Secondhand finds

Thought I'd set up a continuation for this topic, as it's starting to take a while to load, on my end anyways.

I'll get the ball rolling--I just picked up at my local Half Price Books on Anderson Mill and 183 a pristine copy of the two-volume set of Thesinger's Arabian Sands and the Marsh Arabs for $30.00. It has probably around 20 more FS volumes similarly priced.

I don't know if I got good deals or not but still happy to get the following copies

HERODOTUS : THE HISTORIES for $63 US in perfect condition
COLLECTED STORIES OF NIKOLAI GOGOL for $51 US in perfect condition
Robertson Davies' The Deptfort Trilogy for $115 US brand new
All 3 of these are GORGEOUS books!!

I also got Irish Short Stories for $45US which is actually an ugly green book and not in the best condition.

They were all shipped from the UK to Canada. I still have a few more coming too. All from ABE Books.

Louise

I bought Mission to Tashkent and The Age of Innocence, both in fine condition.
The cover of Mission to Tashkent seems rather dull and I'm not crazy about the paper sides but it seems the book will be an interesting read.
The Age of Innocence is a very handsome book indeed. I'm surprised how much I like it.

I just can't seem to stop finding great deals in my local bookshops.

Walked out of a store near work last night with a copy of The Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Invasion (1973) from FS. I really do love the image of Harold seated in majesty on the cover from the tapestry itself with the Anglo-Hibernian script framing him: Harold rex Anglorum.

I'm going to enjoy this volume, and all the other ones I've gotten this month. I should be good until the fall, when it's time to embark on another round before winter arrives.

I recently picked up Runciman's three volume A History of the Crusades for £25 from my local charity shop. I can now let them have my Penguin paperback copies (once I have checked illustrations). Unfortunately the additions require more shelf space than the donations!

> 4
I know what you mean about the Age of Innocence. I picked up for the Folio edition despite the fact that I already own this title in two or three other collectible editions!

> 5
Greg, you will enjoy it. There are some good essays included but most importantly are the color plates reproducing each section of the tapestry. It is well worth spending the time going over each one slowly with a magnifying glass. Despite the theory that this was sewn by nuns, I was rather surprised to find at least two pornographic images in the margins! If indeed nuns were responsible, they had quite a sound knowledge of anatomy!

>7 UK_History_Fan: I'm surprised (from what I can tell) at how infrequently Wharton has been printed by Folio. She and Hemingway seem to be two of the most glaringly frequent absences to me.

> 8
I'm not a Hemingway fan, but I know Folio did a 5-volume box set in the 1980s or 1990s (I've seen it on eBay before). Perhaps they feel that was sufficient. As for Wharton, I also have the Folio House of Mirth (again, a duplicate in my library). Can't remember when it was published though and since I'm at work, no Folio 60 handy. Mirth is a decent book (from a design perspective) but to my mind, not nearly as impressive as Age of Innocence. But I don't disagree that they could publish some of her other well-known works such as Old New York and Ethan Frome.

>9 UK_History_Fan:
I have seen that boxed set and I can't see how it's sufficient. For one, Hemingway still sells. Also, I have a hard time thinking of a more influential 20th century writer (in English, at least). i think it's Hemingway and Twain for most important American novelist (I suppose you can put in Steinbeck if you like). I'm great lover of Hemingway (obviously), and I assume it must be a rights-cost issue as Hemingway is, I believe, still all under copyright (though The Sun Also Rises may not be). Otherwise, he seems an excellent candidate to be issued again.

>7 UK_History_Fan:

I admit I got the book mostly for the cover. :P The colour plates are an amazing bonus, though! (I jest: it's really the other way around! The essays should also be a great read, particularly in terms of their historiographical value as this is an older work.)

Would one of the images be the one of the (alleged?) rape that may or may not have been a cause celebre in its day? That and the comet are the two images that I associate most strongly with the tapestry.* Not sure what the other naughty picture was, but admittedly it's been a while since I last laid eyes upon the tapestry. I fully plan on doing that perhaps this weekend or next, schedule permitting.

*I blame my prof, who spent an inordinate amount of time dissecting the "current events" of the day - apparently discussing the fact that a bunch of Vikings and Normans decided to pay a visit to jolly old "England" near-simultaneously and the like was "pretty damn boring" compared to discussing the type of stories that would have made it into the gossip pages today. I suspect he just found discussing stuff like "Did Harold really die from an arrow in the eye?" and "Exploding Bill"** more interesting. :P

**Short version. When William the Bastard (Conqueror in polite company) died, it was in the height of summer. According to a bunch of chroniclers, his corpse got stuffed into a too-small casket for the funeral, and Bill decided to go out in style by literally exploding and adding some odoriferous decorations to the ecclesiastical garments of the bishops seated around his casket. Needless to say, the funeral was suspended briefly, and then concluded most expeditiously!***

***I can never decide if I like this story more than that of the Cadaver Synod (Synodus Horrenda) or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod

>11 scholasticus:

Postscripta floreant!

>12 boldface:

Latin ftw! :D

>10 Jason461: I agree, I have the 5 volume set and the Short Stories, but for such an influential 20th Century writer this is insufficient , in my opinion. The FS have published a "Hollywood" Hemingway set, the most famous books, but I for one would love a set of less celebrated stories.

I have just taken delivery of The Surgeon's Mate, The Ionian Mission, and Treason's Harbour, all from Bison Books in Winnipeg. What beauties they are. Second-hand but so pristine, you'd swear the shrink-wrap had only just come off them. All for CAD $133 and change. Lovingly packed, too. What a pity they don't have the rest of the series.

I was in Mr Pickwick's Books & Antiques in Katoomba on the weekend, and came across 20 or so volumes of the LEC Shakespeare. They were well over what I can afford at the moment and more expensive than I can generally find them online anyway, but it was my first time ever seeing an LEC book in person, and now I am absolutely lusting after the complete 37-volume set.

>16 johni92:

It's funny that you mention this, as I just snapped up a complete set on Abe earlier today. Got some gift money that I decided to spend on myself, so...guess I now have Shakespeare? The fact that the LEC editions retain the "archaic" English meant to help the actors in their deliveries (and gleefully spite high-school English teachers and prescriptivists alike) is just a massive bonus to me. :) Plus I just love the long 's' and often wish that we'd bring it back into vogue.

I feel another reread of Shakespeare's canon may be due this summer. Assuming summer even shows up. We had snow here the last two days and the daytime high today was officially +4 C, but was actually -3 C with the wind. Some days I really hate living in western Canada.

Doing my good deed thing again: if anyone local to Essex is looking for a copy of the four volume 'The book of the thousand nights and one night', as I think it's called (a set with white spines), then check out the helena hospice book and coffee shop in Colchester as they have a copy for £12, which seems quite cheap to me. They have a few other folios, some for just £2-4, though a couple were lacking slipcases.

http://www.sthelenahospice.org.uk/get-involved/shops/our-shops/coffee-bookshop.a...

1 Centurion House, St Johns Street, Colchester, CO2 7AA (01206 563245)
Monday to Saturday 9.00am to 5.00pm

The Oxfam shop a few doors down had a copy of Medieval Civilisation, but it was lacking a slipcase and they wanted £35 for it! :-O

I did a lot of head scratching over the ones in Helena Hospice and I did consider buying A Thousand and one Nights but leafing through it I was not sure I'd read it and it would take up quite a bit of precious shelf space. I was tempted by Huck Finn (I think it was about £3-4) but I have a paperback bought last year I've yet to read (I think I read the book when I was young, but my memory is very patchy on my childhood reading). I decided instead to buy Redcoats and Rebels by Christopher Hibbert as I thought it might be an interesting read and it was rather a lovely book for £6.

I bought a few non-folios too (Sacrilege! Burn the heathen!!); a paperback of The Lord of the Flies for 50p, a paperback of Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale for £1.50 and a hardback of 'Minsmere: Portrait Of A Bird Reserve' for £1.50; of particular interest as I have had a number of holidays around the Minsmere/Westleton area of Suffolk (it's an amazing place if you like wildlife and the BBC Springwatch series is based there this year).

I also bought a hardback of Dry Store Room No.1 by Richard Fortey in Greyfriars Books, but wasn't particularly tempted by their Folio or New Naturalist offerings… thankfully! Unlike the Castle Bookshop that closed last year Greyfriars seem to have a very low turnover of stock; a gap of several months between visits will still see much the same books on the shelves. It's sad really as I don't really feel I'm supporting the shop much (I think the previous two visits I ended up not buying a single book!) but at the same time it's a relief as it means that after the initial splurge when I first visited and hoovered up the interesting ones I rarely now find myself troubled by too many books to buy (which was sometimes quite a problem in Castle Bookshop given that I had to carry them all back on the train and bus - try lumping a few new naturalists and a couple of folio box sets across town in weekend crowds!). ;-)

Just seen that amazon on their warehouse deals 'thing' are trying to sell a secondhand copy of the Empires of Ancient Latin America… but they're asking £135 for it! They do sometimes have very cheap books on there (which means someone up the line has been ripped off) but they do have some quite laughable prices at times too. Not restricted to amazon though; when I was in Norfolk a week or so back I saw a secondhand shop in Wells selling a somewhat worn copy of The Story Of The Middle Ages set and they were asking over £100 for it! I would have thought it would go for no more than £50 for a GOOD copy. It did fit with the rest of the shop though, they charged rather high, collector prices for most of the stock that I looked at (their New Naturalists were buttock-clenchingly expensive!).

My local Oxfam had some more stock in when I visited yesterday, including a copy of the Rise and Fall of the House of Medici. Not really a book I'd read but it was only £6 and the cloth felt gorgeous so I was a 'little' tempted. They had a copy of the Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Invasion too, but I settled for a non-folio I'd been looking for instead, a hardback of 1356 by Bernard Cornwell (which was a whole £1).

Apologies if I'm taking this thread off topic a bit…

I have satisfied my inner completist with the arrival of my last missing Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea. Not only that but the final pair of intransigent Trollopes traipsed through my letterbox too: Kept in the Dark and The Vicar of Bullingham (sounds like the chaplain to a drinking club!)

I cannot be a true completist as I have had the rest of the Folio Trollope for 20 years, but the current Radio 4 broadcasts from Barsetshire jogged my memory that I needed to identify the missing two that were OOP when I bought my set and track them down ...like a Mountie.

No longer (I hope) can it be muttered in the dMR that I am a pair of Trollopes short of a picnic!

On holiday back in England, at the Oxfam bookshop in Salisbury, I picked up a decent copy of More's Utopia (the spine is rather sunned), The Guns of August (the gold slipcase looks and feels rather cheap), and a nice copy of Reminiscences of An Irish R.M. Not bad for £21.

Received The Remains of the Day and Greengage Summer which I ordered online a few days ago.
I'm a bit underwhelmed by the Greengage Summer' illustrations.
The Remains of the Day looks lovely and I can't wait to read it, It's puzzling that Folio didn't commission an introduction though.

>22 kotarana:
Really?It doesn't have an introduction?
I have the book but didn't check whether it was the case or not.

I don't understand how certain Folio books haven't been introduced,like Possession and Remains of the Day.Is it because they were published at a time when it was quite costly to find a good introducer?

I found a copy of The Riddle Of The Sands (the 2008 edition) in my local YMCA shop a little earlier, though not knowing anything about the book (leafing through it I thought I'd either like it a lot or really hate it… it was difficult to say which!) I decided not to buy it (it was £4) and put the money towards 'something' which I know I want to read instead. However, if it has been £2 or less I probably would have bought it.

Another charity shop had the 1970's edition of Travels in West Africa, which looks interesting but I was unsure of the price (looked like it was £6, though may have been a price from a previous shop) but it was lacking a slipcase and was a bit grubby.

All I came home with was soya milk and rice cakes…! Probably for the best given that I've bought just over 100 books so far this year, including 11 Folios (of which three were sets!).

>24 Paulfozz:
You should have bought Riddle of the Sands at such a great price.
I am reading it right now, and enjoying it, having bought my copy second hand at a significantly higher price than the one you were offered.

>22 kotarana:
I agree about the Greengage Summer illustrations. I also bought it secondhand (there are a lot of copies out there) because I like Rumer Godden and the cover was beautiful, but the interior illustrations are scratchy and amateurish. Too bad!

>24 Paulfozz: With over 100 FS purchases p.a., no wonder you're reduced to munching polystyrene roof tiles for sustenance!

I have RoTS and like it a lot. The film of the book with Michael York and the late Simon McCorkindale caught the gung-ho spirit, even if the villain that they outwitted was a bit cardboard cut-out - not James Mason's finest hour... Having navigated around those islands, I can however vouch for the authenticity of the 'pea-souper' sea-fogs! Worth a watch...

>27 Polar_bear:

Actually it's "only" 11 FS books Polar_bear, and those were all secondhand (I think I spent 'just' over £100 on those, but that IS including three sets). :-)

The majority of my books buys are very cheap books from charity shops, so even with the splurges on New Naturalists and the odd FS set I'm not breaking the bank - the polystyrene tiles were bought by choice (strange as it will seem!).

