What books would you like to see reprinted by the Folio Society?

There is rather full thread about a year old on this subject. I thought a new one could be in order.

Some of the books that come to mind I would love to see Folio print:

The Great Escape ~ One of the most famous true stories from the last war, The GREAT ESCAPE tells how more than six hundred men in a German prisoner-of-war camp worked together to achieve an extraordinary break-out. Every night for a year they dug tunnels, and those who weren't digging forged passports, drew maps, faked weapons and tailored German uniforms and civilian clothes to wear once they had escaped. All of this was conducted under the very noses of their prison guards. When the right night came, the actual escape itself was timed to the split second - but of course, not everything went according to plan.

Horses Don't Fly by Frederick Libby. It's about an American who signed up to fight with the Canadians and then transferred to the RAF and became an observer and then a pilot. He finished the war with the RAF turning down an opportunity to fly with the Americans later in the war. One of the most engaging war memoirs I've read from any conflict. Amazing how he grew up as a cowboy in the American west to become a fighter pilot for the RAF. I can't recommend it highly enough.

John Garth's book "Tolkien and the Great War". It relates J. R. R. Tolkien's experiences with the war and how they shaped who he was as a person, his relationships, and his literary works. One only two books I rated five stars last year (out of 86 read).

The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer. This book recounts the horror of World War II on the eastern front, as seen through the eyes of a teenaged German soldier. At first an exciting adventure, young Guy Sajer's war becomes, as the German invasion falters in the icy vastness of the Ukraine, a simple, desperate struggle for survival against cold, hunger, and above all the terrifying Soviet artillery. As a member of the elite Gross Deutschland Division, he fought in all the great battles from Kursk to Kharkov.

Samurai! Saburo Sakai was Japan s greatest fighter pilot to survive World War II, and his memoir is one of the most popular and enduring books written on the Pacific war. First published in English in 1957, it gave Americans new perspectives on the air war and on the Japanese pilots who, until then, were mere caricatures. Today, the book remains a valuable eyewitness account and a moving, personal story of a Samurai warrior. A veteran of more than two hundred dogfights, Sakai reportedly shot down sixty-four Allied planes, but he is best known for flying his crippled Zero nearly 600 miles to safety while partially paralyzed and nearly blind from multiple wounds.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. This is an important story even if you don't care about Bonhoeffer's faith as this book discusses the way that the Nazi party silenced the church and religious organizations in Germany leading up to the holocaust.

Education of a Wandering Man, the autobiography of Louis L'Amour. From his decision to leave school at fifteen to roam the world, to his recollections of life as a hobo on the Southern Pacific Railroad, as a cattle skinner in Texas, as a merchant seaman in Singapore and the West Indies, and as an itinerant bare-knuckled prizefighter across small-town America, here is Louis L'Amour's memoir of his lifelong love affair with learning--from books, from yondering, and from some remarkable men and women--that shaped him as a storyteller and as a man. Like classic L'Amour fiction, Education of a Wandering Man mixes authentic frontier drama--such as the author's desperate efforts to survive a sudden two-day trek across the blazing Mojave desert--with true-life characters like Shanghai waterfront toughs, desert prospectors, and cowboys whom Louis L'Amour met while traveling the globe. At last, in his own words, this is a story of a one-of-a-kind life lived to the fullest . . .

Sword at Sunset. Rosemary Sutcliff's reconception of the Arthurian epic cuts through the familiar myths and tells the story of the real King Arthur: Artos the Bear, the mighty warrior-king who saved the last lights of Western civilization when the barbarian darkness descended in the fifth century.

There are several Three Musketeers books. Usually you only see the first and final volumes but I would love to see all of them produced as a set or in matching bindings.

I would like to see Folio expand their sci-fi and Fantasy offerings a bit. Frank Herbert's Dune books, Orson Scott Card's Ender and Bean books would all be buys for me. So would Steven King's Dark Tower books.

I suggested C.S. Lewis' sci-fi trilogy to them on Facebook about 6 months ago and they advised they were considering it.

The Horatio Hornblower series.

H. Rider Haggard's The Brethren. A stand alone Crusader tale.

A few for me:
- complete James Bond series
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K Dick
- Junky by William S Burroughs
- Anything by Murakami

Even more than C.S. Lewis's Space trilogy, I would love to see his Till We Have Faces (retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche). I would just hope for illustrations I actually like (no collages!)

I would want to pick that up as well. I just ordered a copy of CS Lewis at the BBC and am hoping it will be excellent.

