Links on the loose!

I'm putting together a set of links here for booklovers who are also compulsive completists. If a book is part of a series, and you own that book, you must own the series. If this is you, skip to the links. If this is not you, you still may find these links to be a good way to browse subjects and find books published by respected publishers.

Oxford English Press have put out this little series called "Very Short Introductions." They are still adding to it but you can see the list-to-date at their site (below) and purchase any of them at Amazon or your favorite mega-bookseller. I personally own and have read the volumes on Chaos and Egyptian Myth and both were excellent. Your mileage may vary. Oh, they also offer some cute little box sets put together by theme, usually five books to a box. This may not be the best way to go if your goal is to collect them all someday, but would make for nice gifts to the readers/thinkers in your life.
OEP - Very Short Introductions

Not to be outdone (actually the series began much earlier), Cambridge University Press have republished existing classics in many different fields all under the "Canto" designation. I don't know what exactly the word signifies here (yes I know it's meaning in the context of poetry), and it's a trifle disappointing for your left best to find out that the books come in graphic designs of all sorts. Some have a "typical" Canto template layout, others just see to have the name slapped on as an afterthought. But thankfully forethought went into the selection of these books, as they comprise some of the finest works from the best brains over the years.
CUP - Canto Collection

You may not know about Project Gutenberg, a volunteer-created site which seeks to make available for free the text of many, many books which have gone out of print or at least have lost their exclusive copyright. Want to read War of the Worlds? You can buy a copy at the book store or download a text file or eBook from this site, since the text has long since passed into the public domain. I noticed they've added audiobooks, sheet music, and other niceties since my last visit there, too. They're currently hosting over 20,000 books from their site alone, and have links to other non-copyrighted material. I'm not really inclined to read books on a computer, but you could download some titles for your PocketPC for that long business trip I suppose. Anyway, check it out.
Project Gutenberg

Another way to enjoy the classics is to hold a bound book in your hands the old fashioned way. No company has championed literary classics the way Penguin has with their venerable "Penguin Classics" series. A few years ago they changed all the book cover designs to be the same size and modernized and unified the look. This made me pretty happy. Now when I want to read Wuthering Heights, say, I don't even hesitate, I just get the Penguins Classics version. I get to read a great book, and it ends up looking great next to all it's carefully-coordinated cousins on the shelf when I'm done! One note: not all of the books have been transformed into the new handsome design, but they're working on it. Most have been.
Penguin Classics

A step up from the Dummies and Complete Idiot series, a helpful "basics" collection without a demeaning title is McGraw-Hill's "Demystified" series, which have resisted all my attempts to find them gathered together on a single page or list. The authors and quality of these books vary widely, and I quick gave up trying to "collect" these when the subjects left science and got into business and everything else. New titles appear all the time. The most help I can offer are my own Amazon lists, part one and part two, which contain most of the older books, and the McGraw-Hill site, which should contain everything but you do have to browse by subject and there does not appear to be a master list. There seem to be 58 books in the series at this point.

If audiobooks or video lectures are your thing, and you like to learn for learning's sake, check out The Teaching Company. They have audio and video on hundreds of topics, organized by subject for the post part. You can usually download the audio, or receive the audio CD or video DVD in the mail. A warning: These are university-level courses that are usually very in depth, and they are not cheap. Some come with a printed transcript of the material or other extras such as workbooks. They can also be found online for the not-so-scrupulous or rich who still enjoy an ongoing liberal arts education. Make great audiobooks for your iPod too (but if plan to do so be sure to read this) - just imagine jogging or lifting weights whilst honing your Tocqueville or Voltaire. I couldn't find a neat by-subject list of their complete offerings on their site, but the site index does pretty well in this regard. You can also browse by topic in the upper-left sidebar.
TTC - The Teaching Company

If movies are your thing, and you like good quality DVD transfers and have a passion for classics, cult films, or movies otherwise 'distinguished' or iconic in some way, there is Criterion. They say it best in their mission statement, but I'll just say that if you want to own a movie of high quality, and are not willing to spend the money or wait long enough to see who wins the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war, check out to see if there is a Criterion Collection version of the movie before purchasing the "normal" copy. You'll get the best quality current DVD has to offer.
The Criterion Collection

Like games? Sure, there are tons of popular games on Amazon, at Toys 'R' Us, and lots of other places, but these large stores do not cater to that brand of gamer who craves quality game, old or new, from the USA or anywhere else, and with genres ranging from role-playing games and card games to word games, puzzles, tile-laying games, and so much more. I was recently looking for a Lord of the Rings trivia game that isn't the official Hasbro "movie" edition. I knew I'd breeze through that one like a ill-tempered gust through dandelions. I wanted something more challenging, and based on the books. Well, like the time we were recommended a game called Carcassonne, a site called FunAgainGames had just what I was looking for! Another quality game site you should definitely check out is BoardGameGeek.
FunAgainGames
BoardGameGeek

Speaking of Tolkien, here in my opinion are the nicest versions of all his major works. Notice I said nicest, not cheapest. These are collector quality editions.
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
The Silmarillion
Unifinished Tales of Númenor and Middle Earth
The Children of Húrin
The Complete History of Middle Earth vol. I
The Complete History of Middle Earth vol. II
The Complete History of Middle Earth vol. III

This is what I consider to be the "canonical" Tolkien. Virtually everything he ever wrote concerning his "Elvish" mythology can be found in these volumes, standing complete or in various draft forms edited and commented upon by his son Christopher. There are of course many non-canonical books by other authors about him and his work, but of these I consider only one essential to own:
The Letters of JRR Tolkien

If you're a Harry Potter fan, you may want to get a boxed set of all the deluxe hardcover editions once the seventh and final book is released. There is sure to be some sort of magnificent and beastly collection unleashed on that fateful day or shortly thereafter. Just to provide an example, here is a boxed set of the deluxe editions of the UK versions, books 1-6. Why anyone would have purchased this is beyond me, when everyone on the planet knows there are going to end up being 7 books. Anyway, for what it's worth, this is what it looked like.
Bloomsbury deluxe edition boxed set of Harry Potter volumes 1 - 6

Hopefully there will be a great big bad US version with all of Mary GrandPré's artwork intact. And I don't mean this gimmicky trunk version.

Well that's all for now. I'm sure I'll present more collections of links of collections or something like it again in the near future. It's what I do, it seems. Have a good day.