I love these books. They are the only books in my “library” that I shelve together and in alphabetical order. Library of America (our Pléiade) makes a nice book: printed on good paper, smith sewn in a case made with Brillianta, with a ribbon marker and printed ends. They cycle through four cloth colors: green, blue, maroon and brown. The works of any one author are bound consistently in one of those colors. They are all typeset in Galliard. The unjacketed Hawthorne volume in the picture is the slip-cased book club edition. I subscribed to the book club early on until my Donnelley rep pointed out that they printed the books and always ended up with a couple of samples in the office! I’ve been buying them of recent years, mostly from Amazon, but I do protest that I will often buy one when I’m in an independent bookstore.

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Here’s a listing (via Publishing Perspectives) of their top sellers for 2013: following each entry are the year the volume was first published as well as its 2012 ranking.

1. Kurt Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963-1973 [2011, –]
2. The Phillip K. Dick Collection [three volumes, 2007-2009; ranked #1 last year]
3. Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works [1988; #3]
4. Jack Kerouac: Road Novels 1957-1960 [2007; #7]
5. Raymond Carver: Collected Stories [2009; #4]
6. H.P. Lovecraft: Tales [2005; #5]*
7. Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs & Selected Letters [1990; #14]*
8. Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America [2004; #6]*
9. American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau [2008; #2]
10. Dashiell Hammett: Complete Novels [1999; #8)
11. John Muir: Nature Writings [1997; #13]
12. James Thurber: Writings and Drawings [1996; –]*
13. James Baldwin: Collected Essays [1998; –]
14. The Collected Plays of Tennessee Williams [two volumes, 2000; #11]
15. John Dos Passos: U.S.A. [1998; –]
(tie) Shirley Jackson: Novels & Stories [2010; –]
(tie) Walt Whitman: Poetry & Prose [1982; –]

(I do not own numbers 4, 6, and 9 — though they are not on my Wish List either.)

As explanation Publishing Perspectives adds: “On the Library of America’s blog, Reader’s Almanac, they note that is probably no surprise that the debut volume of the LOA’s edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s collected fiction was the best-selling title of 2013. On the other hand, who would have thought that Ben Stiller’s movie remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty would triple sales of the LOA’s James Thurber edition. Or that the film version of On the Road would increase sales of the Kerouac volume that contains the novel by more than 30%? Or that an encore broadcast of the American Masters program James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket would increase sales of the LOA’s collection of Baldwin’s essays by roughly 30% as well?”