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The edition or translation of a book one decides to read should be one's own choice. The membership of this book club is too varied to try otherwise.
Especially with translations. It's a sticky subject. Try telling everyone to read a free translation when some may prefer to pay more for a certain translation or the footnotes, etc. that accompany it. Also, try telling everyone to read a more expensive translation when a free one could be just as suitable. Choice is good.
But while we're on the subject of paying for books, I'm not a fan of the book selections being decided by their price tag. Of course, if a book is super expensive, I would understand. And the months where there is a specific effort, like this month and the public domain requirement, then it's fine. But I've seen other months where the discussion during nominating and voting has turned to which of the nominations are cheap, or posters encouraging others to not choose a book because it's not free or extremely cheap. I don't like that.
And on a similar subject, I've also sometimes noticed the discussion during nominating and voting turning to which books are available as ebooks in certain areas. I don't like this either. As I've understood the rules of the club that I've read in the first post of the monthly nomination threads, a book doesn't have to be available as an ebook anywhere to be selected, let alone in a certain area. At least, nowhere have I noticed that mentioned.
I understand this is a digital reading site and that most of us may read most of our books digitally, but if it isn't an official requirement of a club selection then I don't think it's relevant. As much as I'd rather read an ebook, if the selection one month was a book I could only buy physically and I wanted to read it for the club, then I would suck it up and buy the physical book or physically check it out from my local library. I wouldn't expect everyone else not to vote for that selection just because I'd rather buy the book electronically. If the overwhelming general consensus disagrees with me on this, then I'd suggest the rules be changed to clarify the ebook requirement. Then I'd be fine with it. Otherwise though, I prefer that the selection be decided on what interests the most people in a particular genre each month, not which is the absolute cheapest or available as an e-book in Antarctica.
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