This tiny "Penguin 60s Classic" edition contains three of Balzac's stories from his wondrous Comédie Humaine. I love those stories! Eventually I'll make my way through all of them. I have been reading each wonderful story, piece by piece, for a while. A total of sixty Penguin 60s Classics were published in 1995 to celebrate Penguin Books' sixtieth anniversary. As I recall they were 50 cents each. They've held up fairly well and are nice to have for mailing around in bookcrossing. They can travel far with not a lot of postage. Next year, Penguin could come out with Penguin 80s editions.Time flies!

The first and last stories, "The Atheist's Mass" and "The Purse," build on a similar suspense. Why is the noted atheist attending Mass? Why does a baroness live in poverty and play cards? The second story, "The Conscript," the tale of a mother and son, also builds on revelation. My favorite was "The Atheist's Mass." The story does not proselytize for Atheists or Catholics. It shows that love and friendship transcend division.

This is a new bookcrossing bookray. Lovely hyphen8 of Honolulu has consented to be the first in line. Here's the order so far unless otherwise noted:

hyphen8
HI77
chamonix44

For our two USA participants I'm including the new USA Flannery O'Connor stamp. It's a lovely stamp featuring one of our best Georgia writers and at 93 cents it should go a long way in assisting with postage.

Here's a link to the forum that birthed the bookray:

http://www.bookcrossing.com/forum/10/521341

Thank you cordelia-anne for sharing this little book. It arrived yesterday, along with lovely Flannery O'Connor stamps - peacock feathers and all - to use for mailing it to future readers.

I'm intrigued by your note; if I'm reading it correctly you have a personal connection to Miss O'Connor, which makes this bookray in her honor quite special. I'll be sure to use one of the stamps when I send it to its next reader.

I do love these cute Penguin 60s, but if only they didn't have such tiny print! This will be a challenge with my new non-cooperative contact lenses. :p

Other Penguin 60s titles on my BC shelf:

Bartleby by Herman Melville
Baseball: Our Game by John Thorn
Blue Rose by Peter Straub
The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck
Daisy Miller by Henry James
The Dead by James Joyce
The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen
A Gathering of Ghost Stories by Robertson Davies
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln
The Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm
Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
Madame de Treymes by Edith Wharton
The Man with the Twisted Lip by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy
The Original Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Farmer
The Overcoat and The Nose by Nikolai Gogol
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J.M. Barrie
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Sixty Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Three Tales of Horror by Poe, Bierce, & Stevenson
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
To Build a Fire by Jack London
The Wife of Bath by Geoffrey Chaucer
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Youth by Joseph Conrad

Sorry I took so long to get this read: I was really struggling to deal with the print size until I got a chance to sit down without my contacts and read it.

Balzac's stories were set not all that long after a very turbulent time in France's history, when there were still people who remembered the French Revolution and the many changes afterwards. That context is important for these stories, yet people remain essentially the same so the stories still have an impact today.

Thanks for the opportunity to encounter an author whose work I probably would not otherwise have read. I'll double-check HI77's address then get the book moving again soon.

Finally headed out Tuesday 9/8. Sadly, I seem to have misplaced one of the Flannery O'Connor stamps, so I'll leave the other one for HI77, who has agreed to mail the book overseas. I promise to use the stamp for BookCrossing if and when I find it again...

A quiet dream of floating,

it carries the mind
with a sharp undercurrent.

Well, I finally found time to get to this. I love these little books but the print in them is very small, so if I'm tired I find it too taxing to read them. And since I'm tired more than I'm not... :P

So! While I know of Balzac, I've never actually read him. Just another that had been sitting on my mental To Read list that seems to be ever expanding. So I was very glad to have the opportunity to sample his work...

Great stuff! :)

I was completely pulled in. A wonderful writing style with very real characters. And while all 3 were good. I was most interested in The Atheist's Mass. I think it was a great round about way to explain how people bend their views or convictions, where circumstances require, but still remain true to their original viewpoints. I think we all have to make compromises through our lives and this resonates.

Well done. I'll have to bite into more of his work when I get the chance. ;)

What a lovely surprise to receive this book out of the blue. Thank you also for the 2 cute labels. When I read the card that was enclosed I gathered that it was Cordelia-anne who sent it to me, although the last journal entry was written by HI77.
I can also read that it was from a bookray that I entered a while ago, and I had completely forgotten about it. Anyway, I really appreciate receiving this book. I love these small books even though the small print is not good for my eyesight. I wish there were more paragraphs in them, too. I have this one in my handbag right now, and I will read it gradually whenever I am out somewhere and I have to wait for someone or something!

I liked all three stories, but my favourite was the last one. That was the one that kept me wanting to go back and read a bit more. Thank you for this opportunity to read this book. I will be releasing it soon.

I left the book on top of one of the petrol pumps at the Firezone petrol station near to Goor. I do hope someone will see it and take it home to read.

Hallo daar, gelukkige vinder!
Wat leuk dat je op deze pagina bent komen kijken. Als je dit leest, heb je een boek gevonden, zomaar een onverwacht kadootje van mij voor jou... Veel plezier ermee! Hierbij trouwens wat spelregels mbt bookcrossing:

1. Het zou fijn zijn als je meldt dat het veilig bij jou is. Dat mag gewoon in het Nederlands.
2. Daarna kun je het boek gaan lezen en als je wilt nog eens schrijven wat je ervan vond.
3. Mag het boek verder reizen, geef het dan door aan iemand anders, of laat het zomaar ergens weer achter, liefst op een veilige, droge plek. Je kunt via de bookcross-site ook weer melden waar je het hebt neergelegd, zodat anderen ernaar op zoek kunnen gaan...
TIP: Als je het boek op zijn reis wilt volgen, dan kun je je het beste aanmelden als nieuwe bookcrosser (www.bookcrossing.com). Het is erg leuk om erachter te komen hoe het met 'jouw' boek op z'n reis verder gaat!!
Ik zou het erg leuk vinden als je mij chamonix44 dan opgeeft als referent. Voor Nederlandse uitleg kun je terecht op de volgende site: www.bookcrossing.nl

If you are reading here, then I want to tell you that this is a. FREE . book, and there are no catches! It is now yours! Please read on.....
If you are the finder of this book it would be nice if you could leave a message here to say that you have it. Do not worry because I don't want the book back. It is yours to keep if you want it. I just want to know it is now in safe hands.