Carey's Pure Pleasure
 

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...

Is there something fishy about John Carey's Pure Pleasu
a Guide to the 20th Century's Most Enjoyable Books
(Faber paperback, 2000) being out of print? Something
to do with the Sunday newspaper which printed these
short reviews first?

A latecomer to Carey, I so enjoyed this that I planned to
give half a dozen copies as Xmas presents: but it is
out of print: and a couple of these paperbacks on
eBay are priced between $45 and $3,000 ! I tried to
ask Faber by email when there might be a reprinting,
got a negative answer, but am unsure I wrote to the
right part of this publishing colossus (Random House,
Penguin, IIRR.)

If you check out Amazon.com you'll find this book,
excellent though it may be, has only ever generated
5 customer reviews throughout its whole publishing
history. Faber will have the sales figures which
will reveal why it was apparently not thought worth
reprinting at any time since 2000.

Some of the S/H copies on offer are ex-library
but still saleable copies, which presumably means that
library borrowers weren't exactly falling over
themselves to borrow this title either.

It's precisely because the publishers have never
thought it economic to reprint the book that secondhand
copies can fetch relatively high prices. Although nobody could
realistically be expected to pay some of the more exorbitant
fantasy prices being quoted, which probably serve some
other purpose.

mj

Carey's Pure Pleasure
 

"emjay" wrote in message
...

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...

Is there something fishy about John Carey's Pure Pleasu
a Guide to the 20th Century's Most Enjoyable Books
(Faber paperback, 2000) being out of print? Something
to do with the Sunday newspaper which printed these
short reviews first?

A latecomer to Carey, I so enjoyed this that I planned to
give half a dozen copies as Xmas presents: but it is
out of print: and a couple of these paperbacks on
eBay are priced between $45 and $3,000 ! I tried to
ask Faber by email when there might be a reprinting,
got a negative answer, but am unsure I wrote to the
right part of this publishing colossus (Random House,
Penguin, IIRR.)

It's precisely because the publishers have never
thought it economic to reprint the book that secondhand
copies can fetch relatively high prices.

I suspect another reason, because these essays were
commissioned for and first printed in an English
Sunday paper, so that the book collection would be
"second rights."

--Or something more sinister in the author's current connections
with Faber & Faber, who commissioned him in the 1990s
to produce two (extraordinarily good) anthologies of
news reporting and science writing.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)