Folio Books You Would PAY For

The threads about what books folio should do are always interesting but I was thinking about how there are clearly tiers with Folio pricing and what books would be instant buys for me at different tiers. LEs are pretty much out of the questions for me, so I'm really only looking at the tier that seems to run from about $70-$115 (depending mostly on length, it seems).

Kavalier and Clay was an immediate buy, for instance. I love it. I wanted it. And I wasn't waiting for a sale.

For me, personally, I think any of these would also be quick buys at full price:

Anything by Nabokov
Any fiction by William Maxwell
Anything by Ann Patchett
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot
Invisible Cities or If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Love in the Time of Cholera or a new 100 Years of Solitude by Garcia-Marquez

I wonder what else people would buy at the upper tier.

The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, by Washington Irving
Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden
Villette, Agnes Grey, Shirley, The Professor by various Brontes (though I would hope the two smaller ones would be more around 50.00usd)
Alice Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll (to match the latest Alice in Wonderland)
Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier
Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury
The Christian Year, by John Keble
A London Family 1870-1900, by Molly Hughes

These are books I reread quite frequently and would really love to see given the FS treatment!

At 'standard' pricing:
Each of the CJ Sansom 'Shardlake' series
More Pratchett
Wolf Hall
Bring up the Bodies
New editions of Lord of the Rings/Hobbit/Silmarillion
Watership Down
ETA - Siddhartha - Hesse
ETA - The remaining Bronte novels in series
The remaining Hornblower novels (we know they are coming)
The remaining Song of Ice and Fire (ditto)
ETA - More Maigret in series

At LE pricing:
Watership Down
Turner and the Sea (if high quality printing)
Alice in Wonderland illustrations by Dali
New editions of Lord of the Rings/Hobbit/Silmarillion
Down the River / Through the Woods by H.E. Bates (must have the Agnes Miller Parker illustrations)

>1 Jason461:
The fairly recent The Poems of T S Eliot by Faber are two hefty volumes (1300 pages for the first) that provide most of what an Eliot admirer would want in an edition. I can't see someone who owns them forking out again for a Folio edition that might look better but would offer less. Incidentally I bought mine at a small discount from Folio.

So much depends on the details of the publication, besides just the price. The only book that comes to mind, for which almost no detail could dissuade me, is A Canticle for Leibowitz.

I would order just about any Steinbeck LE they might offer.

>5 coynedj:
I asked for that years ago, as did others. Perhaps, after Riddley Walker, they're afraid that post-apocalyptic doesn't sell well, despite over 2 million copies sold.
>3 HuxleyTheCat:
Have you seen the publisher's limited edition (500) of Bring up the Bodies and the latest Mantel? Wolf Hall I suppose sold out. Doesn't sound up to FS standards.

The James Clavell Asian Saga, if they publish the whole thing in complementary bindings

Other than that, it would depend on price and other factors.

Dream of the Red Chamber, Journey to the West

I am a predictable man :)

>5 coynedj:

Pretty much. There's nothing I'd buy sight unseen really. Depends heavily on what sort of treatment FS comes up with.

However, I'd love to see them tackle Neuromancer for fiction and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions for non-fiction.

>9 gmacaree:

I think it's a safe bet they'll do both of those.

Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino.

Ficciones, Borges.

Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, Henry Williamson (15 vols.).

It's extremely unlikely, if more for political than literary reasons, but still less unlikely than any of the other possibilities that readily occur to me (anyone else for an Adelaide Mary Champneys set? Don't all clamour at once...) so I'm resigned lately to being more or less only an LE customer. Among those I might go for the Edward Gibbon and/or the Seven Pillars of Wisdom which have both been mooted at least once, depending on their execution. Everything depends on that.

>6 Mr.Fox: I'm with you!

>1 Jason461:

Unfortunately many in the above lists would involve Folio Society paying through the nose for rights and royalties. If they could get the rights at all. At least I can't see why else FS wouldn't do more Nabokov or Garcia-Marqeuz or Calvino, etc. But hey if they can afford Stephen King...

