Amazon & Penguin Team to Promote Classics

By Neal 

kathryn-gursky.jpgThe folks at Penguin Classics tell us that they’ve just launched a new marketing venture with Amazon.com: The Penguin Classics Reading Group is a quarterly program that will lead moderated discussions of books from the familiar black-white-and-orange collection of world literature touchstones. The first book featured? Fifth Business by the late Canadian author Robertston Davies. A bit of a left-field choice, but all the better.

To lead the discussions, Amazon and Penguin have tapped retired librarian Kathryn Gursky (left), who inspired a brief media stir last year when her husband bought her Amazon’s Penguin Classics collection to replace the personal library lost in a fire (although the Davies wasn’t an official Classic back then).