Amazon's 1,082-volume Classics Collection: $7,989 605
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Who would buy 828 feet worth of books, for nearly $8,000, that would take 20 years to read at the rate of one title per week? And how much does it cost to ship? The Real Time columnists at the Wall Street Journal Online ponder these and other deep questions raised by Amazon's The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection, whose sheer jaw-dropping enormity reminds them of e-tailers' wacky offers during the dot-com boom. 'We think the collection is a perfect fit for more than a few software engineers we've known -- smart, self-directed people who are eternally curious, yet abhor wasting time intellectually and can't hide their impatience with the fuzziness of liberal arts,' Jason Fry and Tim Hanrahan write. 'For them, here's a pre-selected, pretty comprehensive list of Western classics, assembled for purchase with a single mouse-click -- and available in a form that eschews frills for portability and ease of use. Think of it as Humanities In a Box. OK, a Very Big Box.'"
E-book (Score:5, Funny)
Re:E-book (Score:5, Informative)
In the meantime, check the item out on Amazon here [amazon.com].
Wait, it says "Amazon.com Exclusive!!!" You mean I can't pick one up at my local Barnes&Noble?
Re:E-book (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:E-book (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, this is true. Both are just ordinary Amazon.com links.
The problem is that many people see the, qid or ref and erroneously jump to the conclusion that it's an affiliate link. Amazon has many different types of URLs, so I can see how this is possible (i.e. look at the URL in the article).
One thing people can do to nip this in the bud is to crop links after the product code, like this
Re:E-book (Score:5, Informative)
See also: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154018&cid=12
Re:E-book (Score:3, Informative)
Re:E-book (Score:4, Funny)
I've got a better idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
Then we will have thousands of web sites where people from all over the world can talk and read about the individual titles. Were certain characters jerks, megamanics, fools, cowards, heroes, or just ordinary people caught in difficult circumstances.
Maybe people will get out their camcorders and make 'home movies' based on chapters or incidents of the books. Imagine 21st century movies, P2P distributed zero-budget 'productions' that use different actors for different chapters or sections of a book.
The centralized movie business from Hollywood appears to have peaked and seems to be entering a period of accelerating decline. Insanely expensive and tepid remakes of mediocre television shows specifically focused on a young audience that has little to reference its quality.
The greatest threat facing Hollywood is not that people will endless consume its product without paying, it's that people will stop thinking of Hollywood as a source of entertainment product at all. This threat is increased by the fact that the change will be invisible to Hollywood until it has developed an unstopable momentum. Hollywood may find its product repelling people in a manner similar to identical poles of magnets pushing away from each other.
Hollywood is about to find itself in the same position as the big four American auto makers did in the 1980s. Someone comes out of 'nowhere' and takes a big chunk of their market share. And nothing they can do will convince people to go back to their product.
they're not (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I am probably going to get all kinds of replies saying that no, they indeed read and absorb every last word. Sorry, I don't believe it.
Re:E-book (Score:3, Funny)
Thank god... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank god... (Score:4, Funny)
Love interest for Optimus?
"Enormity"? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:"Enormity"? (Score:3, Informative)
"Enormousness" is not a word (Score:2)
Survey Says...59% of scholars agree with you, (Score:4, Interesting)
ref [reference.com]
Libraries (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Libraries (Score:2)
Re:Libraries (Score:3, Funny)
Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:2)
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:2)
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:2, Interesting)
It has massive massive editing errors and it really needs a certain level of accountability, not to mention the messages at the beginnning make it really sucky to read on a palm pilot.
They used some bizzare formatting system which breaks it on most pocket devices, they decided not to use rtf or anything else with support for graphics (Corectly assuming that those were usually patented but still) the list just goes on and on.
It could have been an e
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:5, Informative)
Gutenberg texts are formatted the way they are for lots of quite good reasons, which you have even figured out for yourself...
As for breaking pocket devices, what are you doing with them. They are text files!!
To make it look adequate on a Palm:
1. Download etext
2. Run through gut.pl (http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/gut/ [ryerson.ca]) - followed by deleting the legal stuff if you like
3. Convert to Plucker / iSilo or whatever you like
4. Read
I have read some great stuff this way and have not had trouble breaking my palm.
Um BTW, as an English Major, and if you would like to pass, try leaving the apostrophe out of "it's" (... I was hoping to get modded karma-whore-informative but am now assuming that grammar-nazi-troll is more likely!)
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, you intelligent, eh?
Lets expand that, ahall we... It's = It is (contracted form)
"It is catalog falls far short."
Sounds like "All your base" speech. Yeah.. Engrish Mager.
