Desert Island Folios

Thought it would be interesting to ask the group what would be your Desert Island Folios.

Only 2 'rules' for your selection.

#1 You must only choose 10 physical volumes. (eg new LOTR LE counts as 3)

#2 You must currently own the volumes
________________________________________

So based on that my 10 would be.

#1. The Four Gospels LE
#2. The Aeneid LE
#3. The Fellowship of the Ring SE
#4. The Two Towers SE
#5. The Return of the King Se
#6. The Iliad SE
#7. The Odyssey SE
#8. The History of Western Philosophy SE
#9. The Folio Poets: Tennyson SE
#10. Year Round Things to Do SE

Great thread idea.

In no particular order, while being mindful of overlap in subject -

History of Western Philosophy, Russell
The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides (mid-90s version)
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (2-volume edition)
The Malay Archipelago, Wallace (maybe my island is in the vicinity?)
Catch-22, Heller
Atlas Shrugged, Rand (I imagine some would bring these along solely for kindling)

That's ten.

-edit. Oops, eleven. Bye Rubicon.

In Search of Lost Time (6)
Iliad
Odyssey
Hamlet
The Koran

1. Alice in Wonderland LE
2. The Travels of Lemuel Gulliver LE
3, 4, 5. Lord of the Rings LE - 3 volumes (2002) - with bindings in one-quarter Wassa Goatskin and hand-woven Indian silk cloth over boards, in matching full Moroccan covered slipcase.
6. Love is Enough LE
7. Fifty Fables of La Fontaine LE
8. Beowulf (2010) - Seamus Heaney translation
9. Ulysses (2017) with John Vernon Lord illustrations.
10. Moby Dick LE (2009) with Rockwell Kent illustrations.

Hmm, good one.

A History of Western Philosophy
Jane Austen Collected Letters
Oscar and Lucinda (not my fave of his, but it's long and detailed with lots more to explore)
Chekhov Short Stories (early 2000s ed)
David Copperfield (burgundy nonesuch)
Grimm's Fairy Tales
One Hundred Years of Solitude (psychologically risky, I know)
Moby Dick (light blue SE)
Vanity Fair (I haven't read it yet, so may use for lighting fire, but it's long and detailed, so hopefully I would like it!)
Dune

Sad about Alice in Wonderland and Looking Glass...how long do I have to choose?

>1 LesMiserables: Why Four Gospels LE? Is it that much better than the standard?

I like it. Some of my favorites are not necessarily my "nicest" Folios, in no particular order other than when I found on my shelf:

Philip Larkin's Collected Poems
Wilfred Owen Poems (LE)
Churchill War Speeches
In Parenthesis
The Guns of August/Proud Tower (2-book set)
Melville's Complete Shorter Fiction
The Third Policeman
Eugene Onegin
Antony and Cleopatra (companion volume)

If I am on a desert island, I am going to be lonely and want to surround myself with as many of my best friends as I can!

The Hobbit (SE) Considering I am also on some sort of adventure...
The Fellowship of the Ring (SE) Adventure, companionship...
The Two Towers (SE) Same as above...
The Return of the King (SE) Same as above, but can also brush up on my Angerthas and Tengwar!
Little Women (SE) Being local to Concord, a memory of home...
Jane Eyre (SE) Feeling like an orphan on my deserted island....
The Wind in the Willows (SE) Animism may come in handy for companionship among the local animals....
Norse Myths (SE) Nice to know the gang is around and watching out for me...
Our Mutual Friend (Nonesuch Burgundy) Loads of characters & incidents, pure entertainment...
Jane Austen's Collected Letters (SE) Because it will be nice to have someone to gossip with!

Montaigne’s essays (good company and it’s a lovely folio as well)

Book of the New Sun 2 volumes (can be reread many times to get layers of details and enjoyment out of)

A Book of Travellers Tales Eric Newby (a selection of all sorts of explorers all over the world

Emma Jane Austen (the older red cloth version for an enjoyable read)

Lord of the rings LE 3 vols

Bleak House - Dickens (burgundy leather my favourite of his)

History of Western Philosophy - Russell - been sitting on the shelf for years and haven’t read yet plenty of time on the island.

Dune
100 Years of Solitude
The Little Prince
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Shackleton’s Boat Journey
The Arabian Nights
Oryx and Crake
Mort
The Master and Margarita
The Travels - Marco Polo

Some folios I’d like to bring I don’t own and some books I own and would like to bring are not folios.