>25 wcarter:

Does seem it was a good price after looking around online, but it's not a book I have a strong desire to read (I had heard the title before but that's all I knew of it) and I'm trying to avoid buying books 'just' because they are FS. I may read it some day but I think I'd borrow a copy from the library rather than buy a copy (same with Ballantine's book, The Coral Island).

Took a while to write this as my right hand is throbbing like mad after getting stung by a wasp this morning so am mostly typing left-handed only. Ow!

I managed to get to Bury St. Edmunds this morning and had a great time looking around the Abbey gardens and the town, though the cathedral was hosting a flower exhibition and it was £10 to go in (!) so will look around there another time.

Had a VERY pleasant time in Churchgate Books, there were loads of Folios of interest in there, though some not quite in tip-top condition. I bought two which had some marks (possibly a little food staining) on the outside, but only minor really and I might be able to clean them up a bit if I'm careful. I bought Carthage: A History and Empires of the Nile, which cost me £12 each. Really didn't expect to see those two in there and certainly not for that much!

They also had a copy of Arrian's Campaigns of Alexander for the same price, but it was quite heavily marked and since I already own (and have yet to read!) Michael Wood's book on Alexander and Robin Lane Fox's, I thought it best not to buy a third! I was also tempted by The Persian Wars, but again, I have another couple of books on Persia that I've yet to read! Good little shop though, very helpful and friendly owner as well - definitely worth a look if any Faddists are passing through that area.

Fortunately their New Naturalist selection was limited to two Bloomsbury reprints and a single copy of 'The Hawfinch', which was lovely but at £175 is somewhat out of my price range! My brother offered a fiver but they didn't seem keen. ;-)

Edit: yup - careful application of a very slightly damp cotton bud has removed the stains from the cover of Carthage. Nothing I can do about the spots around the bottom edge of both of the books, but it's really minor possibly splatters of tea or coffee judging from the large stain mark that was on the cover of Carthage.

I caved again this afternoon when I took a look in the British Heart Foundation shop in town; I couldn't resist a very nice copy of the 2006 Celtic Myths and Legends (sans slipcase but was in lovely condition). Not sure if there are other editions but this is quarter-bound in leather - seemed too nice to pass up for £5! They also had Legends of the Grail, also sans slipcase and £5 but although it was also probably quite a bargain I didn't think I'd read that one.

I came across the Folio Limited Edition Oxford Classical Dictionary (no.37/1000) yesterday in the British Heart Foundation charity bookshop in Streatham, South London. Half Wassa Goatskin, silk boards, gorgeous production values, in near fine condition, labelled at £10. I couldn't believe it. A volunteer must have confused it with the standard/non-Folio edition. I pointed out to the staff their unsubtle underpricing and they discreetly removed the book from sale pending revaluation! We all love a bargain but it feels wrong at that degree in a charity bookshop...

>31 cronshaw:

Then I must be a horrible human being, because I'd have bought it at 10 quid SO FAST.

Okay, to be honest, I'd have felt bad too, but I'd still have bought it at 10!

>32 scholasticus: I'd be lying if I said I felt no temptation...

I'm not sure what came over me. A moment of weakness. Normally I have a book devil on each shoulder, screaming, and there's no difficulty deciding.

>36 EclecticIndulgence: OK OK! I know. I've learned the painful way. In future I'll buy every single LE I find at £10, and then gently propel every elderly person across the street.

>31 cronshaw:

Cronshaw, thanks to your halo, Streatham was briefly visible from space. This deliberate and calculated self-denial of a Folio bargain should stand as a warning to all fellow FAD sufferers that overdosing on your medication can have devastating consequences.

Latest (and probably last) 2014 purchases:

Via this forum:

Briggs, Katharine M.; Folk Tales of Britain: Narratives (Sealed, slipcase, 3 vol)
Barber, Richard (editor); Legends of King Arthur: Arthur, The Holy Grail, Tristan (3 vol)
British Myths and Legends: History and Romance, Heroes and Saints, Marvels and Magic (SEALED - 3 vol)
Lang, Andrew; Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green Fairy Books (all sealed)

Via ABEbooks:

Bell, Walter George: The Great Fire of London In 1666 (fine, minor marks)
Ziegler, Philip; The Black Death (fine, minor marks)

These last two came from two different UK booksellers, with unsolicited bookmarks inside. The Toronto bookmark I sort of understood, but the Charles and Di bookmark beat me.

****

Cronshaw: I feel there's an incident in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity that would speak to you. The main character is offered a goldmine of a record stash for £50, when it's worth hundreds of times that. Rob refuses to buy it, plagued by guilt. I'd have bought the Folio, spotted a few other odds and ends you simply had to have to make it up to £50, get them to ring it up, walk across the street, and give the odds and ends to another charity shop. Conscience assuaged, and two charities benefit instead of one.

I salute your morality Cronshaw! If I knew the value I'd be terribly split, I must admit. I know little enough about book prices that the few times I've got a real bargain I've only 'suspected' that it was undervalued. By the same token, I've bought a number and later found I was overcharged horrendously. I think I was undercharged in the case of Celtic Myths but...

It depends on the charity shop really, since some (my local BHF in particular) charge astronomically high prices for their donated books; I don't think £3-5 for everyday slightly battered fiction is reasonable in the slightest! They make Oxfam look cheap sometimes, and in fact I've sometimes found the same book in Oxfam costing half the price that BHF were charging (and in better condition).

>40 Paulfozz: I'm ashamed to say I don't think I'm particularly moral: 'Though shalt not covet' is not a commandment I have strongly adhered to when it comes to delightful editions. When I saw the book and price I was probably more shocked and ambivalent than anything else. I did think the person who had donated the book would have liked it to fetch a little more than a tenner, but I think if I had really coveted that particular LE I could have bought it and then just made an additional donation to the charity, or followed Edmund's advice above. Boldface is probably correct that I'd overdosed on my anti-bibliotics that day.

>41 cronshaw:

Probably more moral than I'd have been in that situation, though I do try to balance my karma a little by donating plenty to charity and if I give something that's got some value I point it out at the time so they know not to lump it in with the general goods.

It all balances somewhat though, as some books will be undervalued while others will be overvalued. There may be anomalies but in the grand scheme of things a middle-ground is found.

I must confess that I wandered back to the BHF shop after work today and as they still had (notice the past tense…) the Legends Of The Grail I had another leaf through it and decided that perhaps I would read it after all so I bought it (£5, but again lacking the slipcase and with some minor marking on the page edges).

I did spend a few minutes talking to the ladies at the counter about these books and explained that some can be worth quite a bit of money (and I mentioned your exploits Sir Cronshaw!), but I did say most of the ones I've seen in their shop have been pretty fairly priced (pretty much spot-on with abe prices) and that for any without slipcases the value is probably much less… though I've no idea what Legends of the Grail and Celtic Myths and Legends would be worth sans slipcases. They are peripheral interest books for me though so if they'd been more than £5 I doubt I'd have bought them.

Raised a thought of how many buyers of Folio books there are in my local area… certainly there is a constant trickle of them appearing in my local Oxfam (and the odd one in BHF and other shops), plus I noted that last week two Legends books (I think they were epics of the middle ages and legends of ancient Rome) disappeared from Oxfam after many months on the shelf. They still have a copy of Icelandic Legends in their display case though… I've no idea how much they're selling that for!

Today just bought FS version of Secret Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope by Piccolomini , published by FS 1988 , it is an abridged edition though introduction explains how abridgment done and readership identified as general interested in Renaissance history . Illustrations section in black and white . a fair buy at equivalent of $8.50 . I'd never seen this title before and for that reason pleased to make the purchase.

>45 Africansky1:

I've had this one from new, Katherine, and there is indeed plenty to dip into for a general reader interested in the period (eg me). It's such a shame the photographs of the wonderful Pinturicchio frescoes of Pius's life are in black and white, when the frescoes themselves are such a blaze of colour.

The FS doesn't credit its typographers often enough, but Bernard Roberts usually gets a mention - deservedly - and this is one of his.

Yes. I was surprised by the b and w illustrations only in the Renaissance Pope memoirs. That must have counted against the FT edition's popularity .

Just got a Les Mis LE for $170 off ebay. Today's been a good day.

To celebrate the new member year, in a year that I didn't really want any of the new titles, I bought a 1959 Life of the Buddha for $17 from Abe. Anyone know of any other 'buddism' Folio titles?

With the recent increase in prices, I'm back to buying used Folios. Just bought a copy of Dubliners for $19 including postage (new reissue price is $67).

I was quite pleased to snag The Golden Compass for $5. It was falsely advertised as being the whole His Dark Materials trilogy for $15 (I suspected as much when I bought it, so I wasn't surprised), and I got the seller to reduce the price accordingly.

It goes against the grain to have only one of a trilogy, but this is my favorite of the three anyway. (The third was a huge disappointment.)

Hard to pass up a deal like that, even if you eventually get the three volume set and have a $5 duplicate title. Congrats.

Another few days away, another exploration of secondhand bookshops in new pastures. Yesterday found me in the fair town of Clitheroe in Lancashire, 'au bord de la rivière Ribble', as a friend of mine who counts himself a native of said town is irritatiingly fond of saying, quoting French dictation during his time at the local Grammar School. (This has resulted in my never being able to mention said town without mentioning its adjacent river, for which, apologies.)

Here you will find a pleasant market town, a castle, amenities galore, a plethora of attractive tea shops, and, of course, a secondhand bookshop (well, the shop isn't but the books are). It is particularly strong on volumes emanating from the Folio Society.

The conjunction of the above circumstances has resulted in a diminution of space in the Shed exactly commensurate with the cubic capacity of the following:

The Mabinogion (1980), with woodcuts by
Joan Freeman.

Chartres: The Making of a Miracle (1986) by Colin Ward (in attractive pictorial slipcase)

Music, Men, and Manners in France and Italy 1770 (1969) by Charles Burney

The Divided Loyalist: Crèvecoeur's America by Hector St John de Crèvecoeur, selected from his Letters and Sketches (1978), with wood-engravings by Sarah Van Niekerk

Ralph Rashleigh by James Tucker (1977) - a semi-autobiographical novel written by a convict who was transported to Australia in the 1820s.

The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945 by J. C. Masterman (2007)

The Deceivers : Allied Military Deception in the Second World War by Thaddeus Holt (2 vols., 2008)

All in fine condition, average price around £10.

Result: Happiness.

> Boldface

You should have ended your visit to Clitheroe by visiting that other glory, the magnificent Byrne's wine merchant and selecting something suitable for drinking with your book purchases. Perhaps FS could start a new service recommending wines to accompany their editions.

>54 David_E: Now that could be fun. I was struggling to think of. suitable wine to accompany A Clockwork Orange, but one of these might do:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/12/orange-wines-guide-best-davi...

These might do for the latest Orwell reissue:

http://www.vintagewineandport.co.uk/vintage-wine/1984-wine-gifts

And of course readers of Latin satirical poetry might appreciate the wines from this particular chateau:

http://www.chateau-juvenal-provence.com/boutique/en/content/12-the-wine-at-chate...

>54 David_E:

We did indeed visit Byrne's - an amazing place. But as my three-and-a-half-year-old grandson was also taking a rather too close interest in helping to re-arrange the bottles, we made a hasty retreat after a modest purchase!

Just snagged from The Book Den on abebooks in fine/fine condition Carthage: A History ($50.00) and The Campaigns of Alexander ($30.00). They've also just posted a number of other related history books in the same condition--but I've already got them (probably from the same source).

I just found a perfect copy of Virgil's Georgics for 12 bucks at a book store near me - slip cases still!

I just received the FS Carthage: A History and am very satisfied with it having paid just $50.00 but I can't understand why anyone would pay $94.95 (the current FS price). It is bound in buckram, is not particularly generous with the color insert photographs, is of a middling size and is just over 400 pages. The slipcase is just a plain brown box. By contrast, The War of the End of the World is also bound in buckram and is about the same size (10" x 6 1/4") but includes striking original illustrations and is almost 700 pages--and it costs $99.95 (and is well worth it--an absolutely stunning production and a great read too).

I would definitely recommend Carthage if it shows up at a sale at 50% off.

>59 podaniel:

I don't think it's a 'beautiful' edition, as such, but it fits well with the other FS books of the type (such as The Phoenicians and Empires of Early Latin America) and it's certainly still high quality. I think it has a decent number of illustrations, even if some are mono line drawings/maps. I'm very pleased with my copy, though it helps that I only paid £12 for it (about $20 US). I'm not sure it's worth the high price that FS charge for it either, though there's nothing wrong with a bit of buckram, especially when it's block printed like this one is. Better than having paper-clad boards, I think.

Holford-Strevens' "A short history of time", new & shrink wrapped for £3. Then add £11 postage. Sigh.

I really should get myself a PO box in Aberdeen, seeing as I go there on business quite regularly - UK postage rates are begging belief!

>61 odderi:

£11 postage is very high for such a dinky book! £3 for a shrink-wrapped copy is amazingly cheap though.