>1 Jason461: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Drop whatever you're doing, go to ebay and look for a copy by the Limited Editions Club. You should be able to find a copy in Fine condition for less than the cheapest regular-priced Folios. I think I paid $20-something for mine. This LEC is wonderful. Really nice paper, beautiful letterpress (and I'm not one who fetishizes letterpress - in this instance it's just nice: deep so you really feel it, but the paper is thick enough that there is absolutely no effect on the other side; better quality than Folio's letterpress efforts), beautiful typesetting and typographical layout, really nice numerous black and white full-page illustrations. Leather spine and cloth boards. The gold stamping of the title/author might not be the crispest in the Fine Press world, but it's only a really minor quibble about a fantastic book that can be bought at an absolute steal. If it were printed now, it would have been priced in the hundreds and would still look like a good deal. Do give it a try.

As to the actual question - so we're more or less in the Fine editions territory. It's a bit different for me. As far as most regular fiction and non-fiction go, regular Folio editions work just fine for me, even preferable most of the time. Some of my favorite Folios are smaller regular editions like The Postman Always Rings Twice which are light, easy to handle, and still have great crisp printing and typesetting. What I do like seeing as Fine editions are medieval and ancient writings; works like Beowulf or The Deeds of the English Kings lend themselves perfectly to this category, I think. So here are a few books I would love to have as Folio Fine editions:

Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio - Pu Songling
Chronographia - Michael Psellos
Geographica - Strabo
Ramakien
The Alexiad - Anna Komnene

Definitely...

With the Old Breed, EB Sledge
Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy
The Code-Breakers, David Kahn
Quartered Safe Out Here, George Macdonald Fraser
Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks
The Barrier and the Javelin, HP Willmott
The Difference Engine, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
Chickenhawk, Robert Mason
The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder

and left field...

The Story of Doctor Doolittle, Hugh Lofting
Biggles Learns to Fly, WE Johns

Walter Raleigh's History of the World
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in leather with complete footnotes and not too over-sized
Last & First Men and Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon

>17 Betelgeuse:

Which makes me wonder - does anyone actually prefer those extra-large volumes FS does now and then? I mean 12-14" and up. Those seem so cumbersome to me.

I would pay most any amount they charged for Clavell's Shogun and Tai-Pan.

Also:

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash Also by Stephenson
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Space Trilogy(Out of the Silent Planet, That Hideous Strength and Perelandra) by CS Lewis
Titan by Ron Chernow would make an excellent FS edition

I would also love to see a series of perhaps 5 books by Mortimer Adler. His best works led of course by the still monumental How to read a book. This man is a titan of 20th century reading and deserves to be recognized by the FS as such.

>19 Sorion:

Snow Crash (or Neuormancer, for that matter) with Sam Weber handling illustration would be incredible.

Anything by Terry Pratchett, Ian M. Banks or George MacDonald Fraser.
The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

Depending on how its done, would consider Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Infinite Jest, Beyond Good and Evil, or a collection of Chekhov short stories.

>18 adriano77: Not me - for 95% of books, I want them in normal book size, unless there are a very large number of pictures which would suffer from being made too small.

A Different Drummer, William Melvin Kelley
Machiavelli in Hell, Sebastian de Grazia
All those LBJ biography volumes, Robert Caro
The Trotsky Prophet trilogy, Isaac Deutscher

And for reasons of nostalgia Roger Zelazny’s first Amber chronicles, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Roger Norman’s Albion’s Dream.

>22 GusLogan: Caro’s LBJ biography is a great call. So is the Chronicles of Amber.

>20 adriano77: I salivate at the thought!

I definitely agree with Calvino. So many of his works lend themselves to the fine press treatment. Also insta-buys:

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Omensetter's Luck by William H. Gass
The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, and Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
Sixty Stories and Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme (perhaps in a slipcased set?...)

>24 SolerSystem:

Oh, yes - Blood Meridian and Pale Fire are good picks. Or McCarthy’s Border trilogy?

A two-volume selection of Winston Churchill's speeches

>24 SolerSystem: YES for Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

Absolutely agree with A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Yes on Dream of the Red Chamber and Journey to the West. The other FS Chinese classics were wonderful!

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Anything by John Crowley

>24 SolerSystem: John Barth, yess. Add Giles, Goat Boy to The Sot-Weed Factor and I'm sold on both!

>18 adriano77: I must confess I have a few of them. FS LE of Canterbury Tales facsimile of Golden Cockerel, 12.5" tall; EP Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays 12.3" tall; and I do have the 11.2" tall FS Faerie Queene LE. They're all magnificent, especially FQ. But yes, never again for me. I'm getting too old to hold those (read FQ with it lying flat on a table, over the course of a couple of months), and I don't relish having to buy a lectern.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, anything historical by Hilary Mantel, anything by Sarah Waters, anything I don’t already have a nice edition of by Neil Gaiman or Ray Bradbury, anything by George Gissing...list goes on!