I will sadly leave Lord of the Flies on the main land!

>10 coffeewithastraw:

Just as well that lord of the flies could give some dangerous ideas on an island.

This is fun, but obviously mean.

1. Eusebius History of the Church
2. Herodotus
3. Micrographia LE
4. Huck Finn
5. Treasure Island
6. War and Peace LE (only one volume)
7. Les Miserables LE
8. The Brothers Karamazov
9. Pride and Prejudice
10. I loved the Marco Polo suggestion above...

>11 Charon49: I can only imagine what would happen if this group got stranded in the same island; with 10 FS books each...

>13 bacchus.: Well, we coordinate properly, it may actually go into a different direction…

>14 AnnieMod: ... as soon as Warwick finds a conch shell we are in for LE raiding parties and FS colophon face paints.

I'll start with three childhood favorites for comfort:

Treasure Island - oh, look, a desert island, must be a coincidence!

My Family and Other Animals - also takes place on an island, and is sure to perk me up and bring some smiles if despair starts setting in

The King Must Die - well, what do you know, there is an island here as well! Another childhood favorite

Easy and Not So Easy Pieces - a little physics refresher from Feynman himself that will hopefully set me in the right mood to start reinventing wheels and bring a bit of civilization to my island

South Polar Times - Antarctica might be a continent, but it still is one big, mean desert island that will give regular desert islands a run for their money. Would be good to see how some folks entertained themselves there.

Montagne's Essays - a beautiful volume that should keep me a good company and would make me happy stroking my bibliophilic side

Theodor Mommsen's A History of Rome - a handsome 700+ page brick of a history book that brought its author the Nobel prize in literature? Yes, it's coming with me to the desert island, and I'll finally have time to read it.

The Icelandic Sagas volume 1 - Another fat volume to spend time with. I thought it would be a good idea to pick some fat unread tomes from my FS collection for the island, such as the Mommsen. Somehow I ended up selecting this one even though I've read 4 of the sagas. However, I wouldn't mind rereading them, along with 5 more sagas and 3 tales that are still new to me, and going back to them again until somebody lifts me off the damn island.

Egypt and Nubia by David Roberts - will have plenty of time to look at all the paintings and, perhaps, get inspired to explore and document my own island

Hooke's Micrographia LE - was just looking at it the other day wondering when I'll have time to read it, so might as well take it with me.

>1 LesMiserables: No Scott or RLS???
:)

1-3) New LOTR LE

4) Kavalier and Klay

5) Beowulf

6) The Name of the Rose

7) Moby Dick LE

8) Catch-22 (need something funny)

9) SPQR (it’s in such high demand, I’m pretty sure if I get in a real pickle and send a message in a bottle offering it for sale, someone will come rescue me in 24 hrs)

10) Kelmscott Chaucer LE (I’ll have plenty of time to decipher it, can use it to work out, and use it as a weapon to bludgeon small prey)

>6 punkzip:

It's the only version I have.

>17 elladan0891:

I have memorised them all. 🤣

I'm really surprised I'm the only one so far who's bringing along YRTTD. 😅

David Copperfield
Ulysses
Finnegans Wake
Montagne's Essays - 3
Plutarch Lives - 4

#1. Gulliver’s Travels LE
#2. The Poetic Edda LE
#3. The Decameron LE
#4. Herodotus LE
#5. The Fellowship of the Ring LE
#6. The Two Towers LE
#7. The Return of the King LE
#8. The History of Western Philosophy SE
#9. Montagne's Essays SE
#10. Beowulf SE

Surprised that nobody has yet chosen Don Quixote. That's the only one I would need!

>23 Dr.Fiddy: you have the ones I don’t own but would want to bring!

Tales of the One Thousand and One Nights LE (The solander is so huge it could serve as a raft)
Don Quixote LE (I've been meaning to get around to reading it >24 drasvola: Antonio)
Beowulf - Heaney (Trying to learn some Old English may be a useful distraction when the weather is too bad for hunting, gathering, raft-building)
The Life and Surprising Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner (I might pick up some useful tips)
Frankenstein (One of my favourite books and the examination of the state of isolation may give some solace)
Toilers of the Sea LE (Ditto)
Dune (Due for a re-read)
The Wind in the Willows LE (What can I say, it's gorgeous)
Moby Dick LE (Great long read and Folio at its absolute best)
Walden - 2009 ed (Another which I have been meaning to get around to reading)

My task here was made easier as I have a much reduced collection now as space (and bookshelf-friendly walls) in my little cottage is at a premium, so I had to go through the process of working out which books are really important to me for real in the not too distant past.