Obligatory Angry Flower Link (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:3, Informative)
"It" is a pronoun, the possessive of "it" is a new word: "its." The confusion exists because of the contraction "it's" which is simply "it is" shortened through the use of an apostrophe.
Other examples:
He - His
She - Hers
You - Yours
Me - Mine
It - Its
You wouldn't say "The cat licked he's fur." or "I liked you's fur."
The same goes for "it."
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm afraid you're mistaken too.
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Also, wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Or are you possibly referring to errors which were in the original text, which the Project explicitly refuses to correct, since their stated goal is to preserve the original author's intent, even if that original author couldn't spell?
The "bizzare [sic] formatting system" Gutenberg uses is Plain Vanilla ASCII [gutenberg.org] for a reason---longetivity. They say it better than I could; read their rationale. They're more interested in making the text stable for the long term, than in compiling it for your device-of-the-week. Besides, as other users have pointed out, you can, with little to moderate effort, derive your proprietary format from the ASCII plaintext.
Not to mention that Gutenberg provides some titles in RTF format [gutenberg.org]. Or HTML [gutenberg.org], including formatting, illustration, and so on. Or that they have a whole section about reading their eBooks on PDAs [gutenberg.org].
When was the last time you used PG? 1985? They have over 16,000 etexts, with more being added every day---how is this falling "far short"? What great and towering public-domain works does their catalog lack?
--grendel drago
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:4, Funny)
As an English major, I must warn you that your English skills suck:
Also, from where are you? I find your use of the (US) term "English major" surprising juxtaposed with your (UK) spelling of the word "catalogue".
Re:Quick Script + Gutenberg? (Score:5, Funny)
He's from England, and a Major in the British Army. An English Major.
Re:Gutenberg doesnt have the geek classics (Score:5, Funny)
Relativity - Einstein
Origin of Species - Darwin
Necronomicon - Abdul Alhazred
OK, all but the last one.
The math is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
My personal library is about the same size, including lots of thick computer manuals, and it takes up less than half that.
They probably dropped a decimal point.
Re:The math is wrong (Score:2)
Yeah, that's almost a foot per book. Geez, even Atlas Shrugged is only six inches thick!
Maybe they have a knobby book stacker who prefers putting them end to end or something.
Of course, most, if not all, of this stuff can be found online as an eBook, which, if moved to a DVD, would take up a bit less shelf space, weigh a lot less, and, rather than $5,300 off list price, ends up about 99.9% off of list price.
Not going to earn you any snobbish
Re:The math is wrong (Score:2)
Guess we now know the new job for the guy who did the math for the Mars probes that missed.
Re:The math is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
You would see at
http://tinyurl.com/bfj8v [tinyurl.com]
"Approximately 700 pounds in weight, the titles would tower 828 feet if you stacked them atop each other--almost as tall as the Empire State Building."
This means end to end, rather than back to back.
So, the maths are correct. Your interpretation is wrong..!
Re:The math is wrong (Score:2)
Maybe if... (Score:2)
Needed (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't say whether they have "improved my life" since the substrate of my perspective now depends upon them. For example, because of them I decided that engineering is too limiting.
But if you have faith that generating interconnections in the brain between sense, experience and imaginitive possibilities is a good thing, then this is the way to go.
Shipping (Score:2, Funny)
tricky calculations (Score:2)
Refer Points? (Score:3, Funny)
Sadly... (Score:2)
Dont forget The Criterion Collection Gift Set! (Score:2, Interesting)
# See individual DVDs for more details
# Number of discs: 282
Price: $4,999.00
You Save: $2,501.00 (33%)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 6A05RM/qid=1119876469/sr=8-1/102-8399008-3450544?v =glance&s=dvd&n=507846 [amazon.com]
What a bargain!
Re:Dont forget The Criterion Collection Gift Set! (Score:2)
Might still be a good choice for a new library (Score:5, Insightful)
You should probably ask them first, though. I'm picturing Monday morning at the hometown library. The UPS rep knocks on the door to get a signature, and the librarian looks up to a couple semi-loads of books starting to be unloaded in their front yard!
Re:Might still be a good choice for a new library (Score:4, Interesting)
As for a gift for a school, most definitely ask first. Local politics run deep in local schools.
About school politics, I once worked for a group that provided Internet access to all k-12 schools in the state (a small western state). Our head engineer (a really smart guy) had a daughter going to a high school with lots of equipment that hadn't been setup. We're talking over 100 PCs, networking gear, Cisco routers and a T1 that was being paid for but not used (termed at the NIU) for over two years. Our group would normally charge $85 per man hour to set everything up but we (about 12 people) volunteered to go in on a Saturday and do it for free. The school district computer administrator said no and that he would do it himself. Two years later nothing had been done. Over 100 brand new, unused four year old PCs still sat in their boxes.
