For the person who has everything, but, most particularly, empty bookcases
Amazon is offering the complete Penguin Library Classics collection as a single item, 1-click orderable and all. Over 1000 titles for about $8000.
I wonder who’s going to order this, and how many of them they’ll actually read.
(If we wait another generation or so, we’ll probably get Humanity: the Complete Collected Works on a handheld.)
(I expect that last part to be true with some important qualifiers like English language prose works in the public domain. You'd probably need a whole backpack for everything.)
Posted by Zed on June 27 2005 22:59
According to the description at Amazon, this collection would take up 828 feet of shelf space. Years ago, I built a bookcase for my paperbacks with seven shelves of four-foot width. (Of course it's completely full now.) I'd need to build thirty more of those shelves to hold the Penguin collection.
Well, that's almost a year's worth of weekend projects. And then I could build myself a house to hold them.
Posted by Jimcat on June 29 2005 06:43
It's not 828 shelf-feet -- 828 feet is the meaningless sum of the heights of the books. Even if the books averaged an inch thick, that'd be under 86 shelf feet. Given that they likely average less than that, I'd bet they'd comfortably fit on 3 of your bookcases.
Amazon also lets you buy 261 DVDs as a single item for $5000.
Posted by Zed on June 29 2005 10:36
Doh! I should have caught that myself... 828 feet would be nearly one foot per book! Well hey, if they only take up three bookcases, that's easy... no need for a new house. Now I just have to come up with $8000.
Posted by Jimcat on June 29 2005 13:12