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18 months ago when I wrote about the 100 Classic Book Collection for the Nintendo DS, I was cautiously optimistic. Now the collection has landed on US shores and I’m wondering if this is anything more than a curiosity.
Over the past few years, these collections have been released around the world: 200 Klassische Buecher in Germany, 100 Livres Classiques in France, and Chotto DS Bungaku Zenshu: Sekai no Bungaku 20 in Japan. The US release mirrors the UK version released on December 26, 2008 down to its Brit-heavy catalog.
Dickens, Shakespeare and Austen are so well represented that this would be a credible textbook for any British Literature course. The set doesn’t claim to be the 100 greatest classic books, but the inclusion of Susan Coolidge’s Katy novels and Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio over Dante’s Inferno or any Milton is questionable. 100 books (or 110 including the ones available to download) is an impressive number, but the amount of variety (and voices) is limited.
The Classic Book Collection hasn’t changed in the last 18 months, but the landscape has. The books in the set are all in the public domain, freely available online. Stevenson’s Treasure Island is one of them and – within a few seconds – I was able to pull it up from Project Gutenberg on my smartphone. It was well formatted and easy to read. I can only imagine that being easier on an iPad or Nook or Kindle.
I’m still interested by the 100 Classic Book Collection and look forward to spending some time with it, but I fear it’ll be more of a novelty than something truly novel.
Silvercube:
It’s only $20.
I’m really tempted to get it – it has relaxing music you enable to listen to while reading.
Though nothing beats the old paper copies :)