>24 drasvola: It would be my #1 (actually #1 and #2; I have the two volume Arion Press set), but I don’t have a Folio edition.

>25 coffeewithastraw: If our islands aren’t too far apart, we could swap after awhile :)

>26 HuxleyTheCat: My task here was made easier as I have a much reduced collection now as space (and bookshelf-friendly walls) in my little cottage is at a premium, so I had to go through the process of working out which books are really important to me for real in the not too distant past.

Great to see you back here posting (semi) regularly, Fiona :)

>26 HuxleyTheCat: The Wind in the Willows LE (What can I say, it's gorgeous)

I followed your advice a wee while back and acquired a copy for myself. I was not disappointed

>24 drasvola:
I still haven't read the whole book yet. However, I can also see where it would be an excellent Island selection.

Paradise Lost (2015), with John Martin mezzotints. Just the first volume.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Faust, Parts One and Two (2005); single volume "fine" edition
The Tempest letterpress LE
The Divine Comedy (1979); single-volume blue cover edition due to constraints
Gargantua and Pantagruel LE (two volumes)
Jerusalem (2007), William Blake
Hamlet letterpress LE
A Midsummer Night's Dream letterpress LE

Really, it would be smarter to choose some nonfiction related to island survival, but I don't think I have anything by FS in that regard. Same with a denser collection of Shakespeare and a single-volume bible, but you go to war with the army you have, as has been said. Maybe swap Midsummer for the sonnets and poems volume.

No Man is an Island (Donne prose selections) would be a good shallow laugh, but we are nothing but serious here.

Sad that no works of history made the cut, but confronted with isolation aesthetic splendor wins. And most of the best history books in my library are not from Folio, so the pickings are currently slim.

>30 abysswalker: ‘….island survival…’

Does The Tempest not count?

>31 affle:
We can always depend upon Alan for le mot juste.

>26 HuxleyTheCat: >27 Dr.Fiddy: >29 CobbsGhost:
That's very encouraging! Thanks.

1. Night Thoughts LE
2. Ulysses LE (the second one--although the first one is nice too).
3. Divine Comedy LE
4. Kelmscott Chaucer LE
5. Four Gospels LE
6-10. Studies From Nature LE

I only own about forty FS books, so my list emerges from considerable constraints:

Honore de Balzac, Lost Illusions (never read it, so something to look forward to)

Goethe, Faust, parts 1 and 2 (2005) (large enough that it could serve as the wall or roof of a house, in a pinch)

Coleridge, Poems

Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 3 vols. (I'd probably be feeling blue)

Langland, Piers Plowman

Virgil, The Aeneid (LE) (lots of islands here)

Ovid, Metamorphoses (1995)

Plato, The Republic (blue print to establish new utopian society)

#1 Labryinths - Borges
#2 The Living Mountain
#3 Riddley Walker
#4 Beowulf
#5 Ulysses - the new one
#6-7 Book of the New Sun (2 vol one of course ;-)

Going to reserve the last 3 slots for ones that they haven't done yet:
#8 Blood Meridian
#9 Pynchon ..... preferably Against the Day
#10 Italo Calvino..... preferably Invisible Cities or Baron in the Trees or Cosmicomics :-)

They can post them to the desert island when they have finally realised their error in not getting to them earlier. I expect the shipping and export costs to be considerable, but it will be worth it.

>36 BaronInTheTrees:

I should have mentioned that you are shipwrecked, hopelessly written off as lost at sea, and completely incommunicado.

Not even the indefatigable and industriously efficient couriers of FedEx can find you.

No, I'm afraid old chap, what jetsam tomes you were washed up with, will be your solitary companions for life!

It will change tomorrow, but:
The Lord of the Rings (3 volumes) - Tolkien
Under the Greenwood Tree - Hardy
Kim (or Puck of Pook’s Hill) - Kipling
A Room with a View - Forster
Homage to Catalonia - Orwell
Labyrinths - Borges
Uncle Fred in the Springtime - Wodehouse
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - Lee

Or would I take ten longer books that I had never read, but thought I should. A lot of the above are short.