The Dharma Bums - yay! Rhoda Ryder (Thea Snyder Lowry) was a very good friend of mine! I have a copy of Her "Empty Shells" with a very elaborate calligraphic inscription by her.

Wow, appaloosaman. Haven't seen you around for years. Nice to see you.

>34 appaloosaman: We can but hope! Fascinating to hear you had such a close connection.

I see from Waterstones that the publishers are flooding the market with Mantel pieces to celebrate the completion of her trilogy. Hardback, paperback, signed hardback, new hardbacks of volumes 1 and 2, as well as a limited edition of 500 hardbacks of each, signed, for £100 each. Poor woman is like to develop writer's crank. Pictures of only slipcases and covers are available. Does anyone know if these LEs have better quality paper, or are just standard issue in wolf's clothing? If the latter, I think I'll pass. The proliferation of formats might dissuade Folio from doing an edition now, assuming that they could get the rights of such a cash cow.

>37 Jayked: I would also be interested in knowing. I would love a Folio set. I actually asked them about it recently and they said that while they would love to, nothing is planned.

>37 Jayked: I don't have direct experience of 4th Estate LEs but I would doubt that they would use different paper. It'll likely be the same text block and a few bells and whistles to make the offer enticing to the typical first edition collector. Whatever they do, the books will fly: as you say an absolute cash cow. I'll buy the standard hardback and wait with fingers crossed for Folio to secure rights in the future.

>38 RRCBS: I noted when you mentioned that previously - very disappointing, particularly when they will have undoubtedly paid massive rights fees for the likes of The Shining, Dune and TSOIAF. Speculatively, I guess the thinking is that those titles will have given significantly increased visibility and customer base, whereas the readership for Mantel is largely already familiar with Folio, so perhaps the sums just don't work as well.

>36 HarpsichordKnight: I first met Thea through a horse riding website. She and her brother Gary were brought up in rural Washington state and were both great horse lovers - hence Kerouac's choice of the surnames 'Ryder' to veil their identities in his novels. My wife and I stayed with her in her home in Novato, CA and went trail riding in Tuolumne. My wife claims she was (by far) the most interesting American she's ever met. I can't begin to list all the interesting things about her but they include working in the Master & Johnson sex clinic, being a onetime burlesque dancer, marrying the medical superintendent of an asylum for the criminally insane, co-authoring a medical text book on the clitoris, writing a history of Petaluma chicken ranching, being a girlfriend of Marlon Brando's (and being bitten on the finger by his pet racoon which he kept in his bath), holding a commercial pilot's license with a seaplane rating, etc etc etc. You were never short of something to discuss with Rhoda Ryder!

>15 elladan0891:

Thank you for some third-party enablement: I've taken delivery of a very nice copy of the LEC Winesburg, Ohio - praise be, sourced in Europe, and so avoiding the vast transatlantic shipping cost. I hope the OP has taken your excellent advice as well.

>41 affle:
I'm glad you like it!

>40 appaloosaman:

Thank you for sharing that, Snyder has a new short work out lately Tawny Grammar and I hope to catch him at a reading before the last of the Dharma Bums leaves us.

>40 appaloosaman: Fascinating stuff - thanks for posting!

Gary wrote a haibun in memory of Thea:

White egrets standing there
always standing there
there at the crossing

on the Petaluma River

(Gary Snyder)

>44 HarpsichordKnight: If you (or anyone else) would like a PDF copy of the tribute to Thea handed out to us at her funeral, email me privately and I will send it to you. It's nicely jokey and gives a good flavor of the woman,.

Anything by Terry Pratchett.

Anything by Robert Heinlein, in particular Stranger in a Strange Land. (I really don't understand why they did Starship Troopers instead.)

Anything by Neil Gaiman unless I find the illustrations very unappealing.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.

The remaining Bronte novels in series.

>47 SF-72: Anything by Robert Heinlein, in particular Stranger in a Strange Land. (I really don't understand why they did Starship Troopers instead.)

I'll happily endorse your views. Stranger is just begging to be given the Folio treatment in the context of their current love affair with SF. Starship Troopers was an inexplicable choice although, of course, as a Heinlein title I bought it.