I bought a copy of Prescott's History Of The Conquest Of Mexico in Colchester today but it was touch and go, I almost came back without a book despite a good trawl around all the bookshops, which is unheard of! Browsing in Greyfriar Books I picked up the Prescott and leafed through it twice as I wandered around the shop but was unsure about buying it as I've yet to read my three FS Latin America empires books so put it back but after a spot of lunch in the park and a look around some other shops I decided to go back and buy it after all. When I picked it up an elderly gentleman told me he'd been looking at it too and had nearly bought it but thought he already had it, and the lady at the counter told me she'd considered keeping that one rather than putting it out for sale, so seems to be a popular book! I paid £10 for it.

There were a few New Naturalists in Greyfriars I didn't have but none of particular interest at a compelling price. I seem to have bought all the interesting natural history books they have; they don't seem to have a very high turnover of stock at all.

Paulfozz - (I've got to figure out how to do the hyperlinks some day!)

Yup, I think the postage is somewhat excessive, but I really look forward to reading it - not to mention how well it will look next to Landes' Revolution in Time on my shelf.

Landes' book focuses more on the watchmaking aspect of time than I believe this volume does, so they should complement each other nicely.

After seeing your post I read a little bit of my copy and it does appear quite interesting. Have you read Longitude by Dava Sobel? I'd recommend that if you haven't.

If you want to do the hyperlink thing just type a greater-than sign followed by the post number, no space, and the site does the rest.

>64 Paulfozz:
Thanks - I tried the touchstones tag a few days ago, but it didn't render properly, so I figured I'd leave tags well alone until I found a how-to.

Yup, Longitude is a terrific read, and I was delighted to find that apparently, it will get the FS treatment shortly.

I'm an engineer and have always been of a tinkering disposition. For some reason or the other, I've always been fascinated by the engineering aspects of timekeeping and navigation - probably, if I were to guess, as the technology involved for the most part is simple enough to wrap one's head around and understand - at least to some extent.

I have a copy of Dava Sobels Longitude and it is the illustrated hardback version and it is beautifully done . Other than saying it's published by FS I don't think see the point of an FS version . I prefer FS to produce hard to come by, out of print classics or books that have acquire classic status in whatever field .

Just snaffled "The Fall of the House of Usher and other stories", Poe, and "Portrait of the the Artist as a Young Man", Joyce, the first in very attractive black( I believe, by smell) leather , with marbled endpapers, from Marshall Cavendish Ltd 1986 ,the latter by Guild publishing, hardback 1987. 2 Euros for both, from a 'Vide Grenier' in the Limousin, France. Late summer bargains, looking forward to reading !!

just ordered a still shrinkwrapped copy of Empires of the Word from an amazon seller

>68 jlallred2000: it continues to surprise me just how many shrink-wrapped folios make their way onto the secondhand market and to charity shops.

After about three visits to the Cancer Research shop here over the last week I finally decided to buy a copy of the first volume of Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It may prove to be a little wordy for my taste (I've just seen volume 1 compared to Moby Dick, which I actually hated with a passion for it's verbose meandering!) but I thought it worth investing £1.50 in - I can always give it back to charity if I don't like it. No slipcase, it's the 1984 printing with a brown cover (I think the earlier printing might have been white?)

>69 Paulfozz:
The first FS edition (beginning 1983) had the red-brown buckram covers. The white covers were sported by a later reprint of the whole set - late '90s?

Paulfozz,

Yes I
Can't believe it. I have purchased about 20 titles that way. Even fairly old ones can sometimes be sealed.

>70 housefulofpaper: Ah, that makes sense as I'd seen the set on their website with white and that would have meant the editions would have been white then brown then white again.

>72 Paulfozz:

I guess a lot of people must leave them on their shelves still sealed and then have to sell or pass them on for one reason or another.

With a 10% off coupon from Abebooks, purchased Schama's Citizens advertised as still in the shrink wrap from a seller in Tulsa, OK.

Up in Harrogate for a couple of days, staying at The Old Swan Hotel with wonderful Agatha Christie connections. Found the second hand bookshop, Books for All, which had a couple of long shelves of Folios, many in excellent condition, and was able to get The People's Tragedy which I have been eyeing since publication for £25, plus several other volumes from last year in near pristine condition.
Now joyfully immersing myself in pre-revolutionary Russia and dimly recalling the first volume of E H Carr History of Soviet Russia read about 30 years ago!

Just bought J.C. Masterman's 'The Double-Cross System' on AbeBooks.

At USD1 for an 'As new' FS edition, the price can hardly be beat. Shipping is another story, though.

Just back from vacation in Seattle and Portland. While browsing in Powell's I picked up an obviously unread copy of The Best of the Raconteurs for $13.

>76 EclecticIndulgence:

I don't know the going rate but that sounds very cheap! I'm not a Kipling fan either but that's a nicely designed set (externally at least).

I finally acquired a copy of The Travels Of Marco Polo today, from a small bookseller in Maldon, Essex. I paid £5 for it, plus I got a copy of Travels In West Africa in a slightly battered slipcase for £2. Very interesting trip, I spent ages chatting with him.

Went on a little shopping spree over the last month. For less than $400, postage included, I picked up the following, all in "like new" condition from the same bookseller:

If This Is a Man
Ordeal By Fire
Zuleika Dobson
Brideshead Revisited
The Towers of Trebizond
Madame Bovary
Goodbye to Berlin
The Road to Oxiana
No Cloak, No Dagger
The Life of The Bee
The Genius of James Thurber
The Remains of The Day
Travels in The Interior of Africa
The Raj: An Eyewitness History...
The Rise and Fall of The Medieval Monastery
The Quest For The Northwest Passage
A Short History of The English People
Buddenbrooks
Vanity Fair
Lost City of The Incas
History of The Conquest of Mexico
Tanglewood Tales
Myths and Legends of Ancient Rome
The Shooting Party

It's a nice mixture of fiction and nonfiction and will probably do me until the winter sales begin again! What I love best about the Folio Society is that it introduces me to authors and titles I may not have considered or even heard of before. Rarely have I been disappointed by a book suggested by Folio or the knowledgeable members of this group. Much Thanks!

Bought from Ardis:
Macbeth - Shakespeare
Hamlet - Shakespeare
I know why caged birds sing - Maya Angelou
The Shooting Party - Chekov
Short Stories - Chekov

All in fine condition and for a total price of £64.34! I'm super happy with them. :)

I have just had the best second-hand purchase coup of all time (well, for me anyway)!
- A History of England - five volumes 2001 (Macauley)
- Italian Cities - Rome, Florence, Venice - three volumes 1997
- French Short Stories
- Hemingway Short Stories
- A Time of Crisis
- 1066 And All That
- The Diary of a Village Shopkeeper
All in fine/fine condition and for a total of ............ AU$80! That's about £45
I was only after the first two, but the others were thrown in as a bonus. Already have the last two, but they can be passed on to others.
Bought from a private seller who was disposing of her father's estate.

>81 wcarter:

Well done!

>81 wcarter:
That is quite something, though sad when these collections get broken up for low prices. I talked to a bookseller at the weekend who sometimes gets called in to look at folio collections of the recently deceased and he said he'd seen a number of 'complete' collections.

>81 wcarter: Congratulations Warwick, that's a bargain in any country, but practically given away for Australia. Happy shelving, and reading of course!

I found some real bargains in my local Barnardo's charity shop today; the current edition of The Arabian Nights for only £40, plus the two volume Greek Myths, which was either £40 or £50, I forgot which. :-)

As I was placing an order with amazon I ended up browsing the warehouse deals and found an 'as new' copy of the current Wind In The Willows for £10. I already have a nice little 1970's hardback but I'm afraid I couldn't resist. I did hold back from the three volume set of The Civil War for £10 as I honestly doubt I'll read it, but it seemed a pretty good price.

They also had (which I already own) a copy of the four volume Empires Of The Ancient Near East for just under £22, though it's listed as 'good' condition, which may or may not be acceptable to others. There is also a copy of The Fatal Shore for under £8, which did tempt me a little but with four books already in my order and a book fair coming up at the weekend I thought perhaps it might not be a good idea to order too many more! ;-)

copy of The Wind In The Willows arrived today - not 'pristine', it has aslight mark on the edge of the page block (I'm not sure of the correct term for that) and some 'tiny' wear marks on the bottom and top where the spine and the boards meet, but otherwise is very good indeed. It arrived with the usual annoying amazon barcode stickers on the back of the slipcase but they thankfully were removed reasonably cleanly and a touch of label remover took off the spots of glue remaining without damaging the slipcase (though it was a bit of an anxious wait for the slipcase to dry afterwards! It's the fifth printing from 2008.

I bought a little box set of the 1995 moire-silk bound Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights for £10 yesterday in Greyfriar Books in Colchester. They were faded to the spine as usual, and Wuthering Heights had a couple of small marks on the spine too but otherwise it looked in very good condition. I've not read any of the Bronte books before but after enjoying my folio edition of Oliver Twist I thought these would be nice editions to do so. They had a second set for the same price but the slipcase was ripped at the corner and the spines were bumped.

Edit: the other set may have had a tear in the slipcase but this one turns out to have a price sticker that is proving extremely difficult to remove. I'm going to have to use repeated label remover applications and careful picking to remove the remnants… not good as it's on the top front of the slipcase.

>89 Paulfozz:
I was in there yesterday too. I've been looking for Marion Fay & Miss Mackenzie to complete my Folio Trollope collection for some time now, and there was Marion Fay, in very good condition, for £10.
I did see Miss Mackenzie in Barter Books in Alnwick a few months ago (quite famous bookshop I believe, but correspondingly expensive) but it was in poor condition and I wasn't going to pay £15 for it.
So now just the one to go. I don't know if I'll be pleased or disappointed when I finally find it - half the fun is in the chase!

>90 rampkr:

It's a small world! Well done finding your Trollope and good luck with hunting out the last one. I saw a few other books of interest there, but none I really wanted desperately or were cheap enough to make them must-buys. I might have bought the two volume History of Chinese Civilisation but £28 was too expensive for my taste and I already have three unread books on Chinese history!

I've seen Barter Books on tv a few times and looking at it I could see it looked like their prices would be rather high, but it looks like a nice shop to wander around. There's a station bookshop in Norfolk, but much less… fancy. The Old Station Pottery and Bookshop in Wells-Next-The-Sea had quite a lot of Folios and their prices generally were pretty good and it was a proper musty old bookshop, in the best sense of the word; lots of little nooks and crannies stuffed with books and with lots of unusual books.

I cant afford to be a Society member.

So I buy my FS books at a local charity shop.

Today I picked Defoe's Colonel Jack & Kipling's Kim & last month Chesterton's Father Brown Stories.

A nice way to spend £15. OK the books aren't pristine but I'm buying as a reader not as a collector, so a bit of wear doesn't matter too much.

I think wear in comparison to many other secondhand books is usually minimal with Folios, at least for the less ancient ones! It certainly makes buying secondhand much more attractive for those of us who don't demand their books to be absolutely mint condition.

A trip to Norwich today took me to The Tombland Bookshop, which was rather a nice shop (though typically they ask you to leave bags behind the counter - I really hate doing that!). I didn't spend too long in there as my brother was waiting on a bench across the road but they had a good selection of folios and I found a copy of Colour: Travels Through The Paintbox for just £8.50. Some marking on the slipcase (most will probably come off with a slightly dampened cloth) but the book itself is as-new. Really pleased as it's one I've had my eye on for some time but hadn't found a copy at a tempting enough price to buy it.

There were a fair few folios in the Dormouse Bookshop around the corner on Elm Hill but nothing that leaped out at me (am trying to be more selective in what I buy!). I struggled to find anything as the books were rather jumbled up and the lighting was appalling, I could hardly see the books on the lower shelves at all. I gave up when I found a so-so copy of an early New Naturalist (Climate and the British Scene) that was horrendously overpriced.

Recently I picked up copies of Anthony Trollope's The Warden & Can You Forgive Her on eBay both with in good condition with slipcases @ £12ea free pp.

Good value I think, and a nice way to start a Barsetshire / Palliser reading jaunt.

I got Waiting for Godot in 'Immaculate' condition for £13 on eBay. (shipping included)
I like this play,so I'm happy I got it for less than £20.

I find many great secondhand finds .. it`s the shippment which is the problem :(

Latest ads: History of rome - mommsen. Odyssey. Books sometime smell like pjuke, but at least in a week or so the smell is gone

Haha,true about the smell.Sometimes.
Hmm,where do you live?

East of the sun, west of the moon

Norway

>96 Pellias: - True, true.

Eagerly awaiting today's lunchbreak find - not too bad at a 50/50 book-shipping ratio. (Arthur Köstler's 'Darkness at Noon', Fine, £10 delivered by air mail to Norway)

Hyggelig med en nordmann til på folio. Hadde vi ennå hatt noe liknende hjemme i Norge ;)

Agreed! (After having worked extensively abroad, I've become very, very sensitive to conversations which I cannot understand - so I'll try to stick with English even when discussing something with a fellow Norwegian!)

It would indeed be nice (well, beyond nice!) with a Folio Society equivalent in Norway, but I think there's simply too few of us - some 5M native speakers (or, in this case, readers) - so any published book would be very, very expensive indeed because of the small print run.

There is, however, at least one niche publisher trying to make beautiful books - Cappelens Forslag (not a typo; it's got nothing to do with the publishing house Cappelen Damm) crowdfunded a semi-unconventional encyclopedic work earlier this year; apparently, it will be numbered and bound in leather.