I believe Folio published one of the Bond books. I suspect a complete series would be successful for them. I would consider picking them up if they published them.

Folio published 'Live and Let Die' in 2007. I wonder whether copyright\licensing is an issue with them. Queen Anne Press produced a some very luxurious slip cased volumes, but at £2000 pounds minimum for the set, I am unfortunately priced out.

Reprint:

Waiting for Godot
Dostoevsky's books
Chekhov's plays/short stories

First publication:
Anything by Murukami
The God of Small Things

Yes, Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff AND totally different by her, but much loved A Little Hound Found

I agree with other posters here regarding the James Bond books, which are well overdue the full Folio treatment. I suspect, as noted above, that it's licensing issues with Ian Fleming Publications that are the hold-up. Vintage bought the complete UK print rights, replacing Penguin, not long ago (and Amazon got them for the States). With Folio moving away from the members-only model, it seems more like direct print competition. But I would love to see more Bond titles from Folio. Live and Let Die was nicely done, but there's even more scope for nice features (e.g. an Orient Express route map on the endpapers for FRWL or a map of Bond's Kent for Moonraker, perhaps?)

Re the first post - I second The Great Escape. But what about a three volume set of Paul Brickhill's famous WWII tales: Great Escape, Dambusters, Reach for the Skies?

And in the sci-fi genre, The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle is a superb book, and would be a nice little Folio candidate. Easton Press had a crack at that one I think.

More Eric Ambler too, please. I hear there's a third in the works. My guess would be that it's Journey into Fear.

Some great suggestions here. I would love to see more by Lewis -- the sci-fi trilogy, or Till We Have Faces, or pretty much anything. Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas is another excellent choice. (Full disclosure: I know Eric, so I'm biased. But I still think it's an excellent choice. :-) )

I like the Chekhov plays idea too. And while The Three Musketeers isn't really my favorite, it gives me an idea: more of the Scarlet Pimpernel books! :-) There are a whole bunch of those as well.

I said it in the last thread, but it bears repeating: I would love to see them bring out Alec Guinness's wonderful three volumes of memoirs. (Or four volumes, if you count "A Commonplace Book").

I went through a slightly obsessive phase and read all the Bonds ,in paperback (many free with The Times ,I recall) and have mixed feelings; some, I think, are excellent (e.g. Casino Royale), some dreadful (The Spy Who Loved Me). Overall, I would probably purchase a set from FS.
I ,too, vote for more SCi-Fi; Dick, Le Guin (and her Earthsea set)
More Ballard.
I think they will do the Mantel Cromwell trilogy a couple of years after the third one comes out.
I would certainly buy any Murakami
A re-printing of Raymond Chandler
Norman Mailer
James Ellroy; American Tabloid

Once the letterpress Shakespeare is complete (if not before) I'd love to see the slim Folio Press letterpress volumes (as published 1988-1991(?)) resurrected with new titles - what those titles might be, I'd like to be able to trust the Folio editors judgement above my own. I would just hope that the selection could go off the beaten track without compromising on quality.

In 2007, the Tartarus Press put a list of recommended reading - books they'd like to publish but, for one reason or another, they couldn't - on their website. Some of their choices have been published in Folio Society editions; here are the others:

Peter Ackroyd - Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem
Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory
Park Barnitz - The Book of Jade
Arthur Calder-Marshall - The Magic of My Youth
Albert Camus - The Outsider
Nick Cave - And the Ass Saw the Angel
Aleister Crowley - Moonchild
Ernest Dowson - Dilemmas (no touchstone)
Charles Finney - The Circus of Dr Lao
Andre Gide - Isabelle
Alyse Gregory - The Cry of a Gull
Edna Judd - A Moving Experience *
Philip Larkin - Collected Poems
William March - The Bad Seed
Flannery O'Connor - Wise Blood
Paul Jordan Smith - For the Love of Books
Sylvia Townsend Warner - Lolly Willowes
Denton Welch - In Youth is Pleasure

* this title is the odd one out in the list. Tartarus' Ray Russell describes it thus: "An updated version of George and Weedon Grosmith's book {i.e. The Diary of a Nobody}, this is an unintentional classic. The naïve autobiography of a woman who does not quite do anything interesting".

Forgot to say - based on what they have published, I trust Tartarus's (Ray Russell and Rosalie Parker) literary judgement.