Magda Szabo, "The Door"or "Abigail"
Imre Kertesz "Fateless"
Andrei Makine, "Dreams ofmy Russian Summers"
Sandor Marai, "Embers"
Carlos Ruiz Zafon, "Cemetery Series" 4 books

*

deleted (duplicate).

> 49

Fateless/Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz and Dreams of my Russian Summers by Andrei Makine (note: his first book to appear in English translation) are outstanding choices. Both would be excellent candidates for the FS treatment.

>49 LG2: The audience for the Zafon books may be somewhat reduced courtesy of the SubPress editions, otherwise a great choice though.

Crowds and Power. Seriously, there hasn't been a fine edition of this book that I'm aware of.

>49 LG2: I have Labyrinth of the Spirits from Sub Press, it's an absolute unit of a book. They still have some copies left.

Any poetry by Philip Larkin. The fact they got round to 'The Prose of Woody Allen' over a decade before Larkin is a source of constant amazement

>54 reticular:

It isn't an amazement to me. Much drivel has been printed in recent times that is more about newish popular texts than texts that have stood the test of time ie canonical. They are far from exhausting the classics of British literature predating the 20th Century, never mind World Literature.

Lonesome Dove, never read it, eager to do so with quality volumes. .. during summer, so hurry FS.

>24 SolerSystem: Maybe I’d finally read Gravity’s Rainbow.

This in response to a hilarious conversation in Knives Out.

>56 Pellias: Worth reading whether FS releases it or not. Augustus Mcrae is one of those legendary characters that will stick with you for a long long time. Just remember that he doesn't rent pigs.

FS doesn't seem to venture into economics/politics too often but I'd like to see The Road to Serfdom in a nice edition. EP doesn't count.

>56 Pellias: >58 Sorion:

Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.

>59 adriano77:

Gryphon Editions did some Hayek as well. If you can be bothered with the sometimes tacky appearance. I'm over political diatribe myself, but they have printed a fair selection. They've included some Socialist and Conservative viewpoint in their offerings, leaning Conservative by a large margin. But I'm not really sure they know for sure what they're printing on which side of the aisle.

>59 adriano77: Uva uvam vivendo varia fit .. that might be a spoiler so i will not check it, but i will make a mental note of it (with the help of writing it down or i will forget it).

>58 Sorion: I doubt you not, and the true meaning and the backstory of that message i will not unleash before it is relevant. I bet FS will publish this, and i will write them a wish

Nice !

>60 Cubby.R.S.:

I've come across Gryphon before and even ordered their edition of Machiavelli's 'The Prince and Discourses on Livy' because it looked passable. Turns out that despite what's written on their site, not all their books are actually sewn. This one was glued. They admitted that it was printed at a time when some were glued but that sealed it for me - not worth further risks. Oh, and I had to pay return shipping out of my own pocket. They refunded this amount via mailed cheque which, after taking a long time to arrive, my bank refused to clear. The bank eventually ate the cost on my behalf given it was a relatively trivial amount. I can't rightly remember why it wasn't valid but yeah... it was an annoyance at the time.

It's a shame as they do offer quite a variety of stuff, especially political, as you say.

>61 Pellias:

It isn't a spoiler but yeah, don't search it online. That would probably lead to seeing inadvertent plot reveals just in the results I think!

>62 adriano77:

Gryphon is best for obscure works that are never ever going to get a reprint otherwise, such as 99% of their classics of medicine series.

They also did a decent reprint of Micrographia which might interest Folio Society Fanatics who missed out on the LE.

>64 MobyRichard:

I agree on the obscure medical and science works. Liberty Fund is the only other publisher I can think of that prints anything like their catalog of thought, philosophy, theology, economics, etc. I often enjoy the older translations of some of their titles and have purchased a more than a few myself.

They cannot replace a good Folio, but Folio isn't going to print much in way of their more obscure works, especially under current direction.

On the Topic of Folio books I would PAY for, I would love a collection of works by Roger Bacon, the Diary of John Quincy Adams and a collection of Oliver Onions. I could also appreciate a larger selection of Carlyle particularly Hero Worship.

There has never been a decent version of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. By any company, anywhere.

I will also vote for some of my favorites already mentioned, to build some momentum for publication.

> Shogun , slam dunk, I'd buy it the day of release

> Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash Also by Stephenson
Neuromancer by William Gibson

Yes, Please!