Links to the collection. (Score:3, Informative)
Browse the Complete Collection by Author here [amazon.com]
Browse the Complete Collection by Title Here [amazon.com]
Pretty impressive... (Score:4, Interesting)
But I still think this [45s.com] is better - a quarter of a million dollars for a vinyl record (45 rpm) of every song that charted between 1950 and 1990.
Re:Pretty impressive... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the real idea is that they don't want to sell it. But if someone does cough up the cash, then they'll sell it and retire.
It's not the acquisition cost - it's the acquisition time. There's another page on the site that says they searched for decades to finish one complete set. Sure, you can probably put one together, but it won't be easy, especially for those songs that hit #40 on the chart for 1 week in 1958 or something.
Not eligible for free shipping (Score:2, Funny)
My biggest problem with this is that they call it "Complete Penguin Classics" and not one book on Linux in the entire set!
Re:Not eligible for free shipping (Score:2)
Duplicates, lots of duplicates (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Duplicates, lots of duplicates (Score:2)
Fuzziness? (Score:4, Interesting)
And these same fellows expect to glide through both Gravity's Rainbow and Finnegan's Wake? I thought it was funny in the WSJ article that they mention being spared Ulysses, which is actually readable by your average man, while FW requires you to understand some self-made Gaelic language Joyce made up. Yeah... gonna polish that one off in a weekend.
I agree that the list is a bit odd. You just get a collection of Kafka short stories without including either The Trial or The Castle. Likewise Hesse's Siddartha should probably be paired with or replaced with either Demian or Steppenwolf. In fact this set seems to betray the classic modernist view of literature: pre-colonial, predominantly Western. Though there are some interesting choices. Like The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam. But Borges seems to carry the load for all of South America. And no Rushdie? Murakami? Aren't we missing a hemisphere? And everything seems to stop around Vineland. No DeLillo, Eugenides, Ellis or Eggers. Its like literature stopped with the post-modern singularity.
But Harold Bloom [amazon.com] would be agree: the entire body of Shakespeare's [amazon.com] work is here. So thus goes the Western Canon [amazon.com]. I guess if you are going to buy 900 feet of paperbacks and you're going to get them for 40% off, no need to be choosy.
Re:Fuzziness? (Score:2)
Re:Fuzziness? (Score:4, Interesting)
I could add my own roster of missing authors: Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, H.D., Ezra Pound, Flann O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Felipe Alfau, Samuel Beckett, and so on. The most likely answer to most of these complaints is that Penguin doesn't have the rights to many 20th-century and contemporary titles. So DeLillo, Eugenides, Ellis, Eggers, and Murakami are obviously out -- they're not published by Penguin, to my knowledge. And while I don't specifically know the copyright situation of Kafka's oeuvre, a glance at a bookstore shelf certainly gives the impression that Schocken holds the publishing rights to The Trial and The Castle while seemingly anybody can publish a translation of the short stories.
On the other hand, I have an old Penguin collection of Sylvia Ocampo stories, and I could have sworn that Penguin had an edition of Martin Fiero, so your complaint about South America rings true. I suspect, though, that Penguin doesn't hold rights to publish that other giant of South American literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and this is probably also true for Adolfo Bioy Casare, Julio Cortázar, and the many worthy South American writers that I've never heard of. And then there's the fact that South American writers in general simply aren't well-known or welll-read in the English-speaking world -- most of Borges's books aren't even in print in the United States!
I don't know what the excuse is for Rushdie, either, except that Penguin publishes Midnight's Children, Haroun, etc. under its Penguin Contemporaries imprint, not its Penguin Classics line. But yeah, if Pynchon and Barthelme make the Penguin Classics cut, I don't see why Rushdie doesn't -- it does seem arbitrary.
And Li Po and Basho and Confucius and Cao Xueqin and Shen Fu and Murasaki Shikibu... but your criticism still stands. I think it's fair to say that the non-Western titles here are included because of the impact they've made upon the Western literary tradition.
i'm kind of a big deal (Score:2)
but seriously, it'd be much more worth it if they were designed to look like old leather books. you know, like rich old people have in their study. in movies.
barnes and noble has some classic books reprinted in some faux-leather hardcover format (example [barnesandnoble.com]) which would be much more impressive to have filling up a room.