Hmm .. thanks (takk). Not to take that any further, but Hemiskringla is my next buy .. http://www.bokkilden.no/SamboWeb/produkt.do?produktId=29047&rom=MP .. the "bible" for norwegians .. i get tired of all the screaming dustjackets .. slipcase is classical, dustjackets can be

So, i sit, live in norway .. and my folio mostly, is ever growing, and dont seem to stopping. The future niche will be their limited editions (alleready have faerie queene) .. i want magna carta comming next year, but - the price .. 16.000 nok (£1,500) .. many of folios history books is primary sources, namely as an example: polybius-rise of rome. That makes it unique.. The worst that can come of it, is me being better at english .. maybe in some years i aim for the folio price .. lol .. anyway, that was a little off route, sorry .. praise continue :)

<101

http://www.newjelly.com/projects/cappelens-forslags-konversasjonsleksikon---et-s...

Decameron Of Giovanni Boccaccio 2 Vols, Full Leather Bound Folio Society 1969 The cream ones. found them three weeks ago in a charity shop £3

>104 frostymaxim:

Nice find!

<104 thats nice indeed.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Decameron-Of-Giovanni-Boccaccio-2-Vols-Full-Leather-Boun...

Yes have been watching that link. I will need sell on maybe at some stage to finance buying more. Am a newbie on very limited budget so may need to wheel and deal a lot lol

.. for myself i am willing to pay gladly a little more for a great copy of out of print books (i really want), if the alternative is f.ex: a bulk on a slipcase .. the visual counts much on the secondhand marked. "We want to be deceived" - buy an edition, fix it up, sell it on if one could/want - there is lots of possibilities, Again, my most hefty price is on the shippment.

Example: I bought the complete hodgins from folio for more than i had to (and a hefty shippment fee) because i reallyreally wanted the volume .. im happy, the sellers happy, an honest buy - the most important!

Every singel folio volume, is an investment .. they are (and will be) simple to sell on the secondhand marked - so, just give them love and care and watch after them

Beware also, i bought a book - it was demanded extra shippment (book heavy) - i wanted to see pictures of the volume described as "as new" before i payed extra .. the pictures showed a big and nasty bulk on the slipcase which wasn`t described. So just be honest, and fix what need to be fixed - there is money in that. The honest sellers, get a reputation over time - so it`s clearly a buisness in this

I showed the link (which you offcourse allready had seen) as a way to tell you what a great deal you made. Hope it is in fine condition

Thanks Pellias. Yes shipping costs are very well inhibiting at times. A local second handshop keeps an eye out for fs titles for me. I bought my first one six weeks ago and thus far have fifty titles. All either from eBay or secondhand shops. Spent all my savings lol but they look so good!

Yes in very good condition. It has pride of place on my shelf next to three vol English civil war set....my interests are history so appear to be nice box sets around

Just bought the FS Leonard Da Vinci, 2nd set of Barsetshire Chronicles, & Dr Thorne all described as v.good or fine for £24 inc pp.

Just need Barchester Towers, now to complete my Chronicles collection

Got the Domesday set from e-bay for £15 plus postage which given very decent condition seems good buy. also a lovely Miss Jean Brodie for £2

Schindler's Ark and Madame Bovary at about £10 each (including shipping) in fine condition.

East of the Sun West of the Moon, for $40 US. I was quite surprised to see it on the shelf, and the time between spotting it and grabbing it was measured in nanoseconds.

Seriously? A seller just listed the 5-volume George Orwell "Reportage" set, which arguably is even less in demand than the "Novels" set, for an astronomical price. Yeah, good luck with that. Granted, it is still shrinkwrapped, but 4 figures it is not. My tracking shows an average price of $101.

If you want a great laugh, have a look. For that price, it doesn't even include free shipping!:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/GEORGE-ORWELL-REPORTAGE-5-vols-in-slipcase-Folio-Society...

>115 UK_History_Fan:

That's just ridiculous.

For that price, I might as well go all in on Magna Carta(!!!)

>115 UK_History_Fan:

Thanks - snapped it up!

All right, just kidding.

Seems he cut the price down to $300. Trying to pull the old "I'll claim it's worth five times more than it's really worth, then cut it back and make you think it's a bargain" game.

I got Things Fall Apart still sealed for £15!
I just adore this book! :)

>119 Evets_Kainzow:

Great price, but "Things Fall Apart still sealed" sounds like a contradiction in terms!

>119 Evets_Kainzow:,120 cheap oxymoron ;-)

Iceland Sagas Vol 2 for £31 on eBay - Huzzah! At last...

>122 Polar_bear: seems a good price for that volume.

>122 Polar_bear: Well done!

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Four Volume: $55.40 .. if the slipcase is not tormented, then i`m happy about that one

Won a Rubaiyat LE in fine condition for £360! Makes me wonder at some of the Buy-it-now prices out there, especially as there's another Rubaiyat with a list price of double of what i got it for. Anyway, it just arrived thus completing my quintet of similarly bound LE. Only problem now is trying to figure out what order to put them in.



On the down side though, whilst trying to replace Von Gogh on the left with Candide and Fifty fables it turned out that space is a bit too snug for both and Candide brushed against a screw head slightly sticking out and scraped about 1/2 cm square of gold-foil off the back of the slipcase :(

I'll definitely vote you in for Grandmaster of The Folio Society Devotees.

> 127

Did you have to include a photograph showing that Gray's Poems looks so good sitting next to Young's Night Thoughts? I had successfully avoided buying the former and now you're making me question my decision.

As for the order of the Fabulous Five--I just have them in date order from publication.

I am a little envyous on you people making great deals on ebay or whatever .. the shippment pricing/customs kills allmost all the joy about that one, at least until now .. i love foliobooks

Folio diary for £12 on ebay .. lol

>131 Pellias:

I bought a diary off of ebay one year when finances were too tight for a renewal under the old system - though I am sure I didn't pay that much!

>131 Pellias:
I can relate.Ever since I came to UK for my studies,I can't stop buying Folio books on eBay!! :o

>130 Pellias: How much is your shipment and customs ? I have the same problem here in Denmark. If I buy from the US shipping alone is $45-50 and then the custom import charges and 25% VAT charges.

>134 ironjaw:

We are lucky in Norway - no VAT or customs on books.

Too bad the Norwegian krone crashed and burned today; I hope it recovers in time for the anticipated sale...

Yes I heard, that it's politically motivated to increase English understanding and reading in Norway. If only Danish politicians had the same enthusiasm.

..

>136 ironjaw:

Kind of, sort of. If I remember correctly, the main idea is to make books in Norwegian more accessible.

No VAT on imported books is basically a way to stay out of trouble with the EFTA commission - giving tax breaks only to Norwegian books would be struck down in an instant.

>137 Pellias:

While I haven't read the custom tariff's definition of 'printed matter' in any detail, I would be surprised if a Magna Carta facsimile qualified. Or did the FS charge VAT on your invoice?

I wrote a temporary reply on the magna carta post, it certainly is no secondary find, lol .. expensive as it was

I just snagged these beauties from a used book store near my office...$50 after a coupon.

This set is amazing. One of the nicest "standard" folio editions. And that price is incredible. I've seen it go regularly over $150.

I'm really interested to know who translated Andersen - some English translations aren't that good I've heard.

I really liked the undiscovered tale recently found: The Tallow Candle

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/dec/13/hans-christian-andersen-first-fairy...

The English translations was really wonderful but I can't find the link now and would like to know the translator. The Danish was boring, yes I know, there's a mob against me and you should see their eyes redden with hate when I declare (blasphemy) that I prefer to read them in English rather than the original Danish.

The tales are a delightful in English.

EDIT: Found it, from the Danish newspaper Politikken. I hate their subscriber popup that pops up to block the article if you've visited their site more than what 4 or five times a month. The translator is Julian Isherwood and the tale is translated here:

http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/ECE1841044/hans-christian-andersens-the-tallow...

From an antiques/jumble/used book stall at a local country fair last August:



From the top down, the titles are The Wit of Oscar Wilde, The Secret History by Procopius, Revolt in the Desert by T. E. Lawrence, The Kings of England and The Fall of Constantinople and the Papacy of Rome (not sure why there was just one volume of the Gibbon there, but it's a good one).

They were priced at $2 a piece, and are all in very good condition. The Wilde had not even been taken out of its original plastic shrink wrap.

In June, I found a copy of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple stories, also in very good condition, on the sale shelf at a library in Roanoke, VA, for $8.00.

I went to a South London auction yesterday and bought 3 large bookshelves of books for £21 , no dealers bidding, probably all in Barbados. From that I extracted a first edition of The Human Factor, Greene, and FS versions of To Kill a Mocking-bird, Alice's Adventures... and Through the Looking-glass( 2 volumes) and , my FS favourite and first ever buy, Blake's Song's of Innocence and of Experience. However, my eureka moment was finding within this haul a first edition complete 2 volume set of the 1913 Scott's Last Expedition , with fold-out maps at the end of both. These are fascinating to me and I think I remember a thread discussing the FS versions. Mine are the McMillan and Co print version, so not as cherished , I understand , as the Smith , Elder and Co first printing . Now I need to find the time to read them.

>144 laytonwoman3rd:
A VERY lucky find. These things happen rarely these days.
>145 tarangurgi:
A matter of luck, being in the right place at the right time, and knowing what to look for.

>145 tarangurgi: You are very lucky. I'm an Antarctica. I've been looking for the 1913 Scott's Last Expedition for a long time just to come close even if it's not the Smith, Elder and Co first printing. If only we had these kind of auctions of English books

>146 wcarter:, I know...it was very hard to believe. There were some others there in rather poor condition, at least as far as the slip cases went. I left them behind, and maybe someone else was thrilled to find those.

>148 laytonwoman3rd:
Linda, your inticate and comprehensive catalogue is amazing! But so few FS books - membership of thos forum will soon fix that!

>149 wcarter: Well, thank you! I've only recently succumbed to the Folio bug...by purchasing the multi-colored-text edition of The Sound and the Fury when it came out. I assume I am doomed along with the rest of this group now!

>147 ironjaw:, >146 wcarter: I agree , very fortunate. I'm not sure exactly how these things are scored but I would probably describe both books as very good/near fine for their age, a little foxing (which I actually don't mind at all). Interestingly, both maps have a small rip in the proximal fold, before the ink detail starts, presumably a design fault. All in all though ,very happy and I will take these on holiday over Christmas . I must say I only became aware of this book though the LT FSD thread, so I also have the contributors to thanks; cheers, Ironjaw :-)

Mine are not really second hand finds, but I didn't see a new acquisitions thread. My Christmas presents included three new Folio copies of titles which I own in other editions: On The Road, Great Gatsby, and Jane Eyre. All are absolutely beautiful Folio versions, all with illustrations I greatly enjoy. My mother made great use of my Wish List!

I'd love to have Jane Eyre and On the Road!!
These are great presents! :)

>152 UK_History_Fan:

Nice Christmas presents there!

My parents gave me some money as part of my Christmas present so I bought a few secondhand folios today when I was in Bury St. Edmunds.

NOTE: anyone near Bury St. Edmunds - it's worth taking a look in Churchgate Books at the moment as they've acquired loads of folios recently and as well as the regular ones inside have a couple of boxes outside the door full of overflow folios at £2 per volume! Some good stuff too - they have a complete set of Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which by my reckoning should be £16! They also had books like The Gunpowder Plot, The Life Of Mohammed and two copies of The Leopard. I can't remember many of the titles there though; mostly what I consider to be older titles really.

I snapped up T.E. Lawrence's Revolt In The Desert, Procopius: The Secret History, The Twelve Caesars and a mint copy of The Leopard (apparently untouched by the original owner as the boards made an audible 'crack' when I opened it for the first time!) all from the £2 boxes, and inside I added a copy of Daily Life In Ancient Rome for £12, which was probably a touch higher than going rate but I couldn't really complain at getting five Folios for £20! :-D

> 154
Nice deals you got there!

>155 UK_History_Fan:

Thanks! I was tempted to go back and buy more when we passed the street again on the way back to the station but I knew the others were volumes I was far less likely to read. I don't think I'd have actually read the Gibbons set, or an entire book on the Gunpowder Plot… the BBC Four documentary I saw recently contained more than enough information for me and it would be likely to languish on the shelf alongside some other slightly rash purchases.

I'm torn with Revolt in the Desert as I already own an unread 1939 two volume Reprint Society edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom and am not sure which to keep and read. The two volume edition is more complete but I'm probably less likely to read that one (the length has already led to me reading other books instead). I didn't know if 'Revolt' was a cut-down version of Seven Pillars or not when I saw it, but I had a migraine 'visual aura' when I was browsing at the bookshop (flashing ribbons of light in my vision) and that prevented me from more than a cursory look at the contents of the books; I thought however that I'd take a punt on it since it was so cheap.

Fortunately I took some pills early enough to prevent the migraine developing; the 'aura' faded a little while later and I didn't get any more symptoms.

folio society, Twain life on the Mississippi ive just bought mint and sealed for £12-50 my Xmas gift to self

Found Shakespeare's Sonnets in fine condition today for $10. I know that's not a hard find, but good price.