> Dhama Bums another 1st day buy

> A Canticle for Leibowitz a perfect corona virus lockdown novel

> Dark Tower series by Stephen King many of you want this you just forgot to put it on your lists!

>67 devilsisland:

The perfect version of The Catcher in the Rye is my battered old paperback which I carried around on many a London bus or tube train when I was a student. It kept me entranced during long journeys and also started a few conversations with complete strangers which were, well, interesting.

I can't imagine Holden advocating for anything fancy or 'phoney'. What we want is an old school jotter with the lines scribbled down or typed badly.

The whole concept of the book is sort of anti-Folio Society, I would have thought.

Good point, I still think a unique version would be welcome. just not a$200 over the top one

Something along the lines of Folios The Spy who came in from the Cold...deliberately shitty

>56 Pellias: >58 Sorion:
I can only second Sorion on this - I wouldn't wait for FS. I read it as part of a state-by-state tour of the USA that I'm doing of American literature that I haven't read (quite a lot!) - this was the book I listed for Texas. Took me rather by surprise (why, I've no idea, as there are plenty raving about it). Stonker of a doorstopper - loved it all.

Thanks guys. Both thumbs up. Lonesome Dove (and also Butcher`s Crossing by John Williams ordered).

>71 Pellias:

'Lonesome Dove'

I misread that initially and thought you meant 'Lonesome Dave', as in Peverett. It's a good enough excuse for some Foghat.

Slowride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcCNcgoyG_0

On the other hand, sometimes less is more and, if Foghat is a bit much in these stressful times, a bit of Morton Feldman might do the trick.

For Bunita Marcos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQjXWcO7aRo

Turn the lights down, sit back, breathe out, and just relax into it :-)

>72 Cat_of_Ulthar: Oh my. My personality is something in between i reckon ;) The latter it is very suitable for Mark Rothko art though. I might use it for when i dive into a book with isolated atmosphere. Like a noire mystery `who dunnit` or something about outer space.

I would rather like to see a Folio edition of Peter Blegvad's Leviathan.

Unlikely to happen in anyone's lifetime but it's a formative part of my life and I would pay for it so that I could have it and hold it and love it and call it George.

Okay, not the George bit.

But I love it: the dust-bunnies; Cat; the scary-rabbit thing; all of it. It's somewhere between Calvin & Hobbes and Twin Peaks.

Which might just approximate real life.

:-)

edit

The minimal and rather beautiful Leviathan website lives here:

http://www.leviathan.co.uk/menu.html

There is a book collection but, as far as I know, it's not the complete series.

>74 Cat_of_Ulthar:

I think Leviathan ran weekly for eight years or so, which suggests that the book from 2000 - 160 pp. - can't amount to more than a third of the whole, given the presence of more than a few sectional title pages. I was a child of 32 when it began appearing, already a seasoned listener to Blegvad, and would buy the LE in a flash. Okay, maybe two or three flashes. Definitely not many.

Do you like his musical work with Slap Happy and Henry Cow? The first album was the soundtrack to my time at art college in London the early 1970s .... bliss!

At LE pricing:
- The name of the rose by Umberto Eco, perhaps in parallel with Il nome della rosa (in Italiano) on opposing pages as they did with Vita Nuova (although I'm aware that this would make the book prohibitively long)

- Any other medieval facsimiles they'd like to produce. I became interested in FS limited editions after many excellent options were already sold out (Getty Apocalypse, Luttrell Psalter) and now need to stalk eBay for months.

>76 red_guy:
Unlike >75 terebinth:, I can't call myself a 'seasoned listener' to Blegvad's musical output, having tended to happen upon it by happy accident when he popped up on albums by other people such as National Health* or John Zorn. And I did enjoy the 'eartoons' he used to create for BBC radio. But I have been listening to some more of his work on youtube lately and so far I liked Kew. Rhone very much. Henry Cow seems interesting: there's a kindred spirit with National Health (John Greaves was involved with both, of course) and Zorn (via Frith). Not so sure about Slapp Happy but I haven't heard very much yet.

Of course, once you start investigating Blegvad's connections there are labyrinthine rabbit warrens to run down!

* Of Queues and Cures is a long-standing favourite of mine thanks to Tommy Vance's playing of a session by the band many moons ago when I was an impressionable teenager.

One for a limited audience, I suspect, but, with my mind on Blegvad and The Canterbury Scene, how about Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees, printed letterpress on that beautiful paper used for the Letterpress Shakespeare?