Re:i'm kind of a big deal (Score:3, Interesting)
Shakespeare [eastonpress.com]
Tolkien [eastonpress.com]
Asimov's Robot Series [eastonpress.com]
Science Classics [eastonpress.com]
Churchill's World War I History [eastonpress.com]
Cheap home decorations... (Score:2)
Do the math... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do the math... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm repeating something I wrote in another thread here, but you pay extra for quality editing, introductions, explanatory notes etc.
Over here there is a discount brand of paperbacks called "Wordsworth Classics". £1.50 each on Amazon. I used to get them for
Here are some collections that they should offer (Score:2)
Now those I would buy as presents.
Who would buy this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just sayin', it isn't unthinkable for an institution to purchase something like this.
Not to be confused with the "penguin" classics, (Score:5, Funny)
which can be found in
Remember katie.com? (Score:3, Informative)
Too much money! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Too much money! (Score:3, Insightful)
Penguin adds value with excellent introductions and annotations. Only yesterday I chose a slightly more expensive Penguin Classics edition of H.P. Lovecraft short stories over the Del Rey edition, because of the 14 page introduction and the extensive explanatory notes, which help put the writing in context.
It's like buying a gym membership (Score:2)
I'm much more likely to finally digest Gilgamesh or some dreaded Faulkner if I already own them, and can easily transport them to the bathroom. If I say, though, "Gee, it's time I finally read some Gilgamesh..." and then have to
Books by the Yard (Score:3, Interesting)
When they would get older classical type books, the kind noone really wanted to buy used to read, but that have the nice old decorated hardback spine, they would line them in a seperate area for "decorative books". People would buy them by the yard as filler, either to fill their library with impressive looking books, or for theater props or whatever. All they really needed to do was look good filling a shelf.
Amazons version of this sounds a bit expensive.
Re:Books by the Yard (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, Texans.
Goat-skin (Score:2)
impatience with the fuzziness of liberal arts? (Score:2)
Harvard Classics (Score:5, Informative)
My alma mater, the University of Chicago (http://www.uchicago.edu/ [uchicago.edu]), is very much a Great Books kind of place. Here's a good list to start with (from "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, 1972):
1. Homer (9th Century B.C.?)
Iliad
Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus (c.525-456 B.C.)
Tragedies
4. Sophocles (c.495-406 B.C.)
Tragedies
5. Herodotus (c.484-425 B.C.)
History
6. Euripides (c.485-406 B.C.)
Tragedies
(esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
7. Thucydides (c.460-400 B.C.)
History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates (c.460-377? B.C.)
Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes (c.448-380 B.C.)
Comedies
(esp. The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)
10. Plato (c.427-347 B.C.)
Dialogues
(esp. The Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, Meno, Apology, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus)
11. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, The Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics)
12. Epicurus (c.341-270 B.C.)
Letter to Herodotus
Letter to Menoeceus
13. Euclid (fl.c. 300 B.C.)
Elements
14. Archimedes (c.287-212 B.C.)
Works
(esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies, The Sand-Reckoner)
15. Apollonius of Perga (fl.c.240 B.C.)
Conic Sections
16. Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age)
17. Lucretius (c.95-55 B.C.)
On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil (70-19 B.C.)
Works
19. Horace (65-8 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)
20. Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17)
History of Rome
21. Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 17)
Works
(esp. Metamorphoses)
22. Plutarch (c.45-120)
Parallel Lives
Moralia
23. Tacitus (c.55-117)
Histories
Annals
Agricola
Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl.c. 100 A.D.)
Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus (c.60-120)
Discourses
Encheiridion (Handbook)
26. Ptolemy (c.100-170; fl. 127-151)
Almagest
27. Lucian (c.120-c.190)
Works
(esp. The True Way to Write History, The True History, The Sale of Creeds)
28. Marcus Aurelius (121-180)
Meditations
29. Galen (c. 130-200)
On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus (205-270)
The Enneads
32. St. Augustine (354-430)
Works
(esp. On the Teacher, Confessions, City of God, On Christian Doctrine)
33. The Song of Roland (12th century?)
34. The Nibelungenlied (13th century?)
(Völsunga Saga is the Scandinavian version of the same legend)
35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274)
Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Works
(esp. The New Life, On Monarchy, The Divine Comedy)
38. Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400)
Works
(esp. Troilus and Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales)
39. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
The Prince
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus (c.1
Re:Harvard Classics (Score:3, Funny)
Only (men) wishing to extend the patriarchal phallo-centric culture would advocate a list of books such as this. We all now know that womyn and persons of color are the only ones who may speak authoritatively on any subject. At least, that's what my college lit classes were teaching.
Re:Harvard Classics (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, you're a PC postmodern relativist.
