How many FS books did you read in 2023?

In a year of reduced buying, it was a great opportunity to read through some of my extremely large TBR pile and winnow away the chaff. I could really stand to have another few years like this!

What FS titles did you read over this last year and were there any standouts or pleasant surprises?

My list, in rough chronological order, for 2022:

Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson
Catriona - Robert Louis Stevenson
A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
Moonfleet - J. Meade Falkner
The Silver Sword - Ian Serraillier
The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin
A Shameful Revenge and Other Stories - Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor
A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes
Cider With Rosie - Laurie Lee
The Four Just Men - Edgar Wallace
The Surgeon of Crowthorne - Simon Winchester
Touching the Void - Joe Simpson
A is for Ox - Lyn Davies
The Red House Mystery - A. A. Milne
The Blue Flower - Penelope Fitzgerald
The Drowned World - J. G. Ballard
Big Chief Elizabeth - Giles Milton
The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
The Hollow Man - John Dickson Carr
The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford
Dream Days - Kenneth Grahame
Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories - Angela Carter
A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
A Month in the Country - J. L. Carr
The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam - Bernard Lewis
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
Mr. Norris Changes Trains - Christopher Isherwood
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
The Compleet Molesworth - Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark

The standouts were the Spark novels, Silent Spring, and Wind in the Willows (first time re-reading it with the Sandwyk illustrations!)

The surprises were "A High Wind in Jamaica" "Moonfleet" and "A Shameful Revenge". All great stories I don't think I would have found if they hadn't been printed by FS.

Happy reading in the New Year, devotees!

Here's my list of Folio editions read during 2023.

To the Lighthouse
Disgrace
The Secret Life of Trees
The Foundation Trilogy
Five Days in London, May 1940
Shackleton's Boat Journey
The Door in the Wall
The Franchise Affair
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Roadside Picnic
A Month in the Country
Lark Rise to Candleford
The Darling Buds of May
If This is a Man
Schindler's Ark
The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution
Norwegian Wood
The Remains of the Day

My favorite reads were Disgrace, Shackleton's Boat Journey, A Month in the Country, If This is a Man, Norwegian Wood, and The Remains of the Day.

My favourite editions were Roadside Picnic, The Door in the Wall, and Norwegian Wood.

My first year as a FS reader. In order of reading

A Wizard of Earthsea
I Know why the Caged Bird Sings
Pet Sematary
The Road
Roadside Picnic
Faceless Killers
The Shadow of the Wind

All of them good reads. The Shadow of the Wind and The Road were the standouts. They have only encouraged me to acquire more.

My physical book groupie shot in the order I read them this year. My goal was to finish reading all my unread FS limited editions which I completed with some time to spare.

In terms of production for the Folio-only titles, the first three are absolute bangers as LEs. Piers and Essays were also exceptional for fine/collectable editions or whatever they're called within Folio's line up. The sci fi titles unfortunately are nothing noteworthy with their cloth bindings and suffer in their presentation with regards to the out of place colophon (it at least suits Essays). While the colour palette for the Dick books caused a divide, if i recall in the original post, I still think as I did when I first saw them that the garish colours work in this case. Dune however does get an honourable mention for the case design. It's definitely a standout among Folio LEs, beaten (in my collection) only by the Divine Comedy and Gormenghast.

In terms of pure enjoyability of reading, Dune, Paradise Lost and the Eddas were my top titles. The first two were rereads and I've enjoyed them each and every time. I've also read some of the Eddas in a slightly older translation from FS's own North Myths.

Overall though, out of all the FS titles I read this year, I think the one book that strikes the best balance between production, original cost and content (all of it, from the the actual text, the presentation and artwork etc), is Piers Plowman.

My FS reading list for this year are as follows:

The Iliad
The Odyssey
The Selected Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Far from the Madding Crowd
Tess d’Urbervilles
Dune
Middlemarch
Chekhov Short Stories (book 1)
Ulysses
Gogol Collected Stories
Moby Dick
Melmoth the Wanderer (ongoing)

Highlights for me were the Iliad, the Odyssey and Middlemarch. Both content and binding really worked for me. I will probably add Melmoth the Wanderer but I have to finish the last quarter. A highly absorbing read so far.

>4 wongie: what’s the second book in the first shelf?

The Drowned World
Frankenstein

>6 RRCBS: Liber Bestiarum

My Folio reads in 2023:

- Birdsong
- Mostly Harmless
- Enigma
- The Jewel in the Crown
- Unreliable Memoirs
- Jane Eyre (re-read)

Best reads: Birdsong and Jane Eyre
Best editions: Mostly Harmless

Really, really tried with the Paul Scott…but ended up selling the set. Couldn’t face the rest of series - some great stuff in there, but whoa boy…dry…throw us a juicy bone, Paul.

I read 9 FS books so far this year, and am partway through 4 others. In alphabetical order, by author:

Inferno (LE)
Purgatorio (LE)
Pride and Prejudice
Something Wicked This Way Comes (my favorite of the ones I completed)
Journal of a Tour to the Western Isles
A Memoir of the Forty-Five
Catriona
Kidnapped
Anna Karenina

In process:
Moby Dick (LE)
Paradiso (LE)
The Two Towers (LE)
Oliver Twist

>8 wongie: 6 RRCBS: Liber Bestiarum

Strong contender for my favourite Folio ever. Definitely top 5.