Maybe not a book, perhaps a series of scrolls. In some fancy sort of table, if that tickles your fancy, or to be ordered individually?

Okay, probably not.

Here's some nice music: Of Queues and Cures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftKM6vfrLjo

:-)

Your bonus track: Robert Wyatt's version of Shipbuilding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjUkjpJa6bY

>76 red_guy:

I must have come across Blegvad first in Alastair Brotchie's Atlas Anthologies, then picked up The Naked Shakespeare in a record shop, and the rest followed naturally, including Slapp Happy and Anthony More's solo work. Didn't immediately take to Henry Cow so much, but after loosening of the musical joints through exposure to jazz and a spell of immersion in Cheer-Accident I was more than ready to embrace the triple-box collection of a few years since.

Cat_of_Ulthar and terebinth - thank you both for those leads, which I will follow up and via Qobuz! Desperate Straights was the only Henry Cow album I really enjoyed, and that was because of the Slapp Happy link. But the two recent-ish Cosa Brava CDs with Fred Frith are pleasantly spiky and enjoyable (also beautifully recorded, if that interests you).

A Pete Frame LE would enable Folio's tendency towards gigantism to find the perfect outlet. I might even condone a solander box for that.

The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan could be a lavish fine press FS edition.
I will ready my debit card.

Would love to see James Mitchner. Definitely Chesapeake, Texas, Hawaii and Alaska. Would certainly buy a whole set if they published those.

I would happily buy The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson. That’s been a favorite of mine for decades.

Tim Powers is a favorite of mine and he already has a lot of limited fine press editions of his work that are out of my price range - I'd love to get affordable FS editions.

A few in here I'd second (or third) - Blood Meridian, anything Gibson, Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (or Antathem), The Codebreakers, some of Pynchon's work.

I'll also add Nicholas Christopher's 'Veronica' and 'A Trip to the Stars' as well.

I'd like to see a nice edition of Neuromancer but after the garish Philip K Dick books I think FS should stay away from neon drenched future dystopias.

PKD is one of my favorite authors and I still can't bring myself to buy Ubik.

Embers by Sandor Marai
The Egyptian by Mika Waltari
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Conversations On The Plurality Of Worlds
Jack London's short stories
Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Browning
The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin

1. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. A sci-fi classic.

2. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. We do not need another FS re-issue of C&P or The Brothers K, we need a Dostoevsky classic that FS has not yet done.

3. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, JR. Another groundbreaking sci-fi classic. Already mentioned numerous times on FSD - such an obvious choice, one wonders why FS hasn't gotten around to publishing this one.

4. Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A little-known novel about a working-class couple's stealth resistance in Nazi Germany after their son is killed at the Russian front during WW II, based on a true story. A masterpiece.

5. Stoner by John Williams.

6. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

>89 dlphcoracl:

I believe Folio has done The Idiot. 1971, I think is the year. And... There's one for sale on Amazon for only $973 and some odd change!

>90 Cubby.R.S.:

WOW !!!!!!

Such a deal.

>91 dlphcoracl:

An Australian bookseller has a VG copy for 20 USD (plus maybe twice that much for shipping, depending on where you live).

>92 cpg:

Thank you!

>89 dlphcoracl: - Every Man Dies Alone is a superb book, well worthy of FS treatment. A Canticle for Leibowitz may be asking too much, but if issued I would buy it. It's one of my all-time favorite books, and I'm not a huge sci-fi fan.

Having Folio do The Neverending Story is one of my dreams.

Also, I second all who mentioned Jonathan Strange: I'd buy it immediately

>89 dlphcoracl: Every Man Does Alone (which is the literal translation of the German title; it was published in the UK under the alternative title "Alone in Berlin") is my top wish. I have told Folio Society about this and mention it here at every opportunity, so I live in hope. Fallada died in 1947, putting his work in the public domain in Germany. Unfortunately, the English translation wasn't made untill 2009 so Folio would have to negotiate a license. Fingers crossed.

The other book I'd really like is Wonder Boys by Chabon. No sign yet that FS plan to expand beyond Kavalier and Clay, though.

>96 ubiquitousuk:

I second the idea of doing another book by Michael Chabon but I would opt for his first novel 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh'. There is something wonderfully naive and fresh about it - it was Chabon's debut work.