I wonder what FS could do with Milorad Pavic's "Dictionary of the Khazars"? Given that the book can be read in any order, with one paragraph differing between two editions, perhaps illustrations could be similarly enigmatic. Perhaps like advent calendars or even Magic Eye types.

>13 InVitrio:

Or different artists for the 'male' and 'female' editions?

Hmn...alright, I'll do ten (admittedly, most of these are somewhat self-indulgent and highly unrealistic):

A Rebours - Huysmans
The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers
An Algernon Blackwood collection.
The Island of Dr. Moreau - H. G. Wells
A BLOODY LOVECRAFT COLLECTION ALREADY.
Les Fleurs du Mal - Baudelaire
Let it Come Down - Paul Bowles
The Immoralist - Andre Gide
The Beetle - Richard Marsh
Severin's Journey into the Dark - Paul Leppin

I have not read Paul Brickhill's other books. Apparently a failing that needs to be remedied. As soon as Folio Society prints their edition. ;)

Sadly I don't know Eric Metaxas. But I agree his biography of Bonhoeffer would be a good selection for Folio. :)

Another Sci-Fish book I thought of would be Doomsday by Connie Willis. It's a time travel tale of someone sent back to England during the Black Death and surviving in a village as it was being ravaged by the plague while friends in the present are desperately trying to mount a rescue. It was years ago when I read it but I remember enjoying it. Michael Crichton wrote something with a similar story construction but his was an adventure story while this one has a narrower cast of characters and is more a survival story.

The Four Feathers by A. E. W. Mason surely is a classic novel with several movie versions being done? I would buy a Folio edition.

Roald Dahl's autobiography. If it has his signature humour we see in his fiction I'm sure I would really enjoy it. :)

A few essentials come to mind:

Ulysses, Joyce
Things Fall Apart, Achebe
Frankenstein, Shelley
1984, Orwell
Leaves of Grass, Whitman
Don Quixote, Cervantes

>16 Chris_El: Chris-El
Connie Willis' Doomsday is a superb sci-fi book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Very appropriate title for the FS

I haven't bought anything from Folio for years, and there's not all that much in their current catalogue that would tempt me, apart from Parade's End. Too much emphasis on recent popular novels that we all have umpteen paperback copies of anyway.

I'd like to see a decent selection of Walter Scott, something they never seem to have had a serious go at. Also some more Victorian poetry (Tennyson, the Brownings, ...), maybe one or two more 20th century poets (have they ever done a Betjeman selection? Larkin? Ted Hughes? Steve Smith? Dannie Abse?), and definitely a Ronald Firbank boxed set (I wonder how many copies of Prancing nigger they would sell in the US...).

>15 veilofisis:

Ah,A Rebours! Yes,definitely!

>17 LaCamera:
You're right.I forgot about them,but would love to see them back on the Folio Society,preferably in a newer format with newer introductions.Orwell's 1984 and Cervantes's Don Quixote are definite must!
I did not know the FS once published Things Fall Apart!

Yes,
a complete collection of short stories by Chekhov
Leaves of Grass

My vote goes to:

Au rebours
Dictionary of the Khazars (combined editions; one paragraph difference)
Les fleurs du mal
A collection in one volume of wordless works by Frans Masereel

Reprint Dostoevsky's books

Connie Willis's novel about the Black Death is called Doomsday Book, not Doomsday, just for the record. Good suggestion.
My favorite book by her, though, is To Say Nothing of the Dog, which Folio should do in a matching edition with Three Men in a Boat.

Springer Verlag's Probability and Stochastics by Erhan Cinlar. Lowest (production quality)/(content and writing quality) ratio in the history of publishing.

There's a whole string of iconic reference works that have recently ceased to be published in printed form. Folio should probably take the opportunity to bring out a uniformly-bound series of commemorative editions of great European railway timetables and telephone directories. Even if they don't sell very well to typical Folio members, they'll be extremely popular with up-market furniture stores...

Another vote for Connie Willis' Doomsday Book,
Fountainhead by Ayn Rand,
Horacio Hornblower,
Jeffrey Archer's,
Ellis Peters

>12 housefulofpaper:

Dilemmas: Stories and Studies in Sentiment; the Diary of a Successful Man-a Caseof Conscience-An Orchestral Violin-Souvenirs of An Egoist-the Statute of Limitations works for the Ernest Dowson title. I seem to be the only individual LT member admitting to possession of a copy, hence or otherwise it would probably, if published by the Folio Society, rank among their boldest attempts to reintroduce a work to the reading public.

