Kathryn Gursky of Los Alamos, N.M., with her restocked library. Photograph by Rick Scibelli Jr. for The New York Times.
For those of you who are curious to find out more about the enigmatic owner of the complete Penguin Classics collection whose photo of her library, posted on Amazon.com, I borrowed and posted here, The New York Times published a short profile of her today.
Interesting tidbits? While the Times names her as Kathryn Gursky, and states that she has "acknowledged her ownership in a review of the collection on Amazon's Web site," the customer name as listed on Amazon.com is "Kate Bolton." (of course, there are a million reasons why the names might not match, and many other particulars line up: New Mexico residence, the appearance of the bookshelf in both the Times and Amazon.com pictures, and the description of the arrival and unpacking process of the collection on both Amazon and in the Times article.)
Also interesting is that Penguin acknowledges that the set as sold is not, in fact, complete. There are, apparently, a little more than 200 titles which are either awaiting redesign and reprinting, or are simply not in sufficient stock at the publisher to allow inclusion in the set.
So one more reason for me to hold off on my order.
1 comment:
It was short enough to miss, but I noticed this paragraph in the NYT article:
"Ms. Gursky earned a master's degree in library science at the University of Chicago before returning to Los Alamos, her hometown, and shortly thereafter got a job as a librarian at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where her husband, Richard Bolton, is a physicist. She now works in database support for the laboratory."
From this I would conclude that Kathryn Gursky also sometimes goes by her married name, Kate Bolton.
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