I don't know how, but I have managed to get Ovid's Metamorphoses Limited Edition for £125, postage inclusive! No one was bidding on it on Ebay a couple of days ago so I put a bid in in the last minute and won. It has just arrived and is in mint condition apart from a very slight dink to one corner of the box. I am somewhat happy right now!

I got a sealed copy of All Quiet on the Wetsern Front and a mint,unread,copy of The Name of the Rose for £20 each.

>161 Kainzow: so THAT's why Umberto disappeared from my eBay basket today. You snooze, you lose ;-)

Today i bought for a total of £8-50 two titles, mint , sealed. Vienna by Jan Morris and Michaelangelo

>162 Polar_bear:
Haha! ;)

I also won a mint version of In Cold Blood for £14.

>164 Kainzow:

I remain wary of reading 'In Cold Blood' after seeing the skin-crawling portrayal of Truman Capote by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, and recalling how brutal the killings had been!

I was just like you.I thought it was just a non-fiction book that would only appeal to fans of the genre.I held little interest in it as I reckoned I already had Capote's best book,Breakfast at Tiffany's,on my shelf.

But I saw many people praising this book.On goodreads,for instance,it got an average rating of 4.08 for over 300,000 users.I read many reviews and the term 'page-turner' is recurring!

You should give it a go!

As for Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Capote: he was simply perfect.
He was just as good as Capote as Marion Cotillard was as Edith Piaf.No wonder they both won an Oscar.

>165 Polar_bear: I feel the same way Polar.

>168 EclecticIndulgence: etc. I much prefer his fiction and never understood why this is considered a great book.

I hope I did right in buying it...

>170 Kainzow: Certainly not the merest hint of admonishment from me ...chacun à son goût! You won't find many book burners on LT.

>170 Kainzow: Haha! I'm relieved!

I also won a fine copy of The Golem on eBay for... a little less than £10!!
I remember when there were the special offers,John Sutherland recommended five books among which was The Golem.But I went for Metamorphosis and Other Stories and Master and Margarita.
Still,I've been interested in The Golem ever since,even though I was not too keen to pay much for it.
£10 is not bad for it,I think.It'll be even better if I end up liking it!

Oh,I wonder if the guy from whom I 'snatched' the book is on LT.

Golem is a bargain for less than £10! Aiming to read my copy this year...

Best deal I've ever gotten was Livy's The War With Hannibal for $4.00 including shipping in very good condition.

To cheer myself up from the disappointing January FS Sale I found copies of Folio's Legends of the Ring and Icelandic Sagas II (finally, hurray!) at half the usual secondary market prices on 'Amazon Warehouse', at £15 and £50 respectively, including P&P. I was wary since Amazon warehouse doesn't have high feedback ratings and reviews, and both volumes while listed in the title as 'Used-Like New' contained a standard blurb beneath which mentioned the somewhat contradictory 'Good book' rating. I ordered them anyway, knowing I could return the books free of charge if I wasn't happy with them. Happily they arrived (not well packaged, typical Amazon, but fortunately not bumped) this morning with both volumes in fine unmarked, unread condition, except that both paper-covered slipcases had great extra-sticky Amazon coding stickers stuck on them, most frustrating, as it's nigh impossible to remove these without at least superficially tearing the paper covering of the slipcases. Nonetheless, I can't bring myself to return them as the books themselves are pristine. I adore the Vernon Lord illustrations in Sagas II and the Simon Brett engravings in LotR, but was surprised (and disappointed) to note that the Brett engravings are all stuck together in successive pages, in a separate section in the middle of the book, and not usefully interspersed among the stories themselves. Any idea why Folio resorted to this? It seems quite senseless, and must detract from reading pleasure compared to other volumes in the Myths and Legends series which have their illustrations appearing within the relevant text.

More positively, my eBay purchase of the FS Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination arrived in perfect unread condition, an absolute joy with Harry Clarke's mystical halftone drawings. A must for Folio fans of Gothic!

I had that experience too with 'amazon warehouse' and had actually emailed them about the stickers but was completely ignored. I found that label remover did work to remove the label on my Wind In The Willows slipcase, thankfully without leaving a mark, but it was really tricky.

I just ordered online the two-volume Thesiger in Arabia for $50(US). It was described as "like new" so I'm crossing my fingers that it is.

>175 cronshaw:

Sadly, as far as I know, the only reason to lump the illustrations together rather than have them interspersed is that it's cheaper that way.

>176 Paulfozz: Thanks for that. I need to invest in some Amazon Warehouse Inappropriate Sticky Label Remover then. I wonder if Amazon would sell it? I'll input that name and see what appears.

>178 boldface: I was hoping there may be some nobler, less depressing reason, but I suspect you're right!

>179 cronshaw: I bought my label remover from Maplin but it's pretty widely available I think. It took ages to dry on the slipcase after I removed the label, I began to think it would be permanently discoloured but I can't see a sign of where it was now. I had to soak the label for a while before trying to peel it and even then it took a lot of effort to remove.

>181 EclecticIndulgence: I'm not sure how worldwide the model is, but at least in the U.K. it operates like a marketplace seller on Amazon's regular website, except that next to the listed new or used item for sale, in place of a private company or seller's name, it reads 'Amazon.co.uk Warehouse Deals' with free P&P, 'fulfilled by Amazon'. I've no idea what this means in terms of sourcing or logistics, other than that the goods clearly seem to be located at an Amazon warehouse in the U.K.. The pricing seems bizarre, I've no idea what logarithm they use. Perhaps they throw a die. Some of their Folio books, for example, look like bargains (if the condition has been accurately described, perhaps a big 'if' with second hand goods - I doubt the people at the warehouse typing in the descriptions are experienced booksellers) whereas other volumes seem unreasonably expensive compared to other listings. Unfortunately the Amazon Warehouse description of a book's condition frequently appears vague and contradictory, hence perhaps the mediocre feedback rating. However, as I found today, a lucky bargain can sometimes be had, compared to secondary market pricing elsewhere, though Amazon's labelling and packaging leaves generous room for improvement.

I think these are books that people have 'traded in' to amazon, which amazon then re-sell at a big profit. Morally I dislike it (but it's no different to any of these places that buy secondhand books/cds/dvds/'stuff') but you can sometimes pick up difficult to find books very cheaply there (my copy of the New Naturalist book on British Bats came from amazon marketplace). Recently though I am more often finding the amazon price to be higher than other sellers on amazon; I've seen books which amazon are listing at £30 also available from others for £5-10.

I got the Hans Andersen set (the Turquoise one),still sealed,for £47.(shipping included).

I know it's much,but I really love these stories.Also I can allow myself to spend such a hefty sum on a set,given the number of bargains I've made lately.

One more book off my Folio wishlist. :)

Edited: I've also just purchased Tolstoy's Collected Stories.I adored Anna Karenina,and I felt reading it in Folio edition is for something.So I was immediately interested when I saw this set in late October.

I bought it at £61.On Ardis,for members,it is set at that price for UK postage.However the slipcase is only very good.
So I looked for a better one on eBay and made an offer of £61 (£8 less than the asking price),and it was immediately accepted. :)

War & Peace maybe for 2016...

I was eyeing the Tolstoy set for a while and finally decided to go for it,as I didn't want to have regrets in case it disappears.

And as for the Hans Andersen set,I was waiting for the red one to go on sale on the FS site,but then I saw this one sealed!! It is rarer than the red one,so I went for it immediately,considering that there were many other 'watchers'! I'm glad it's a good piece of business. :)

>186 Kainzow: I've often wondered who all these patient 'watchers' are on eBay for BuyItNow items. Perhaps the seller and a few mates!

>184 Kainzow: Do you know the name of the translator for Andersen?

>187 cronshaw:

I suspect there are often a few prospective sellers of the same title among watchers, waiting to see whether the asking price is achieved quickly or at all. Then, I've quite often watched Buy-it-Now items myself, either while agonising over whether to buy or in the course of lying in wait for a possible re-listing at a lower price.

>187 cronshaw:
Yep,maybe,but sometimes I'm among them!
In the past,I waited too much before buying an item!This is how the Chekov set slipped away!

>188 ironjaw:
I have no idea.I have tried to look up on eBay,but all I know is that there are drawings by 46 different artists and an introduction by Brian Alderson.
I'll let you know who the translator is when I'll get the book. :)

>187 cronshaw: I watch stuff on eBay all the time. Usually, I'm just curious what the final price will be but sometimes I come back and bid/buy.

>187 cronshaw:
In fact I tend to watch stuff so as to remember them.My watch list is like a record of all titles I seriously consider buying.
When bidding,I tend to bid on the last day and hour,so the last-day notification comes in very handy!

Btw,did any you of get an as new copy of Peter Pan in Kensington Garden?
I remember the price was over £22 the last time I saw it,and there were still some hours to go.The starting price was £5.5 while the shipping cost was £6 something.

>188 ironjaw:
I got my books today.The translation is by Jean Hersholt.

I found myself leafing through the History Of Chinese Civilisation set in a bookshop today. I was tempted as have been rather interested in China after visiting the Ming exhibition (twice...) at the British Museum, but in the end decided it was a little dense for my taste. I found a copy of the original Jonathan Cape edition of Bamber Gascoigne's "The Treasures and Dynasties Of China" instead; somewhat cheaper than the folio edition (one of the few they've published over the last year or so I was interested in) and although it's not as 'pretty' it is a very good edition.

Pliny the elder - natural history. Finally: £129.90 + shippment - still sealed, mint! Okay, not cheap, but it`s probably the cost when it was still in print. - hard to find secondhand, i would at least think so.

The one i miss now, is the complete greek tragedies, then im satisfied! Maybe .. for a while ..

I think it’s a good deal.
I ordered my copy of Pliny’s Natural History from the FS in September 2013 when they had just seven sets left. I paid £155.00 plus £6.50 P&P.

Every serious library needs a Pliny. Yes, i calculated that i got a bargain there .. great service .. only 4 days delivery to Norway from order. Long live Ardis!

Plinius us is very important for the Scandinavian gentlemen.

Edited changes Plink (an obvious mistake occurring from having to switch between two dictionaries Eng/Dan in my iPhone)

Plink. Are you drunk ironjaw ;) (tomorrow i will be - chess and whiskey) - you know what my answer to that is, it is this - here comes the reason i am going mental on folio books in a good way: "Folio produces volumes i have never ever heard about - a large gate has opened up - the thirst for knowledge through good stories" - you will not see Pliny transelated to Norwegian at first, not in a complete delicate set anyway.

`I read history magazines about the classical world, medieval times etc. The referances they use are for instance: Alexander the great, referanses to Arrian=check! Plato=check! Xenofon=check! Tacitus=check etc .. etc .. its lovely to own volumes like these, and many more (what should i call it) a first hand referance book

So, thats my Pliny, and thats why i love folio the most .. the FAD is strong in this one, i got alot to catch up on - thats my bonus!

The romans and the greeks never had so much influence here up north as on the continent, thats why much of these stories are not in everymans library, (Heimskringla should be, but it`s sad it isn`t) and much is lost .. luckily, im not everyman, i am a FAD

Sorry for the off topic, but i have learned that happens to the most ;)

>199 Pellias: Well almost :) I was dangerously too close to opening up a brandy bottle yesterday but alas it was not to my liking. I'm thirsting after a great brandy. I actually meant Plinius but the dictionary as I've written the above post corrected to something unrecognisable. I haven't researched whether Plinius is translated into Danish, well I'm rather happy with mine in English. For example Cherry-Garrard's Worst Journey in the World hasn't even been translated into Danish yet.

Oh yes I'm just like you; I too recognise that trend of books unheard off. That's why I trust folio with my books choices and I must say that the current Dawn from Decadence is precisely what I like and will be purchasing.

If you're into the Greeks and Romans why not check out the Loeb Classical Library ca. 500 volumes of wondrous classical literature.

Good night ironjaw. I am to drunk to write you right now ( i am not usually a drunkard) .. a lovely tip "Loeb Classical Library" is .. i shall write folio society on what volumes they need to publish with Loeb as a referance .. and i will research Loeb more when sober. Thank you!

I bought:
Lost Illusions,sealed,for £20
Don't Look Now,sealed,for £12.50
Sylvia's Lovers,supposedly mint,for £15

>202 Kainzow: where do you find them sealed? bookstores in london?

>203 lechacal:
Nope.Just on eBay.
You have to be lucky and,sometimes,quick.

So far,I got Things Fall Apart,Hans Andersen's Complete Tales,All Quiet on the Western Front and the two books cited above sealed.

What has been people's experiences of making purchases on ebay? Some FS titles look very steeply priced and others seem modest . Must be a case of caveat emptor .

The problem as elsewhere online Katherine is the shipping cost and buyers on eBay charge a lot. I've only found Ardis to have reasonable or lower prices.

Ebay is hit or miss. Be extremely skeptical, especially if there is a lack of clear photographs. I much prefer buying from individuals rather than stores, as (in my experience) they're more likely to take the time to give an accurate description. Examine the photographs very closely. But, I've purchased some excellent volumes on Ebay, and continue to browse there.

