Cheap Kindle Classics?

[soulsinging]

One perk of the Kindle is the ease with which you can scoop up a lot of classics on the cheap. On the downside, some of these versions are garbage, poorly edited/translated, etc. So I thought it might be worth having a thread where people can plug good versions or warn away from bad ones.

My contribution is I bought a $2 version of Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, but haven’t read it yet. I’ll let everyone know what I think.

My ulterior motive is I’m looking for a change of pace from the dark non-fiction I’ve been reading (Cold War spying and the IRA contributions to the Troubles aren’t much comfort as the world seems to be falling apart). The required reading thread nudged me towards Thoreau’s Walden, which I found pointlessly meandering in high school but sounds about perfect for quarantine. But which .99 cent version do I get??

 

[Brian G Turner]

There are a lot of nasty 19th century reprints on there, which suffer from bad photocopying, layout, and accessibility. I've especially found this with classical literature, so have to take care - the quality of the translation is essential to enjoying the book.

As for English literature itself, worth looking out for the AmazonClassics editions - though I'll confess I've downloaded a load but not read any yet!

 

[.matthew.]

As for English literature itself, worth looking out for the AmazonClassics editions - though I'll confess I've downloaded a load but not read any yet!

*Cough* I'd never do anything like that...

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Generally, I find Delphi Classics the best ebook publisher by far of classic literature. And for about $2 you get all of Dickens or all of Balzac, usually with a lot of care put into editing and formatting.

The only exception here is their books of poetry: for some reason, they double-space their poems, which makes them, to me, unreadable. (Weirdly, though, they don't do this in their Shakespeare -- and possibly in other poetry books? It's worth downloading a sample, at any rate.)

 

[soulsinging]

Generally, I find Delphi Classics the best ebook publisher by far of classic literature. And for about $2 you get all of Dickens or all of Balzac, usually with a lot of care put into editing and formatting.

The only exception here is their books of poetry: for some reason, they double-space their poems, which makes them, to me, unreadable. (Weirdly, though, they don't do this in their Shakespeare -- and possibly in other poetry books? It's worth downloading a sample, at any rate.)

Oh man, these are phenomenal! Thanks for the tip! And they have Walden

 

[J Riff]

HC version of Our Mutual Friend sittin in the warshroom for ages here, I've glanced at it a few times... but, online Kwality Lit? Well by golly yeah, and the Chas. Dickens stuff seems pretty well done. I'll look to see wot else I have, it's kwite a lot.