatje.
2. A Fairly Good Time by Mavis Gallant. Two of Gallant's rare novels.
3. Young Once by Patrick Modiano
4. The Cretan Runner by George Psychoundakis. Translation and introduction by Patrick Leigh Fermor.
5. Temptation by János Székely
6. The Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge

And there goes my summer book budget. I had to place a second order after reading some of the commentaries here.

After spending hours paring down a lengthy Wishlist, I finally ordered the Chateaubriand pour deux, a trio of Grossman’s (Life and Fate, Stalingrad, and his warm travel memoir An Armenian Sketchbook), a hardbound bio of Leigh Fermor, and a copy of The Broken Road, his posthumous final volume of youthful adventures, two British and American social histories of the 1960’s (Akenfield and Eve’s Hollywood), a volume of Dante criticism and one of T’ang poetry, three hardbound children's classics for my grandkids (Masefield’s The Box of Delights and The Midnight Folk, and D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths), and four other works of fiction – eighteen books in all, for less than the cost of FS's latest comic book.

I’d been looking for a copy of Buzzati’s long out-of-print Tartar Steppe for years, ever since the readers of Le Monde selected it as the 29th most memorable book of the century (just behind #27 Lolita and #28 Ulysses and more unforgettable than #58 Lord of the Rings) - but I was unwilling to pay the $300+ asking prices. Happily surprised to see it show up here in an affordable new translation as The Stronghold.

These are the things NYRB does best – keeping canonical texts in print, arranging translations of interesting works from locales largely unexplored by the English-speaking reader, and putting attractive copies in readers’ hands at an affordable price.

Edit: never mind, found some on Kobo!
Keeping this here in case anyone had a similar question.

I wanted to buy some of their e books since I generally don’t buy paperback books, but it looks like they’re not available in Canada? Have any Canadian FSDers had any luck?

My order:

Memoirs from Beyond the Grave - Chateaubriand (volumes 1 and 2)
Heaven's Breath - Lyell Watson
Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard - Arthur Conan Doyle
Eve's Hollywood - Eve Babitz

My order:

Hav - Jan Morris
Summer Will Show - Sylvia Townsend Warner
Poems of the Late T'ang - translated by A.C. Graham
D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths

Spent quite a while browsing and selecting titles, but shipping four books to Australia is going to cost $135 USD! Wish I had known.

Don't forget to put The Book of Ebenezer LePage in your basket if you haven't already!

>16 red_guy:

For anyone interested in acquiring 'The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, this is the edition you (should) want:

https://extraordinaryeditions.com/books/the-book-of-ebenezer-le-page/

The sale has been extended until midnight ET on Monday, June 26.

One other title that NYRB publishes that is slated for a limited edition is Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. An edition is in the works by newcomer Dymaxion Press.

>17 dlphcoracl: I was preaching to the (as yet) unconverted. Naturally, the Leather Edition has pride of place on my shelves ...

My assortment of books from the NYRB sale arrived yesterday!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CuU29gguZ5K/

>22 MichaelPerezz:
A sale of NYRB children's books already took place over the weekend, so I am hoping the classics will be along soon...

>15 Aleks3000:
Yes, the postage charges are unreasonable. (I begin to feel sorry for those buying FS books from outside the UK!)

Does anyone have a solution for this? Is it worth trying a courier who can provide a local address in the US? (Recommendations?) What happens if the books arrive damaged? (As tends to happen with Amazon.) Thanks.

I'm waiting for them to release The Singularity, been looking forward to it since its announcement. It's also the next volume in their Book Club for subscribers.

As for getting better international shipping, you might want to check either a local bookstore to see if you can buy through them or see if there's one available through Bookshop in your region.

>24 Shadekeep: I was a little disappointed with The Tartar Steppes. I thought it was enjoyable and would recommend it but with all the rave reviews I was expecting something better. The Kafkaesque style was pleasant and I'm glad I read it but it certainly wasn't one of my favorite books I read last year. Maybe The Singularity will be better and will probably buy it during their sale.

I'm most looking forward to Lies and Sorcery (Morante's History is fantastic and she is such an underrated author,) and Walter Kempowski's An Ordinary Youth.

The Story of a Life by Paustovsky is an absolute must and he was slated to win the Nobel Prize for this novel (NYRB should publish the next part hopefully soon) but politics got in the way. I'm nearly done with the second volume of Chateaubriand's Memoirs From Beyond the Grave and it has far exceeded expectations.

NYRB and Archipelago publish the best books out there and hopefully the sale happens soon!

>25 Joshbooks1: I enjoyed The Stronghold immensely, but it's very much my kind of novel (oppressive and isolated, with a touch of magical realism).

I picked up Lies and Sorcery recently myself, might delve into that one next, or possibly On the Marble Cliffs. The only NYRB title I cracked open lately that didn't hold my interest was Dissipatio H.G., mostly because of the narration style, but I freely admit I may not have picked it up at the right time. Many books one has to be in proper frame for. I could see coming to it again later and enjoying it.

The Archipelago titles have been landing hot and heavy lately and I need to work through my back catalogue of those too. I picked up several in their recent sale as well.

Another NYRB sale going at the moment, this time focused on WWII titles: https://www.nyrb.com/collections/weekend-sale-wwii-books