High shipping costs is a game some less-than-scrupulous sellers play. EBay's policy is that if an item is returned for not being accurately described, the purchase price is refunded but not the shipping charge. So, a seller who lists an item for $10 with $10 shipping keeps more of your cash than one who lists it for $15 with $5 shipping. I refuse to do business with anyone who charges inflated shipping. But I'm in the U.S., where books can be sent through the mail at low cost - I'd imagine that shipping to South Africa is a very different experience than I'm used to.

I haven't paid much for my secondhand books on eBay.

As a general rule,I never go beyond £20 for a book.
Here are some of my previous purchases:

Things Fall Apart (Sealed) - £15
In Cold Blood (Mint) - £14 (£10 + £4 shipping)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Sealed) - £20
The Golem (As New) - £9.30 (£6.50+£2.80)
Complete Tales of Hans Andersen (sealed) - £47 (£40 + £7 shipping)
Collected Stories of Leo Tolstoy - £61 (£56 + £5 shipping)
Lost Illusions (sealed) - £20
Don't Look Now and Other Stories (Sealed) - £12.50

I think I got these books at really good prices.It's quite rare that during sales a Folio book is being sold below £20,shipping included,so I'm happy with my purchases.The fact that I'm currently in the UK is of a huge benefit!!

That being said,I don't like buying on AbeBooks,because most books are overpriced there.I'm not saying that is not the case on eBay,but it is somewhat rarer.Also I don't think it is sensible to look for relatively new books at exceptional prices on eBay...

thank you to 206, 207, 208 for responses about e bay and also the comment on Ardis. I have found Ardis to be very fair. What I shall probably do is give e bay a try but to make use I use my son's or a friend's American address, and wait until one of us visits. Nowadays shipping to South Africa is expensive and also erratic (on the S African side).

I got my books today.
I have to say the Folio edition Lost Illusions is really beautiful.I'm happy I got it sealed.
Now let's hope the content of the book is just as captivating.

Does anyone on here use bookfinder.com? The owner of a local used shop tipped me off to it recently. I didn't know it existed. Very helpful as it searches all the sites.

I just picked up a couple of Letterpress Shakespeares on ebay -- Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet. Binge binge binge

How much did you get them for. They are lovely!

$250 each. Thought I'd lost them then got an email the next day that said the winning bidder pulled out so they were mine if I wanted. Wasn't sure I was going to, because after 'losing' the auction I made a big order with Folio that ate up a lot of my planned book budget, but in the end the price was too good for me to skip over.

I'm up to 5/39 -- those two, King Lear, Richard III, Sonnets and Poems. Maybe someday I'll have them all :)

That's a great price. I do hope that I too can find a way to purchase some. I've only got one Macbeth and have too many books to purchase.

>214 gmacaree: Great prices!

I bought a Fine/Near Fine copy of the 2008 edition of The Brothers Karamazov for £15.Shipping was £3.65.
It's been quite a while since I bought something from AbeBooks.

I came away from my local Oxfam Bookshop with a first edition of The Trial of Charles I from 1959. It was only £3.49, in mint condition but without the slipcase. I can live with that! I already have the 1974 reprint of this book under the Folio Press: J. M. Dent imprint.

The 1959 edition (Folio 60, no.125) has gravure illustrations and is bound in black buckram with a beautifully tooled spine and front board in gilt. The text is letterpress. The 1974 edition (Folio 60, no. 364) is printed in litho and the illustrations have less detail and are rather smudgy by comparison. The newer edition is bound in red cloth with a gilt cypher on each board. There was no slipcase: FS issued the book in a transparent plastic jacket with purple paper flaps, whereas the Dent issue had an all-paper dust jacket. Curiously, my copy, bought many years ago from the Members Room when it was in the basement of Sotheran's bookshop, has both.

I just bought a brand new in shrink wrap copy of Pax Britannica for $17.80.

I don't know if a better deal can be found!

>219 jlallred2000:

I can't imagine finding a sealed copy for that little; you did extremely well there! I think i paid £20 for my unsealed copy from a local charity shop and considered that cheap, so $18 is superb.

Recently I was outbid on a copy of North and South.
I was pretty sure I won it,but got sniped in the last seconds.Well,I'm not sure I'd have paid over £22 for the book.
I'll have to find another copy now...

>218 boldface: Oxfam is awesome. I got an autographed first edition of Sayers's The Nine Tailors from there. :-) Had to get an English friend to take delivery and then ship it to me, but it all worked out beautifully!

just bought a brand new copy of The Deceivers for $31

Plutarch lives in my posession. Starting to feel at ease with my self, i dont think to much like this anymore: "why did i spend those money on life, i could have bought 2 nice foliobooks for those money" .. right now i am building shelves on my wall for folios, happy weekend!

Just found a copy of Gilberts First World War set sealed for 50$

today a rather tatty dust jacketed FS Tom Jones 1959 for £2.00 though not great condition it would have been rude to leave on the shelf

>225 jlallred2000: Nice! I've got trade hardbacks of both the first and second world wars but would love to upgrade to the FS editions if I could find them at the right price.

Mycenaeans & Minoans came in. Just need Carthage, Vikings, and Normans to have complete Ancient Empires catalogue.

I just found a still plastic sealed "English civil war" set for 50$ at a book store in a nearby college town.....nice.

I found a fine,unread copy of The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir for less than £12! I'd have paid less had it not been for 1 bid from another guy.

I just landed four of my missing O'Brians for $20 each. Eight to go!

Eugene Onegin for 30$ new
The age of illumination set sealed for 38$

Aged to perfection.....

>233 jlallred2000: Ouch, I was pleased to pick up a used copy of Age of Illumination for twice that! Nice job.

> 223 yes very lucky. My used slightly damaged copy also 2x that

I am lucky in that my part of texas has around 15 used book stores....sometimes you find folio books still sealed! I guess estate sales dump them there?

I've been looking for The Normans for two years -- it never seems to come on eBay at a reasonable price. But Carthage isn't in the Ancient Empires series, is it? The binding is very different, unless I'm mistaken.

>237 NYCFaddict: I thought it fits in the series even though the binding is slightly different. Not sure what others think

>239 EclecticIndulgence: Wow where did you find those?

Dude you live on an Island? How cool

I do envy all your FS buyers .. Have not bought one for weeks and weeks . had to make do with other books otherwise would be a book desert! But I can't complain as at the moment I am concentrating on my Johannesburg collection and local architecture titles . we need a space to tell one another what we are looking for !

>244 EclecticIndulgence: How wonderful. Would have been wonderful to have caught up for a coffee or tea and to discuss books. There are some wonderful coffee places unbeknownst to many tourists. I'm quite in love with Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteket - a building built to house the collection of antiquities collected by Carl Jacobsen, the founder of Carlsberg beer.

While it's true that we cycle a lot and are far healthier than our European brethren, I must admit that sometimes the taxes are irritating (I'm still hoping for the day when VAT on books is removed, like in the UK and Norway) but taking everything in consideration paying 38 - 62% income tax is nothing compared to the fact that the Danish state takes good care of us to preserve our lifestyle and welfare. Well I still hope so that is the case in ten years. Oprah made a big scene about "privileges" and it turned to really bad and a media storm afterwards, the government changed many welfare rules to the detriment of many unfortunately.

It's just shocking to hear about the NHS in the UK and the division in public and private schools and the general poverty. We were all heartbroken to hear about the story of an unemployed individual dying with £3 in his account and generally bullied by the Jobcenter in the UK

>242 ironjaw:
You try living on an island during the winter storms which effectively cuts us off from all facilities on the mainland -like hospitals, for instance - for days on end, and we'll see if you still think it is cool...

(This comment is meant way, way more tongue in cheek than it appears. I promise! It just sounded quite crass when I read it after typing it - not my intent - just trying to point out that there are downsides to the sometime idyllic island life...)

Luckily, the government saw fit to use some of its (well, our) petrodollars to blast a subsea tunnel to the mainland a few years ago, ending our occasional wintertime isolation. Oh, before anybody asks - the island population counts some 12-13000 or so, so they didn't blast a £250M hole in the ground for the benefit of half a dozen fishermen... :)

>246 EclecticIndulgence:: It may well be in the middle of nowhere, but it does have a decent airstrip, doesn't it? (I seem to recall that Gimli took on the world's largest glider a couple of decades ago - a 767 which had suffered loss of both engines.)

today i found after much wear of leather! Montaillou; Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324 (in slip case)
for £1-50 and Edwin Drood 1988 for same price also

#247

"It may well be in the middle of nowhere, but it does have a decent airstrip, doesn't it? (I seem to recall that Gimli took on the world's largest glider a couple of decades ago - a 767 which had suffered loss of both engines.)"

Ah, yes, the Gimli Glider. Those engines would have worked just fine if the plane hadn’t run out of fuel. Canada was still trying out to work out the kinks of converting to the metric system at the time and when they were fuelling up they totally miscalculated the conversion factor. Result: they weren’t even running on fumes when they hit Manitoba (hence the glider nickname). Luckily the pilot was a glider expert and the co-pilot knew about a decommissioned Air Force base at Gimli. What they didn’t realize was that part of the airstrip had been converted to a racetrack and there was a car show on. Imagine their surprise when they saw their hoped-to-be landing strip covered in people and go-carts, including three boys on bikes who were shocked to see a huge jet bearing down on them. Again luck was on their side; everyone managed to get out of the way, the plane landed safely, and the Gimli Glider became a small town’s most exciting claim to fame.

The other thing they are known for is their annual Icelandic Festival Islendingadagurinn which brings in thousands of people to this tiny little town.

#250

EclecticIndulgence, here's the website for the festival:

http://www.icelandicfestival.com/

I didn't realize this year was their 125th anniversary. What 's really great is that with Gimli it isn't just a "pull out your heritage once a year" thing. They still have very strong ties with Iceland.

anthology of poetry today £2-75

Amazing prices! Where do you find these?

local charity shops, sometimes Oxfam in particular though that one sadly closes in a weeks time. We have a new second hand bookshop in town also that stocks a fair number but im not too keen on prices there, so will be a last resort!

I have found my bargains on library book sale shelves and at a local country fair antique sale tent. It's amazing to me what people will virtually give away.

last of my bargains were today, One Hundred Years Of Solitude and Rise and fall of the medieval monastery. the two came to £7-75

I envy you people who can find such deals. I need to arrange a book-buying trip some day.

>254 frostymaxim: Sad that you're losing your oxfam shop (I find it impossible to pass my local one without going in to browse) but the opening of a new secondhand bookshop is to be applauded, even if it's expensive.

Am stuck at home recovering from a somewhat nasty chest infection and won't be able to get out for a day trip on my birthday so have splashed out on some books from a Hay-on-Wye seller, which hopefully I'll get tomorrow. I've treated myself to a copy of Pliny: A Self Portrait in Letters, the New Naturalist on Bumblebees by Ted Benton and a British Museum book on the history of archaeology, The Discovery Of The Past. I also bought some books for birthday presents for my family (shh! Don't tell them.).

Foolish to buy yet another New Naturalist when it's already going to take decades to read the ones I have now but I couldn't resist. It was a close run thing between this and the volume on Finches, but I think I can probably find Finches cheaper than the £30 they were asking.

hey paulfozz sorry to hear of your illness, pray you get better soon mate. i ordered and received the 3 volume Pepys off ebay and was well pleased with the service and condition and at £25 inc postage it was very decent

i keep racking up crazy good deals. Remeber that 3 Vol set folio offered "Oxford Companion to Archeology 2nd edition"...for 150$? Well it sells on amazon for around 580$ new. I found it at a Half Price Books in lewisville, still shrink wrapped, for $49! woo hoo!

I also found a brand new copy of the folio "Book of Common Prayer" for $38 and i ordered from a UK ebayer the 5 volume "story of the reinessanc"e for $56 shipped.

its interested me in the short time i have collected just why certain titles seem to frequent ebay more than others, the ones i see most of in there boxed collection seem to be Domesday, Renaissance, myths and legends and greek myths! i did wonder if there were so many due to offers of these at some time?

>261 frostymaxim:

Not sure about the others, but the two-volume Greek Myths set was included in many joining offers over the years.

My acute Faddism exploded into bibliophilic bulimia today when I discovered a range of Folios seriously underpriced in a store apparently more geared to selling comics and music than Folios. I stuffed my cycle pannier to bursting with ten new, mostly shrinkwrapped volumes which included Tiger in the Smoke, Smiley's People, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Periodic Table, Epitaph for a Spy and The Selfish Giant, most at £6 each, how on earth to say No? I also discovered two old Folio volumes I'd never previously seen (despite over half a decade's Folio illness and very regular hunting trips to several London secondhand bookshops and the Naughty Trolley), The Sonnets of Michaelangelo (1961) illustrated with several of his sketches, and Ghost Stories by Walter de la Mare (1956) with wonderful lithographs by Barnett Freedman, both near fine and £10 the pair. To complete the gluttony for a further £6 I snaffled a fine, slipcased Heritage Press volume with Sandglass insert, Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, exquisitely illustrated with wood engravings by Agnes Parker Miller, sketched in the churchyard at Stoke Poges. I've yet to be disappointed with a Heritage Press volume, and I wish more were readily available in London.

wow,wow and thrice wow Sir Cronshaw

>264 frostymaxim: I know, I know, it's a Faddict's dream come true. Once the euphoria has dissipated I will have to deal with the harsh reality of where to put them all, but right now I'm just enjoying the warm flush of post-raid pleasure.