EDIT: Oh... it worked as a touchstone in preview, but doesn't appear as one now in my posting, though there it is listed among them at the right hand side of the page. I admit bewilderment.

>28 terebinth:

There are a few Dowson "poetry and prose" collections on LT. Maybe the Folio Society would find something along those lines easier to publish?

I would buy Connie Wills' Doomsday Book as well. I don't read much SciFi, but I do like time travel stories and historical fiction.

Other books I'd like:
Watership Down
The House on the Strand
The Thirteenth Tale
The Pillars of the Earth
The Secret of Santa Vittoria
More C. S. Lewis

I for one would like to see Principia Mathematica reprinted. I refuse to pay the extortionate prices demanded by book thieves, oops I mean book sellers

Flashman!

Thanks for the correction on the title for the Doomsday book. :)

I absolutely agree that Watership Down would be an excellent Folio edition.

12: I think The Circus of Dr. Lao deserves FS-like treatment. But for me the Artzybasheff illustrations are so integral to the book that it might be a risk for FS to obtain another illustrator.

Another sadly overlooked fantasy classic is The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison.

I would also buy Watership Down as a FS edition.

I'll trot out my usual FS requests, any of which would be purchased by me without waiting for a sale or even for the end of the day on which said publication became known to me:

The Book of Ebenezer LePage - G.B. Edwards
The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr.

And the suggestion by many of you of The Great Escape is an excellent one. If published, it too would most likely find its way into my overstuffed library. As for Watership Down, I think that it would lend itself magnificently to illustration, would be a big seller, and I would not be a buyer. I know that I'm an outlier on that book, but having read it once I don't see myself ever reading it again.

Is Watership Down not approaching critical mass yet? It seems an obvious choice for the reasons coynedj cites. Maybe rights/royalty issues?

Maybe there should also be more Booker Prize winners?
They've already published quite a lot of them,so it'll be great to own a collection of Folio Booker Winners!

>37 Evets_Kainzow: The Life of Pi would suit the FS treatment but I'd like to see what they do to Vernon God Little I agree more Booker Prize Winners would be nice.

I too would like to see Catcher in the Rye receive the Folio treatment!

>24 withawhy99: Agree - Doomsday Book is good, but To Say Nothing of the Dog is, in my view, better.

Agree also with all those who go for Watership Down

I'm one who veers toward the contemporary. I'd love to see:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
More Margaret Atwood in general
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (this is perfect for Folio)

I'd also like to see some Hemingway novels. I assume the rights must be very, very expensive or else they'd have done more with them.

>20 Evets_Kainzow:

I concur completely, Evets. As for Things Fall Apart, I don't know how I let that one slip by.

As long as we're dreaming aloud, add Lolita to the fantasy wish list.

I know they've published The Prince-Machiavelli before and now kicking myself for not buying one on ebay still sealed for $40 I'd like to see these favourite titles I've read back in high school.
The Catcher in the Rye
The Alchemist
Death of a Salesman

A Song of Ice and Fire series (Needs to to be published in a slip case edition as the Harper Collins is way over priced right now in the secondary market)
Divine Comedy
I'd like to see Homers The Iliad and the Odyssey in a LE edition but unsure if they've done one already.

'The Isles of the Sea' and 'Eastern Approaches', both by Fitzroy MacLean. The former could be the Scottish component of myths and legends, and latter would sit very well with 'Mission to Tashkent'. As would Rory Stewart's unputdownable 'The Places in Between.'

All three are magnificent works.

Sholokhov's 'Quiet Flows The Don' (Ed.: not at the moment, it don't!) would be a welcome edition to the Russian collection.

>44 LaCamera: That's all very well, but what book would you like to see reprinted?

>47 InVitrio: See >17 LaCamera:

I wish the Folio Society would publish more W. Somerset Maugham. I was glad to get Of Human Bondage recently but I'd also like FS editions of Ashenden, Cakes and Ale, The Moon and Sixpence, and so on.

I say this every time, but I really wish they would reprint A Little Princess.

Other than 'Travels with Charley', has FS done Steinbeck? I'm thinking 'Of Mice & Men', 'Grapes of Wrath', 'Cannery Row', and more.

>51 sdawson: FS published The Grapes of Wrath in 1998. And then of course there is also the new Once There Was A War.

>52 Conte_Mosca:
Thanks, I'll look for the 1998 edition of Grapes of Wrath.

> 49
Yep.We need more Maugham! I'm surprised that only Of Human Bondage and his short stories were published by the Folio,for there are other great works for which he is famous.