>96 ubiquitousuk: >97 dlphcoracl: I quite enjoyed Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, and would enjoy a FS presentation of that work. Telegraph Avenue, on the other hand, I did not care for.

>98 jsg1976: I own and have read many books by Michael Chabon and Telegraph Avenue was the only one I didn't like.

I would continue to wish for a Limited Edition facsimile of the Bruce Rogers designed/T.E. Lawrence translation of The Odyssey.

>100 laotzu225:

Well, I'd want real gold for the roundels, and then there's the aromatic ink . . . .

>100 laotzu225: Have you considered the 1981 LEC edition of The Odyssey translated by Lawrence and illustrated by Barry Moser (24 full page wood engravings and one vignette). 2000 copies so you should be able to find one for under $100 (my copy cost $83).

>98 jsg1976: (and all other Chabon posts)

Yeah, I'm not wild about Telegraph Avenue. I think it's okay, but certainly not his best. Gentlemen of the Road is the only thing he's written that I thought was plainly bad. If I were to rank some of his remaining books in terms of how much I want Folio to publish them:
1. Moonglow
2. Wonder Boys
3. The Yiddish Policeman's Union
4. A Model World
5. Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Anyone else here read and adore Colum McCann? I'd love to see one of his books picked up by Folio.

Gosh, yes. Let The Great World Spin was astonishing. Thank you for reminding me to read some more of him.

Laying in bed last night reading Folio's Robert Frost I was thinking I would most certainly pay for a treatment of Robert Frost in the same manner as the war poets series. A series I personally consider one of the finest things the FS has ever done. Perhaps for Frost a two volume edition. I know that this will never happen but as this thread is the books I would pay for thread I had to mention it.

>106 Sorion: Not quite the same, but look into the Imprint Society's Frost poems.

>89 dlphcoracl: >95 dyhtstriyk: If you are able to understand german there is a newly realeased (August 2019) illustrated version of the Neverending story that was released last year (https://www.amazon.de/Die-unendliche-Geschichte-illustrierte-Schmuckausgabe/dp/3522202503/). At 35€ it's really good value IMO. It has a sewn binding, is bound in red cloth with blind embossing and the text is printed in red and blue. It's comparable in quality to the Harry Potter illustrated editions. It isn't as profusely illustrated, but there are a lot more illustrations than in regular FS editions. There are full colour double and single page illustrations and pencil sketches. One negative I can find is that the ink is quite glossy, but I haven't read it yet and can't say how much of a problem that will be. I really like the illustrations and I'm quite happy to see this book published in german as I'm always a bit weary spending a lot of money on nice translations of german books. If you are interested I can post some pictures.

>108 c_schelle:

I would definitely welcome seeing a few photographs of this German language edition. I enjoyed this story so much I would certainly entertain the thought of buying this new illustrated edition and having the English translation alongside to help me navigate the German language as I read it.

Here are some pictures of the book:


The red of the third picture is closest to reality





I hope I could help your buying decision.

>110 c_schelle:

Thank you. That is absolutely gorgeous, so much so that I will purchase this and read it with the English translation at my side. I can read and comprehend just enough of the German language to do this comfortably.

I would love to see newly illustrated versions of

Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn

Michael Ende's The Neverending Story (an English version. I know there is a beautiful edition in German as referenced earlier in this thread by illustrator Sebastian Meschenmoser)

E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan

Ethel C. Pedley's Dot and the Kangaroo

T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone (original illustrations paired with new would be amazing).

I spend a ton of time researching children's literature (just a passion of mine) and have come across many more in need of revamping but these are the ones that come to mind at present.

Also, not kid's lit, but an illustrated version of Andy Weir's The Martian would be fantastic!

>101 boldface: I've said elsewhere, the facsimile can approach but not duplicate the original. Those features are incredible.

>102 kdweber: I am probably going to buy it. Obviously it has its own appeal. But yet...there are many photos online of the Rogers chapter heading pages which are so beautiful.

>112 Tribefox: “Ethel C. Pedley's Dot and the Kangaroo”

One vote against. This one scarred me horribly as a child.

Kundera seems unaccountably underserved by nice editions, to the degree that perhaps there is some rights issue involved, or some similar constraint.

In any case, any of his works seem like good “literary fiction” candidates for Folio editions.

>116 abysswalker: I agree. All of my Kundera has been either paperback or trade hardback. I finally bought the three volume Easton Press set but I wouldn't really recommend it.