Spent some time browsing secondhand book shops in Dublin this morning. Got what I consider a bargain. O Pioneers published by Westvaco and looks like it has never been read. Saw 2 copies of a FS publication I had never heard of, Gods Graves and Scholars but I was not interested enough to buy either.
Also visited the Chester Beatty Library and was blown away by the beauty of some of the works on display. A number of amazing Quaran's from different centuries and countries. Sensational scrolls , illuminations and bindings. If ever in Dublin make sure you visit this place. It's fantastic and admission is free.

>263 cronshaw: my word, those are astounding bargains. I can appreciate fully your overindulgence!

I forgot to mention a remarkable eBay bargain I received in the post this week (quite the most impressive week of Folio purchases I can recall), the Folio Fine Press 'Peter Grimes: The Poor of the Borough' by Crabbe, for £7.25 including P&P, and completely fine in its glassine cover. The seller appears to have considered the volume an ordinary Folio lacking its slipcase. I'd never appreciated Crabbe before and had no idea he was lauded as a poet by none other than Byron who apparently ranked him with Coleridge. The illustrations in the Folio Fine Press edition are wonderfully evocative lithographs by Alan Powers and are among my favourite illustrations of the series, other favourites including those used for Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and Henry James' Aspern Papers. Highly recommended to all happily unwell Faddicts.

Cronshaw, you have had a week of dreams. That is quite a haul, not only in quantity but in bargains. From my perspective, the worry about where to shelve them is but a small concern.

>263 cronshaw: Well done! Yes, where to put them can get problematic. But it hasn't stopped me yet.

I got sealed Folio editions of Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy and Wind in the Willows for £25 each.Hardly any bargain,but these were books that were on my wishlist.It'd cost much more to buy them directly from the Folio Society.

I've been in the UK for hardly a year,but my wishlist has reduced considerably.

am attempting to eventually collect the 19 books in the set that includes Characters and Crooks, Source of the Nile etc, i believe its referred to as Victorian exploration? anyway i secured Raj, Pillars of Wisdom, Pioneers, Beagle and Into the dark. they were posted on ebay at £20 each with free postage, which was still too much for me so i mailed the seller and with some "bargain Hunt" magic secured the five for £80

> 272
I think this may have appeared on another thread previously, but can you please list out the 19 in the "series"? I didn't remember it being so many. I must be forgetting several titles.

Would it be these ones?

http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Folio+Society+Victorian+Exploration+...

Perfect, thanks

Another source is:-
http://www.librarything.com/topic/154143#4147539

Got an immaculate copy of Gogol's Stories for £12.50.
I now have Anna Karenina,Eugene Onegin,Master and Margarita,Tolstoy's Collected Tales,Brothers Karamazov,Gogol's Stories,The Shooting Party and Chekov's Stories (not the collected tales - the set is too expensive) in Folio Edition.I read Crime and Punishment and didn't like so much as to buy its Folio edition.As for Doctor Zhivago,the story doesn't entice me that much.

I'm eyeing Turgenev's books now,but I'm not willing to buy them at their current prices.I'll keep on waiting until one copy of each book pops up on the secondhand market at an affordable price.I also wish the Folio Society would publish Fathers and Sons.

>277 Kainzow:
Folio did publish this in 1979 by letterpress with a translation by Rosemary Edmonds and the introduction by Colin Ward. The lithographs by Janos Kass are quite nice.
It is an attractive publication. Perhaps you can look for it on the secondary market at a reasonable price.

>278 Forthwith:
Alright! I'll check it out,even if I would have preferred a modern version to go alongside the other Russian books.
7.
...

I also got a new copy of ''A Folio Anthology of Poetry'' for £27.40.Given the price it's currently at (£44.95) I'm happy with the purchase. :)
If I keep on buying books like this,I'll soon be out of funds and won't be able to buy any meal! :/

ditto anthology of poetry £2-75 last week courtesy of Oxfam shop

Letterpress 'Coriolanus' & 'Sonnets'

Up to five now...

Though I do rather understand the
sarcophagus comment by Cronshaw

>280 frostymaxim:
You got it for £2.75?

There was another one cheaper on eBay,but the condition was not as good,and there was a birthday greeting on it.

I share your pleasure in acquiring all of these super finds . Wow , what a treat and I know that feeling of delight at acquisition of nice titles . My focus of late been on acquiring some unusual items of Johannesburg / Africana on a website called BidorBuy (local version of ebay but nothing much comes up in FS books ) . There is also a South African , Antiquarian Auctions sale going on right now and this is now international and not a bad online market place. I recommend a browse . I do find that the problem with online purchases is that one does not really know what one is getting, but pretty satisfied with 5 titles so far that arrived of 8 ordered . Then today a friend from Boston treated me to 3 missing volumes in 2 series I am tracking down ....Newsweek, Wonders of Man series (early 80s) and these are excellent titles and wonderful quality though many produced as aimed at mass market. Then another volume on Dresden art in series on the Great Museums of the world also Newsweek . The internet killed this type of quality publication .. But don't turn your noses up at their ubiquity as they are surprisingly good value and texts are literate. So I have not made an FS purchase this year but other nice volumes satisfy the book itch .

Letterpress Merchant of Venice on ebay at the moment at £85

On a trip back home from a rare visit to Sydney, I stopped in at Berkelouw Books, just outside Berrima. What a change from my last visit 15 years ago. It now incorportes a licensed (and well patronised) resturant within. Alas, I could not linger too long, but it had a case and a half reserved for FS books. I got "Mistress Masham's Repose" (1989) with its wonderful illustrations and shimmering cover for $27.00.

"Relativity", by Einstein, and "The Double Helix" by Watson, both in pristine condition were too hard to resist as $22 each. There were many other temptations which I (and the credit card) somehow managed to abstain from.

There were a few early books, but not many. I did spy a copy of one of my favorites.."A Memoir of the Forty Five", but no need for a further copy!

I received my first ever second hand Folio volume yesterday from a bookseller in Oslo. I never imagined I'd find myself ordering a book from Norway, given that I still keenly remember from a visit a few years ago the shock of learning a (single) coffee in an ordinary Oslo café cost £5, enough to make even Mr Starbuck blush. However, this Norse abe seller had the Folio Press Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, apparently fine though 'without dustcover' for £15, i.e. three coffees, plus £5.80 P&P, which seemed reasonable to this British student on a budget, given that this volume is typically offered by abe sellers for £40 or more. (Oddly, the same seller offered the 'Folio Book of Days' and 'A Man of Singular Virtue' for the same price, though in London bookshops these are both singularly unloved volumes which would set you back one Norwegian coffee each.)

Macaulay arrived, well packaged, and not only in fine condition with the original transparent cover, but virginal, with uncut pages, so I now have the novel delight of going through the volume with a blunt knife to open them. The marbled boards, silk spine and letterpress type are a joy—I love this series and recommend it to all ill Faddicts. My thanks to Daithioc in the FSD Folio fine press editions thread for praising this particular volume and enabling me.

Congratulations, on your recent acquisition. Good hear that even Norway is able to cater for the wider audience. I'm quite surprised that Norwegian shipping was so cheap to UK. I think it would have cost double in Denmark.

>286 cronshaw:
Are you a student? I always thought you were an old man with a white beard! I guess the name Cronshaw,which is also how a character in Of Human Bondage is called,is for something!

I thin cronshaw is more like me an eternal student.

A sealed copy of 1984(new edition) sold for £12 something! I'm surprised there wasn't any bidding war over such a book.

>288 Kainzow: Ah you've unmasked the origin of my moniker! I've long enjoyed W.Somerset Maugham's stories. Cronshaw is a very minor character in that wonderful novel of his you mention, but he appealed to me and so I stole the name...

I think 'mature' student is the usual term for middle aged people like me who aren't in a rush to grow up and who quite happily study not to do so.

>291 EclecticIndulgence: Your wish is my command (on this occasion).

Just won an auction for the Travels in Arabia Deserta LE!

>294 gmacaree: Congratulations! I have often admired it in the dMR.

I've just ordered the non-Folio (but previously sold by FS) A History of Paris in Painting, reportedly 'like new' on eBay for £40, sadly not including P&P, a hefty £17.50 from within the UK. I already have the Rome and Venice offerings and love them. They are enormous, heavy tomes (taller than both the Kelmscott Chaucer and Folio's Johnson's Dictionary LE) but worth the awkwardness of stowage. Only Florence to go, though that one may have to wait a while.

>296 cronshaw: Florence is c. £85 new on amazon cf. £99 in the recent FS sale. Love the other three!

>292 cronshaw:
Haha,I admit thinking of you when I came across Cronshaw in that book,one year ago! But,afterwards,I thought that there must be some other more serious,ancient and intimidating book which you've read and in which a character bears the same name,hence why you went for that moniker!

On an unrelated note,I got a copy of The Good Soldier for £8....and a brand new hardcover copy of V for Vendetta for the same price.

>297 Polar_bear: Thanks but I've obscenely overspent during the past month and need to calm down. I do not need enablement!

>298 Kainzow: Sorry to disappoint with the lack of seriousness, ancientry and intimidation. Of Human Bondage just happened to be the book I was reading when I needed a LT name for myself. (It's lucky I wasn't reading A.A.Milne at the time.)

>299 EclecticIndulgence: That's a bargain, but also a sign of terminal F.A.D..

>294 gmacaree:, I was tempted by that auction but it was too rich for my blood - although still far cheaper than buying it directly from FS. Even here in the UK it was ~£200 saving so if you're US based I bet it was a real steal.

just back from a trawl of charity shops and was pleased to seven Jane Austens in two slipcases a 3 and a 4, seven pounds the lot. Was not particularly after the titles but hey come on! a pound a book

plus at £4-50 Charlemagne sealed

>294 gmacaree: I was tempted but the weak Euro stopped me. US purchases are now a luxury : (

>302 frostymaxim: Amazing value there. Saw Columbus: On Himself in my local Oxfam shop for £5 today but although I was tempted I suspected I'd not actually read it. I actually came home without a single book.

my Oxfam closed today and Charlemagne was my parting buy. i had been saved for another buyer who decided against it so i was grateful to take it. The collection im trying to get is the Victorian explorers one, 19 volumes, i have four to go. the 15 i have were reasonably bought on ebay and i reckon at around £15 each though couple were £25

>306 frostymaxim: Ah, I remember you mentioned that earlier. :-( Sad that it's closed. I don't buy many books from my oxfam these days (trying to be good) but I go in there whenever I can and I'd be gutted if it shut.

Which Vic. exp. volumes are you missing? I only have one from that series, The Conquest of Mexico. I tend to see them come up on amazon's warehouse deals quite often, particularly The Raj, Source of the Nile and The Fatal Shore. Not sure if the link will work but...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/b/ref=sv_gb_0?ie=UTF8&node=3581866031

they have an inclination to fix difficult to remove stickers on their books though; I had to use label remover spray and great care to remove one from the slipcase of my copy of Wind In The Willows!

>302 frostymaxim: To normal people, buying seven Folios you're not particularly keen on is bonkers. To normal Faddicts, not buying seven Folios you don't have at £1 each is bonkers—or to those with FAD psychosis, even if you already have them but the binding is different.

Congratulations on the £4.50 sealed Charlemagne as well as the £1 Austens!

>306 frostymaxim: The Victorian Explorers series is a particularly handsome set. On Friday there were two single, sealed volumes, still on the look-out from the Naughty Trolley: William Russell, Special Correspondent, and The NorthWest Passage, in case either would remedy your gap.

Found 1974 edition of Typee by Herman Melvillein a local charity shop on Friday. No slip case but otherwise in excellent condition. Interestingly it says "Distributed for the Folio Press by J M Dent & Sons Ltd .

>309 N11284:

Several regular (letterpress) editions from the 1950s and possibly early 1960s (i can't check at the moment) were reissued in the 1970s in litho and sold jointly by the Society and Dent. The latter copies were sold in bookshops with a dust jacket instead of a slipcase.

>309 N11284:,>310 boldface:

There were a dozen of these photolitho reprints, six in each of 1973 and 1974. The original letterpress editions were from dates between 1948 and 1963. They had transparent plastic dustwrappers in the main, though some copies of some books had slipcases, and Dent issued paper dws. Information from Folio 60, of course.

these 4 left now Cronshaw and Paulfozz

The Quest for the Northwest Passage 2007
The Descent of Man 2008
The Expression of the Emotions 2008
The Great Game 2010

Probably not as good deal as the steals that frostymaxim and Paulfozz regularly report but got Letter from America sealed for under $10.

nice one

>313 kotarana: That's very cheap for that one; I think I've only ever seen one copy in the shops I've frequented and I think they were asking for a lot more than that!