Folio reads:
Roadside Picnic
Childhood's End
Restaurant at the End of the Universe
A Wizard of Earthsea
Consider Phlebas

FS reads:

Amelia
Mansfield Park
The Truce
Killing Floor
The Man with the Golden Gun
Great Contemporaries
The World Crisis (five volumes)
Faceless Killers
Trainspotting
Homage to Catalonia
The Spanish Civil War
A Christmas Carol
For Whom the Bell Tolls

My non-fiction favorites were The World Crisis and The Spanish Civil War.
Amelia was a surprising fiction favorite (perhaps the best book ever written of a wife's devoted love to her wayward husband).

I haven't counted as yet but I really, really, really enjoyed The Surgeon of Crowthorne :-)

>10 jsg1976:

I must have missed this , but when did FS produce LE's of Inferno and Purgatorio?

>11 folio_books: It's definitely one of Folio's absolute best, and also easily in my top 5 of Folio LEs I own in terms of pure production values. The content itself is also easy to digest given the suggestion it was likely written for a child though perhaps maybe a little lacking in depth. That said the reading experience is one of the reasons it drops a few places were I to re-rank them to take into consideration factors other than production values such as my inability to read Latin leading to reliance on the translation volume which for me is a bit of a negative.

>15 N11284: It's the Divine Comedy set that was released in Sep or Oct of 2021 https://www.foliosociety.com/uk/the-divine-comedy-limited-edition.html

The FS books I read in 2023 - I'm disregarding partial/incomplete re-reads - in the order that I read them (it was actually really fun to go back through the reading year and pick out the Folio Society copies!):

1. Roadside Picnic (LE) — my first LE ever!!
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
3. Diamonds Are Forever
4. The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
5. Doctor Strange
6. Jurassic Park
7. From Russia with Love
8. Dr. No
9. Kafka on the Shore
10. The Lost World
11. Anansi Boys
12. Inferno (LE)
13. Purgatorio (LE)
14. Paradiso (LE)
15. The Meaning of Mice — a re-read
16. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (LE)
17. The Velveteen Rabbit — a re-read
18. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (LE) — a re-read but my first time reading this edition!
19. The Tale of Peter Rabbit — a re-read
20. Studies from Nature (LE)
21. Goldfinger
22. The Shadow of the Wind (LE)
23. Monkey
24. For Your Eyes Only
25. The Waste Land (LE) — a re-read but my first time reading this stunning edition; I've re-read this five times total this year but I'll just list it here once ◡̈
26. Madame Bovary (LE)
27. Henry IV Part 1 (LE) — a re-read but my first time reading this edition
28. Titus Andronicus (LE)
29. All's Well That Ends Well (LE)
30. The Merry Wives of Windsor (LE)
31. The Moonstone (LE)
32. Henry IV Part 2 (LE)

And I'm currently making my way through The Six Wives of Henry VIII!

>14 Cat_of_Ulthar: The Surgeon of Crowthorne

Ah yes. fascinating read. Thoroughly enjoyed that one.

Read some biggies: Ulysses, Anna Karenina, The Odyssey, and The Origin of Species. Also Half of a Yellow Sun, Barchester Towers, The Darling Buds of May, The World of Odysseus, The History of the Crusades, and The Long Week-End. Nothing beats the feel of a FS vol in your hands.

Only one, East of Eden (hanging my head in shame). But I did read 100 books, and several were very long.

Three out of about 70, if I can claim credit for Totalitarianism which I will hopefully finish slogging through this weekend.

Reread an An Outcast of the Islands and The Quiet American earlier.

Conrad remains fresh and insightful on humanity, even after more than a century. And Greene is absolutely prescient in how well the American adventures in Viet Nam would turn out.

Totalitarianism is mostly disappointing, in a a 'this isn't the book I wanted to read' way. For our present moment, someone like Enzo Traverso seems a much better guide.

Not enough!

Looking back, it seems that the only one I read was T.H. White's The Once and Future King. I just get sidetracked so easily by the bright shiny objects I see in the library or a recommendation. I need to get back on track, once I finish my latest bright shiny object.

>22 coynedj: That's one of my favourite Folio editions, but I've heard divided opinions on it.

I read last year from Folio:

- The entire Book of the New Sun
- Consider Phlebas
- Roadside Picnic
- To love and be wise
- The Day of the Triffids

9 for me out of a total 51. My other reading project is old Booker Prize winners: I read 8 of those (and wish FS published more than they have!).

- Starship Troopers
- Night
- 84, Charing Cross Road
- Titus Alone
- The Four Gospels
- Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
- Anansi Boys
- Rendezvous with Rama
- Shackleton's Boat Journey

I read 24 books last year, but only 2 Folios.

Mani and Roumeli by PLF.

I'll have to get my act in gear this year.

Just four FS books in '23 (five if you count the two books covering FMF's tetralogy):

The World Turned Upside Down
Coriolanus
Julius Caesar
Parade's End

76 read in 2023, of which 4 were FS: Disgrace (a reread), Kindred, Planet of the Apes, and Fall of Constantinople 1453.
Want to start on my FS Le Guins this year, and maybe even one of those Teys that have been lying around since a sale God knows when?

Only four FS books read in 2023, but three of them were big reads:

Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, parts I and II (tr. D. Luke)
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (tr. H. Mansfield & D. Winthrop)
Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 3 vols.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abby

The Goethe edition is so large that I had to read it on a table, with supports for the covers.