>37 LesMiserables: That is fair enough matey. I will instead choose Italian Folktales by Calvino (2 vols) and a spare copy of Labyrinths in case I wear it out.

Can you take a luxury? Like on Radio 4? If so I would like to take book binding equipment and have a go myself.... how hard can it be?

4 chunky classic novels: first of all 2 I love, then 2 I've dipped into but never read properly - now there's time to do so! More about the content than the productions, but they are all productions I really like (which can't be said for a number of books that might otherwise have made this list).

Middlemarch - George Eliot, the 1994 blue covered reissue of the 1972 edition; a favourite
Bleak House - Charles Dickens, from Dickens2 (cream cloth with Keeping illustrations); another favourite
Don Quixote - Cervantes, SE Smollett translation; to be read
Ulysses - James Joyce, the first standard edition; to be read

Then the poetry and non-fiction. :
Bird Poems - John Clare, my favourite FS poetry collection, beautiful little production
The History of British Birds - Thomas Bewick, 2 vols; perhaps my favourite FS of all time; can it be a British desert island please?
The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne - Gilbert White (I have 3 FS editions, but would probably take the 18thC Memoirs series)
The Mapmakers - John Noble Wilford - maps are a passion (and the basis of much of my professional career)
The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen; travel, Himalaya, natural history, fab production - a brilliant combination

but, to be honest, the last 2 could well be replaced by any one of a dozen or more other travel or other related non-fiction that I either really enjoyed and want to reread, or have yet to read but really want to, and will now have the time and space to do so. Include South, Guns Germs and Steel. The Voyage of the Beagle etc etc

Well, it's not Folio but How to Survive on a desert island by Jim Pipe would be my number one

I don`t think books would be the first thing to think about, stranded. Alone. If I were to be alone that is. Be it a desert or a deserted Island. Also, I don`t believe I would care about any philosophy - if so maybe the stoics - the journey being sort a strive and reflective anyways. Isn`t there a Japanese (at least asian) saying, that one who tends to the garden don`t need to read philosophy (or something). My mind would probably be busy surviving. Albeit, I believe I would write my own journals, at least draw some primitive illustrations, maybe in charcoal. That said. The books I were to bring with me, would not all be of the "heavier" books, as it likely would fuel my mind into a deeper psychosis. I would end up shouting at the sky anyway. So, books that I own, and that I might bring, might be in the line of:

Treasure Island

Twenty Thousand leagues under the sea

Moby Dick LE

Don Quixote LE / count of Monte Cristo / or Sound of Fury

Travels to Arabia Deserta LE

Norse Myths

East of Eden

Structures or why things don`t fall to the ground

The earth an intimate history

Journals of captain Scott

Those LE`s would not make it back home in one piece mind. Some of these books would likely be relevant.

Desolation Island
The Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of HMS Bounty
Shackleton's Boat Journey
Impossible Journeys
and six out of eleven volumes of my Pepys LE which should qualify me to take the wooden bookcase to use as a canoe. I'm coming home to fetch the rest of my books!

One Hundred Years of Solitude
Midnight's Children
Dune
The Magic Mountain
Foucault's Pendulum
Victory (Conrad)
Voyage of the Beagle
Sagittarius Rising
and both volumes of From Dawn to Decadence.

>41 SimB: Along similar lines, I was thinking the Philip K Dick Short Stories LE could be used for signalling passing ships. With the added benefit of it being a Folio.

>40 Willoyd: "The History of British Birds - Thomas Bewick, 2 vols; perhaps my favourite FS of all time; can it be a British desert island please?"

I looked across at that set on my bookshelf when compiling my list and it very nearly made it in. A firm favourite from the period I personally consider to be 'peak Folio' and if the desert island was a rock in the Isles of Scilly the Bewick set would certainly have been first choice.

>28 folio_books: I'm very glad that you weren't disappointed with WITW, Glenn, given that disappointment would undoubtedly have come at a not insignificant price! I do feel a little bit of a fraud when posting now, as I haven't actually bought a Folio in a long time, in fact my collection is substantially reduced these days as several car loads went over to Robert at Ardis. Space constraints and an ambience which very much lends itself to reading (stretched out with my two dogs in front of the wood burner) rather than the somewhat antiseptic (albeit often thrilling) act of acquisition, has resulted in altered priorities. I have enough (very beautiful) books to keep me going for quite some time and, also, I have to admit that I can no longer justify the Folio price for a standard edition unless it is something special - the SE Lord of the Rings may qualify. If I was to give advice to any FSD neophytes it would be to try one's best to be focussed and selective when building a collection, sorting the wheat from the chaff and knowing that what you buy is what you really will want to own far into the future. That's what makes the 'desert island' question so interesting and a little different to those which usually result in willy-waving as to who has the biggest and/or most expensive.