>312 frostymaxim: I don't think I've seen those ones that often online, certainly not in shops. I think I saw The Great Game somewhere online for about £20 recently but I don't remember where or know what's a regular price for it.

yes Great Game was on ebay but i had to let it go by as i secured the Origins that time

Those last three were the ones that cost me the most. But it was worth it for the mega set completion!

yes im finding that too NYC, the Quest for the Northwest Passage appears now and then for around £20-£25 but others are more like £35 but i will wait my time! today i had last of my recent spend out, with the two volume Guns of August and Proud Tower at £25

>318 frostymaxim: - You're in for a treat; I love Tuchman's prose.

Incidentally, I am reading Burton's 'A Secret Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina' from the Vicky Explorer series right now.

>319 odderi:

Odderi, do you know whether that volume is abridged?

>320 ironjaw:
It says that it is based on the 1879 edition by William Mullan & Son.

I did a rough word count; the FS edition contains on the order of 175,000 words, give or take a few thousand.

Now, the Gutenberg edition (based on an 1893 memorial edition published by Tylston & Edwards) contains roughly 325,000 words; even after deducting the Gutenberg info and the notes section (which appears to be more voluminous in the Gutenberg than in the FS edition) it would seem that the FS edition is an abridged one.

>320 ironjaw:, 321

The colophon says, "The text of this edition follows that of the 1879 edition published by William Mullan & Son ... and with the omission from the Appendices of A. Sprenger's 'Notes on My Journey'." I don't know how long the Sprenger was but it obviously accounts for some of the discrepancy. Also the 1879 edition wasn't the first (1st edition, 1855-6), so it may already have been altered or abridged.

>322 boldface:

Sorry, should've mentioned that - judging from the Gutenberg edition, the Sprenger is seven or eight pages or so.

On a side note, the first edition looks absolutely, positively marvellous. Too bad excellent copies fetch well north of £10k at auction...

I remember that these were originally issued in three volumes (1855-6) so 325.000 words sounds right.

Leave it to Psmith at £8
Letters to a son at just £2

Both from Churchgate Books in Bury St Edmunds.

Have they still got their £2 box outside the shop then Theo? Found that too tempting when I was there at New Year.

Love Churchgate! My dealings by mail have been top class.

>326 Paulfozz: The £2 box is almost empty in a corner near the till.

Stephen, the owner, is both pleasant and knowledgeable. The shop opened on 1st April 2006 and seems to be going strong as the only independent bookshop in the town (disregarding John Crawford who lives in Bury and trades from his home by appointment but sells most of his stock from the Risby Barn, and Antique Centres in Lavenham and Yoxford).

I'm not surprised; it was good value - the complete Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire set was in it when I was there. There were two boxes jammed with books when I visited.

FYI: I just wrote a long post about some bad eBay experiences in the "OT: Returning a book" thread -- some content may be of interest to those who buy on the secondary market.

Just ordered The Iliad for 19.95 including shipping. Should come in tomorrow- looking forward to opening it up.

Got a sealed copy of Anne of Green Gables for £12 today...

I have been looking for a copy of the Fagles iliad forms while. Most copies seem to be around $60

333: Yes. It`s hard to get by. (The iliad) - i found a copy, sealed in canada (not got it yet, due may, maybe) - and the term on the book then were "very good" - i wrote to them "a book still sealed, very good?" Bookstore wrote back, yes - it is very good, but i would not like to wrap it open and check, because it is still sealed"

Conclusion, of what i hope: That i found gold, and a bookshop not known with the term "mint"

Before i found whattever it is i found, i looked far and wide for iliad (folio version) - and it is extremely expensive - so, some folio volumes get theire worth when out of print, if well kept - i myself have bought some overpriced volumes from out of print - to complete sets etc..

---

Myself, i now look for the single volume from the philosophy set "seneca, letters from a stoic" - that to is a hard find, and it would not be a cheap one eventually i believe

>333 jlallred2000: I somehow managed to get a real steal with it. I ordered it via fulfillment by Amazon with Prime, but it still hasn't shipped even though it is supposed to come in tomorrow. Anxiously awaiting seeing that it has shipped.

My lovely girlfriend also got me The Once And Future King this past week in Like New condition. Already 250 pages in and love it

>333 jlallred2000: got out my Iliad for a quick look. The sister volume "Odyssey" 's green leather quarter-binding has
Gone sticky although the other leather q/b FS volumes are all OK.

>337 Polar_bear: You should stop reading them whilst eating jam sandwiches Mr. Bear. ;-)

Sorry… that's not good - is it something that can be treated? I saw one web page that says:

"Leather bindings can become sticky and will attract dirt if oils and leather dressings have been over-applied."

http://www.conservationregister.com/PIcon-booksbibles.asp

but it didn't appear to mention any ways of repairing that.

The reason is good to know; I had wondered. I think that brushing dust off the sticky areas is all that can be done to minimize the harm to the appearance (my Virgil has the same problem). Does anyone know anything else solid on this issue?

Wow, that is really useful. Thank you for sharing!

The Iliad came in and was in amazing condition, but of course Amazon (I bought it through fulfillment by Amazon) had to put a sticker on the slipcase. Oh well

I think there may have been a production problem with the leather binding on this edition of The Odyssey. I'm sure I've read about in, either here or in Folio 60. I know there was a similar issue with the edition of Metamorphoses in the same series - the dye applied to the leather never quite drying.

All I can suggest is leaving the book out of its slipcase, and letting it air for several months. I did this with my Metamorphoses.

Yes the sticky leather was a common problem and known here on the forum thus why we were forewarned about acquiring this edition. Sorry to hear that but I don't think there is much you can do.

There was at least one reprint of The Odyssey which had a cloth spine. My copy is one such and, according to the copyright page, is the fourth printing (2005).

Thanks, all

Very interesting.

Perhaps whatever makes the dye forest green
Doesn't react too well with leather. The inside
of the slipcase is stained green!

two decent finds today, Restoration London at £3, and one i had been looking out for The Wannsee Conference, also £3

>349 frostymaxim: any folio book for those prices are decent finds

I wrapped up my first big foray into the second-hand market to lop some titles off of my wish list. Here's how I did (price totals include shipping):

1. The Maltese Falcon - $22.05
2. Miss Marple Short Stories - $17.74
3. Enigma - $31.28
4. In Cold Blood - $37.37
TOTAL - $108.44

What it would have cost to buy them new from the Society - $283.80 (shipping included)

I also picked up the 4-volume Great Stories of Crime and Detection and the 4-volume Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for a total of $144.95. All of these books rate as like new or close to like new, so all in all I'm very pleased. And I did also recently purchase a few books from the big collection sale, so I haven't totally shunned the Society :)

just bought The life of Alexander the Great, slipcase a bit dowdy, seen too much light and probably spine too, but book itself in good shape and if read then most likely just the once. but for £2 im not grumbling

>352 frostymaxim: Very good price! I saw a copy last year for about £8 but it had a huge coffee stain inside.

Noticed this afternoon in my local Oxfam bookshop (Chelmsford) that they had a Rudyard Kipling seven volume box set for £50 with Jungle Book, Second Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Short Stories, Poems and some others (in slightly pastel coloured covers). Not sure if that's expensive or cheap but thought it might be of interest as it's not a set I've seen on my travels before.

>352 frostymaxim: Bargain!

>354 Paulfozz: It's cheap if they're in fine condition.

>355 cronshaw: Am not sure of condition but it looked ok; I'm not really a lover of Kipling so didn't actually look very closely at it but thought I'd mention seeing it just in case it was of interest to someone else… I remember someone (my memory fails me here!) did buy one folio I mentioned seeing in this shop before.

A Sealed copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude for £19 + £4 shipping.
I already have one at home,but I bought it secondhand.I guess I'm addicted!! :S

Nice one -- I was watching that sealed copy. I'm glad it went to a fellow Devotee, and that I didn't drive up the price. :)

Letterpress Midsummer Night's Dream.

6 down, 33 to go!

>359 NYCFaddict:
Ha,Thank You!! :)

>358 Kainzow: Did you have a new or secondhand copy? I could understand buying a sealed copy to replace a somewhat poor condition copy.

Not folio but on Saturday I found a copy of How I Found Livingstone by Henry M. Stanley; the Time Life Classics of Exploration reproduction. Not sure how the series is regarded but I quite like the way it reproduces the original style and has lovely fold out maps. There are a number on the Oxfam website in their sale but am going to try to resist adding more. They even have a copy of Layard's Discoveries in the Ruins of Ninevah and Babylon:

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/books/travel-and-holiday/discoveries-in-the-ruins-o...

I like the folio edition but the original I looked at was really lovely with the fold-out illustrations, which this appears to reproduce.

> 358
Oh,I had a secondhand copy in really superb condition.However I was impressed by the book itself and the slipcase.So,when I saw the sealed copy on eBay,I said ''Why not?'' Haha..........

If I get a sealed copy of Possession one day,I'll definitely buy it.The Folio copy I have on my shelf is not really flawless,and Possession happens to be one of my favourite books....

>344 housefulofpaper:

I bought my 1998 edition of Odyssey from a secondhand dealer about a year ago who had noted that the binding was "sticky." The stickiness is mostly on the spine, so leaving it out of the slipcase wouldn't help much. Nevertheless, after 17 years the binding still looks great and the stickiness is almost gone.

Not FS books, but I picked up two volumes of poetry (one Keats and one Shelley) from the Peter Pauper Press for 50 cents each. They're small volumes and appear to be fairly old, but they're in good condition.

I sniped a Folio copy of North and South today...for £25.I can't complain about the price,as other similar copies fall under the £20 - £25 range.
Thanks to eBay watch,I was reminded that the bidding would end in 3 minutes!

Grabbed an immaculate copy of In Cold Blood today in a nearby Oxfam shop, on holiday in the Lakes: £2.99! Been on my wishlist for a while, so doubly pleased.

We've been on holiday for a few days in Shropshire this week, and I picked up a shrink-wrapped copy of SOE by M. R. D. Foot (FS, 2008) in the Oxfam Bookshop in Ludlow. This completes my set of WWII histories in this series binding. It wasn't a wonderful bargain at £24.95, but I was glad to find a perfect copy.

marcus aurelius meditations for 16 including shipping
hans christian andersen (no slipcase) for 19 including shipping

At Library Express (a combination library branch, used/new book shop) today, a copy of Defoe's Colonel Jack for $5.00. The slip case has some wear on the corners, and its black dye has rubbed slightly onto the spine edges of the book itself, but otherwise the book is in lovely condition, and does not appear to have been read.

>369 lechacal:
Hmm,dollars or pounds,if I may ask?

dollars- off of amazon

I found myself drawn to my local Oxfam bookshop after work today and was quite tempted by a copy of the Black Death for £4, but it was pretty dirty and I'm already far behind on my Middle Ages reading. I couldn't resist a copy of Redmond O'Hanlon's In Trouble Again for £7.99 though; it looks very much like a book I'll really enjoy but I've never actually heard of this book before, let alone seen a copy, so not buying it would have been difficult!

I need a shoehorn for these books...

> 343

Yeah, I still have sticker residue on some small press books I ordered from Amazon. It's hard to understand why. If the book is worth more than $10, just don't do it!

>374 JustinTChan: a pain when that happens. :-(

Picked up Taming The Infinite for £10 from Churchgate Books in Bury St Edmunds today. They have a copy of The Scramble For Africa for £35... I did look at it but thought it was probably not really a book for me. If it had been under £20 it might have been a different matter though, but fortunately not as I ended up also lugging home a surprisingly heavy toaster!

i saw the 9 volume Cambridge Cultural History set at £35 locally and asked the shop owner what his best price would be, was nicely surprised that he took £20

Just picked up Aristotle - Ethics, Plato - Republic, and Cicero - On the Good Life in their 2003 editions all for just $15 each.

>379 EclecticIndulgence:

Ugh! I've been looking for that book here at an acceptable price for ages. Enjoy!

Found a pristine copy of the early 2000s printing of 1066 and all that..for 7$

Also found a sealed copy of The Double Cross system for 15$

Toilers of the Sea for $225!

>373 Paulfozz: I enjoyed In Trouble Again, but the cover is gorgeous - I just love the way the front cover design grows round onto the spine - with the little lizard (I hope, as I am not at home to confirm).

>384 CarltonC: It really is a lovely design... I had a look at my copy and it's a frog (and a parrot) on the spine. I like the little drawings at the start of chapter pages too. Am very much looking forward to reading it... at some point... when I can fit it in with all the other hundreds of books clamouring for attention. :-D

Someone seems to have recently (and foolishly) unloaded some Folio books at my local Half Price Books. So I just got Legends of King Arthur set for $20 in quite excellent condition. It's a good day.

Nice find, I haven't come across any FS books in my local area bookstores yet.

Got an as new copy of Catch 22 for nearly £19.

Also got a sealed copy of The Postman Always Rings Twice for £15.30.
There was a fine one for £11,but I went for the other....

The Rise and Fall of the Medieval Monestary. $30 including shipping from an Amazon seller. Still in the shrink when I got it! It's beautiful.

My most recent acquisitions:

Folio Book of Historical Mysteries
A Little Princess

Both still in shrink wrap.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/MARY-QUEEN-OF-SCOTS-by-Antonia-Fraser-2004-Cased-Foli...

Listed like new! Look at the spine.

Folio LE of "The Faerie Queene" for $654.58. It's number 269/1000.