I've read:
The Lady Murasaki - The Tale of Genji
Omar Khayyaam - Rubaiyat
The 1001 Nights.
I agree that they're worthwhile. I would like to read
Moses Maimonides - Guide for the Perplexed.
The reason that these great book lists are Eurocentric is that the Western cultures are ours. A Chinese who hasn't read some Confucious would be strangely lacking: he simply wouldn
Everyman's Library (Score:3, Informative)
Eventually true for everyone... (Score:3, Insightful)
The number of books you'll have time to read during the rest of your life decreases.
At some point in your life, these two lines cross.
Meaning there is a point in your life when after that, you won't live long enough to read all the books you have.
Re:Who reads that slowly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who reads that slowly? (Score:2)
Re:Who reads that slowly? (Score:2, Insightful)
Man, slashdot isn't the place to find humility, thats for damn sure.
-d
Re:Who reads that slowly? (Score:2)
Uh-uh. I know people who read super-fast. I'm not one of them.
Re:Who reads that slowly? (Score:2)
Well, you get Finnegan's Wake and Crime and Punishment, for instance, and they'll eat up a lot of whatever time margin you can get on the more accessible titles.
Re:Who reads that slowly? (Score:2)
Lots of people. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lots of people. (Score:2)
So if you ask me questions like that about a book, I'll blow them. I get out of a book what I want to get out of it, and that's clearly not the same kinds of things you want to get out of it. One of the things I get out of books is connections between books, between viewpoints of authors looking at the same subject. That's fun, but it
Re:828ft (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Sounds dumb. (Score:2)
> If you can't be bothered to figure out for yourself which books you "ought" to read to get a good grasp of western literature, are you going to read the books some people at Amazon think you "ought" to read if they just end up on your shelves?
It's not really an "ought to read" list; it's a collection of everything that has been released in the Penguin "classics" line. Notice that a number of titles appear repeatedly:
I don't think they'
Re:Sounds dumb. (Score:2)
Actually it's the editors of Penguin Books, not the people at Amazon.com.
I read a lot, and the idea of this is pretty distasteful to me. Sure, you'll get some of the good books, but you'll also get the awful crap that snotty english types swear is "fine literatur
Re:So how many... (Score:2)
Re:So how many... (Score:2)
Funny bit is that this is not the first time an offer like this has been around. The Russians had a similar set published in the 1980-es. 200 volumes. It was not bad, though personally I found the selection slightly biased. And it took one wall worth of library space in an average size apartment.
This one looks considerably better and clearly less biased. Most french classics are there. So are most of what the westerners consider for Russian classics.
Re:So how many... (Score:3, Funny)
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Aeneid by Virgil
It's a good thing they've got three copies of the Aeneid by Virgil. I'd hate to have only read two of them and missed out on what happens in the third.
Looks kind of like the selections of ready-made web templates you get for $30.00. 250,000 web-sites my foot.
Re:So how many... (Score:5, Informative)
A small caution is that they do have not really duplicates but different versions or translations of some works as "The Iliad" by Homer has four different books:
ISBN: 0140445927
ISBN: 0140275363
ISBN: 0140444440
ISBN: 0140447946
Re:So how many...all of them (Score:3, Funny)
(of titles that is).
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
# Beowulf by Anonymous
# Beowulf: A Prose Translation by Anonymous
# Beowulf: A Verse Translation by Anonymous
Which, as we all recognize, is a Beowulf cluster....
Re:Maybe more geeks would buy it... (Score:2, Funny)
1024 *will* 'overflow' your geek 'bookshelf' if- as you're implying- the number of books it holds has to be contained within 10 bits.
Unless, of course, you're using the class of bookshelves which can *never* be empty, and can thus hold 1-1024 books, instead of 0-1023.
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
The Penguin Classics imprint largely consists of out of copyright works, but Penguin Books [penguin.com] publishes a lot of contemporary literature.
Back in the day, the had Penguin for fiction, Pelican for non-fiction and Puffin for "younger readers". I get the impression those brands have been phased out, which is a shame because I thought it was rather clever, and the logos were nice.
Penguin is probably most famous for fighting and winning the Lady Chatterly's Lover censorship case.
Re:"Enormity"? (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a usage note from Dictionary.com [reference.com]:
Usage Note: Enormity is frequently used to refer simply to the property of being great in size or extent, but many would prefer that enormousness (or a synonym such as immensity) be used for this general sense and that enormity be limited to situations that demand a negative moral judgment, as in Not until the war ended and journalists were able to enter Cambodia did the world really become aware of the enormity of Pol Pot's oppression. Fifty-nine percent of