1 Sound and the Fury LE
2 Moby Dick LE
3 - 6 A dance to the music of time (I would have put Proust here but I don't like FS edition as it doesn't open flat and the binding is cliched and hasn't aged well)
7-8 Golden Bough (I think this is the last great FS issue)
9 Name of the rose
10 Bleak House (the nonsuch semi facsimile)

Honourable mentions to Bewick's British Birds (I agree this was 'peak FS') History of western philosophy, wealth of nations, alexandria quartet and Duke's Children

Spenser's Faerie Queene DLE- 3 volume set
Virgil's Aeneid DLE
Seamus Heaney Beowulf
Dickens' David Copperfield
Dickens' Bleak House
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy - 3 volume set

Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Bleak House
Anna Karenina
Middlemarch
Waverley (I wish there was an FS Heart of Midlothian!)
Mary Barton
The Return of the Native
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
David Copperfield

I would have included Brother Karamzov but don’t have a FS version.

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (3 vols.)
Montaigne, Essays (3 vols.)
Charles Lamb, Essays
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Samuel Johnson, Dictionary (2 vols., LE).

>48 Betelgeuse: I congratulate you on the choice of Spenser. Perfect desert island reading. I'd have included it, but I own the LEC edition, not the FS.

This thread reminds me of the similarly distressing thread of about a decade ago that allowed you to keep only five of your Folios. It's always good to update and refresh one's masochism.

Tristram Shandy LE
The History of Western Philosophy
The Origin of Species (the island may have giant turtles or chaffinches)
Shakespeare's First Folio LE (I believe this is the only way to get nearly all Will's plays in a single FS volume)
Europe: A History (Davies) (3 vols)
China: A History (Keay) (2 vols)
The Wind in the Willows

It was a wrestle between The Wind in the Willows and The Temple of Flora LE. The latter's solander box would make an excellent reading table, fort rampart or even potential raft; but it wouldn't do to be without the philosophical insights of Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad.

>51 Eumnestes: I read it for the 2nd time a few years ago. It's probably my favorite FS.

After serious consideration...

Faerie Queene LE. This would be the perfect opportunity to actually read it all which, to my shame, I have not yet done.
The Lord of the Rings. Escapism when there's no hope of escape.
First Folio of Shakespeare, The Norton Facsimile. Thanks to >52 cronshaw: for the one volume idea. A lot of entertainment in one binding.
Natural History of Selbourne, the large brown 'Fine' edition. In case I get homesick for the English countryside.
The Book of the New Sun. Recommended for multiple re-reads; could be useful with a limited library and endless time.

I would have loved to include Gormenghast, and Canterbury Tales with the side-by-side translation but at three volumes each they'd go over my luggage allowance. This is the only time that I've wanted FS to do a single volume version of these and The Lord of the Rings (not really).

Also after long consideration:

(1) & (2) The Complete Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. My favourite FS binding of all time, packed with interesting illustrations, and very readable.
(3) The Living Mountain. Was #1 on my wishlist for FS to publish. The binding is a little old-school, but serves as a reminder of the early years of the FS. I think the illustrations are spot-on.
(4) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. This could have been any one of the Andrew Davidson Christies, but this one just pips the others. With my memory, I am quite capable of forgetting the endings of whodunnits, so the remarkable denoument would come as a surprise every time I re-read it.
(5) American Gods. For re-reading when in a contemplative mood. The binding and illustrations are also magnificent.
(6) Paradiso. There would be occasions when this would be the only text to lift my mood, and this particular production is one of my favourite Folios.
(7) The Complete Ghost Stories of M R James (the 2007 edition). FS at their very best.
(8) Seven Gothic Tales. Love the stories, love the binding, and it has illustrations by Kate Baylay.
(9) Finn Family Moomintroll. Nothing special about the FS edition, but I have always felt that Tove Jansson rivalled Lewis Carroll as a creative genius, and the fact that she illustrated her books herself gives the Moomins the edge over Alice.
(10) Folio 60. To provide fond memories of the FS books that I had left behind, although a Folio 75 would be even better!

