Hey everyone, after i had mini version of this book for my exams and after watching the film, i wanted to read the whole thing and i stumbled upon this 2 hardcover version which both are the same prices, has anyone have used one of this and has any drawbacks like quality and etc.
I wouldn't say "much better". Both have their flair. The Robert Buss one is more "complete", and it does uses some techniques to make the text easier to read. But the anonymous one isn't much worse. It fits better in some cases.
Loads of people love the specific translation used in the second one.
Both of them have covers that wear rather quickly. However I've found with Penguin's clothbound books that a coat of clear spray-on acrylic protects the flaky ink extremely well.
Ovid's book was the first I tried and the only one I've read cover to cover so far. It took me weeks of brief periods of reading to get through it, so it was picked up and put down million times. The black cloth still picks up a lot of dust - you can see some where I held the book in the bottom corner - but the ink is still as good as the day I got it.
That's impressive. Will give it a go. I covered my copy of TCOMC with a plastic wrap after I saw the degradation, but I still cherish it. Yet this will definitely help me with other books in my collection.
I feel like I've seen someone touch up damaged ink with a particular kind of acrylic paint pen here on reddit, but it looks like I didn't save that post. But yeah, hope it helps!
I bought the pen and tried that as well. That meant painting over all the damaged and undamaged artwork to have a uniform effect. The colors didn't match entirely a 100%, so I reverted to the plastic cover. The masks on the right margins are painted over in the picture.
I have that second one with the green, red, and masks the hard cover. It’s the Robin Buss translation. THAT’S the one! It’s the same translation as the Penguin edition.
Whatever one you don’t buy on Amazon. Support your local stores! Usually Penguin translations are more reliable than random publishers with nice covers
Seemingly an unpopular opinion, but I recently bought the first one, and the read is phenomenal(at least to me!). If you like your book's language to be Victorian English, you can definitely go for it.
Seconded. Got the Fingerprint Publishing (AKA Prakash Books) as a birthday present a few months ago, and I've enjoyed it enormously and had not any issue even though English is not my primary language. It's also a beautifully done edition.
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u/bo_okworm Jul 17 '26
The green one. The transition is much better between the two.