Looking thought the list, I am amazed at the things I have left behind - no history or travel for instance - but I could not think of anything on the list that I was prepared to leave out.

>55 TheEconomist: I'm surprised the FS Complete Tales of Hans Christian Andersen doesn't get mentioned more often when we hear so much about the FS Fairy books. To my eye, the former is vastly superior, not only in binding design (one of my Folio all-time favourites too) but especially with respect to the illustrations: the two volume set contains an immensely satisfying 90 full plate illustrations by 46 different famous artists (the FS Fairy books in contrast only have about 15 plates each). It's a golden age Folio classic!

>55 TheEconomist:
>56 cronshaw:

My experience is you don't see it for sale all that often and I've been pipped at the post several times now, so I still don't have it. I agree wholeheartedly with the comments. Maybe next time?

>57 folio_books: Considering you own most Folios that have ever been published, I'm truly amazed you don't have that beauty. I have my fingers crossed for you! :)

>58 cronshaw: I'm truly amazed you don't have that beauty

I'm working on it :)

I'm not going to think about this too much; I would just have to take all the Folios that are waiting to be read.

And re Tove Jansson, I heartily recommend her "adult" books of short stories: The Summer Book, The Winter Book, Travelling Light, exellent writer.

No longer anticipating any desert island, but having bought Folio books over half a lifetime I've downsized many a time and that's not going to change. Books I've returned to, again and again, for their content, readability, binding, layout, and illustrations would surely include these top ten volumes:

1). The Odes of Horace (1987), with Latin originals and a very good but far-from-literal translation. Quarter leather, and though I'm not crazy about the pencil illustrations, they've grown on me.

2) Beowulf (2010), again with the original language and the wonderful Heaney translation, in a quarter leather binding. I've never bought a limited edition, but from the marketing photos I think I prefer the look of this standard edition.

3) through 5). Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (1984), three volumes, with Middle English and modern, and woodcuts by twelve illustrators.

6). Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (2004), an engaging "essay" on a favorite topic, generously illustrated with art work (a topic the author mostly ignores).

7). Johnson and Boswell, Journals of the Western Isles (1990), the learned and loquacious Dr. Johnson in the wilds of the Highlands and western islands of Scotland, with beautiful aquatints.

8). T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (2000), from the sort-of-series Epics of Exploration and Empire, a handsome binding and the oddest war memoir ever. Not the movie Lawrence, maybe not even the Lawrence Lawrence.

9). Joyce, Finnegans Wake (2014), purchased with the determination that, if I pay this much for a book, I'm going to read it, come hell or high water. Which I did, with the usual frustrated difficulty, and occasional astonishment. Peculiar but pleasing illustrations, and a joy forever.

10) Kenneth Clark, Civilisation (1999), a personal favorite book from my teenage years, with the muddy black and while photos of the original edition replaced with color. Not really the "stick in the mud" he claims to be.

> 61 "Books I've returned to, again and again, for their content, readability, binding, layout, and illustrations would surely include these top ten volumes:"

I have to agree with your list . I have 1,2 7 9 and 10 and count them among my favourites. Also made my way through the Wake but found it easier the more I read. For anyone interested in trying it , these sites might be a help.

http://www.finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm

https://finwakeatx.blogspot.com/2015/02/joycegeek-jorn-bargers-return-and-other....

1. The Name of the Rose (Eco)
2. The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin)
3. The Elegant Universe (Greene)
4. Mansfield Park (Austen)
5. Our Mutual Friend (Dickens)
6 and 7. 1Q84 (Murakami) (2 volumes)
8. Perdido Street Station (Mieville)
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Marquez)
10. The Selfish Gene (Dawkins)

1. The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle (SE, though I do own the LE also; it should be arriving today, so technically I own it)
2. Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges
3. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
4. History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
5. At the Court of the Borgia, Johann Burchard (I find it an inexhaustible source of unintentional hilarity, whatever that says about me)
6. Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
7. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
8. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
9. The Greek Myths, Robert Graves (I have a background in sociology and a keen interest in mythology, so right up my alley)
10. Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll (okay, two volumes, whatever)

I suspect this list will change the next time I think about it, but based on my own library:

The Complete Shakespeare SE (3 vols)
The Gormenghast Trilogy SE (3 vols)
A Canticle for Leibowitz SE
The Divine Comedy SE
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
The Art of War