What Are You Reading? (12)

I’m reading the old classic by Ira Levin - The Boys from Brazil in a work up to the classic movie I acquired recently on DVD. Liking it thus far!

The Sound of Silence by Karen Hall.

Have already read, but just acquired as a handsome FS box set, Asa Briggs’ Victorian Trilogy. Plan to look at the illustrations when I have some leisure.

Recently finished:

The Books of Jacob, by Olga Tokarczuk. I got more than 300 pages into it, and if someone asked me “what is it about” I could have cobbled together an answer, but if I was asked to recap the story so far, I would have struggled to come up with anything. It seemed to me that Tokarczuk got so carried away with the admittedly excellent style that she neglected the story. I found that I wasn’t looking forward to my next reading session, which is a bad sign. I gave up. I’m a failure.

Everything Must Go: Stories We Tell About the End of the World, by Dorian Lynskey. It goes into our long history of predicting, in religious and social movements, fiction, and non-fiction that turned out to be fiction, the end of the world or at least humanity’s existence on it. Very thorough, very illuminating, but a bit short on the “why” of the whole thing. Still, quite good and an easy recommendation.

Feersum Endjinn, by Iain Banks. Not part of the Culture series, which FS has started - I thought I’d try a standalone book before jumping into a multi-volume series. Funny that it’s an end-of-the-world story. I sometimes (often) wonder just how writers manage to come up with their stories, and this is one such case - Banks clearly had a Feersum imagination. The world building was tremendous, though there was a critical issue that went completely unexplained. Some sections are written with phonetic spelling, which does slow things down a bit.

The Gospel According to St. Luke. Continuing my reading of the FS Eric Gill-illustrated Four Gospels. I read this for the start of Lent, and will finish with St.John at Eastertime - perfect though unplanned timing.

You Will Not Stampede Me, by Bryan Caplan. A collection of blog posts from the libertarian economist. I agree with him on some points, disagree on others (especially his take on revenge), and I do wonder if he’s still a supporter of open borders. The world is filled with what I call “bundled beliefs” - the thought that if you believe A, you must then believe B and C because they “go together”. It’s good to hear from someone who doesn’t fall prey to that fallacy.

If This Is a Man, by Primo Levi, FS edition. A number of people on these boards seem to have read it recently. Powerful stuff, and depressing in what it says about “civilized” humanity. I wasn’t very keen on the illustrations, but it’s the content that really matters here. Levi’s clinical approach to describing what happened there is remarkable.

>1 NLNils: I did a huge Levin binge read a few years ago. Great pulpy page-turners.

"Rosemary's Baby" and "Son of Rosemary" (the overlooked, weirder sequel) are very good.

>4 coynedj: The funny thing about the Culture series is that the books themselves are very much self-contained. They take place in the same universe, but over thousands of years with different characters and can be read in pretty much any order. Outside of sharing some common labels for things, Consider Phlebas and Player of Games could be very much in different universes.

>4 coynedj: I also didn't enjoy The Books of Jacob. I had it in my head that it would be something like Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World, and it suffered severely in comparison.

>8 LT79:

I just started my Fitzcarraldo Decade edition of Flights. I hope I can get into it, because I picked up a paperback Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead at a used bookstore last weekend. The lonely blue paperback beckoned on the shelf and I had to take it home to live with the more of its own kind...

Recently finished Rental House , a slim novel of a young couple growing/wearing into their marriage. It had moments, was perfect to read on a plane.

On the same trip I finished Ahab's Rolling Sea which I would recommend without reservation to anyone that enjoyed Moby-Dick. King follows the path of the Pequod, explores Melville's footnotes and sources, and delivers an very readable annotation. The only downside is that of course now I want to revisit the classic instead of the looming TBR pile. Always a dilemma.

>5 PartTimeBookAddict: I got back into Ira Levin when I got nostalgic about reading his’ This Perfect Day in middle school. Started back up with The Stepford Wives and now The Boys From Brazil, before I go for the reread. All in the fairly recent uniform editions by Corsair.

>11 NLNils: Those look nice. I haven't read "Sliver" yet. I'll have to track that one down.

Been reading some lovely books of late:

JL Carr's A Month in the Country.

The Folio Ed. this time in re-reading Nan Shepherd's A Living Mountain.

Have just embarked upon Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways after reading again his inspiring essay The Gifts of Reading which I do believe enticed me first to read both Shepherd and Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts trilogy (although I do believe I first came across Fermor through reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall).

If you might note a prevailing recency toward the outdoor and pastoral, blame no other than being inspired by the excellent Sherlock and Pages (website and Youtube) for inspiration and reading suggestions.

Completed Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways: thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now reading ARB Haldanes' The Drove Roads of Scotland.

Really enjoyed The Drove Roads of Scotland. Brilliant exposition of the development and decline of droving.
Starting now on The Salt Path by Raynor Winn.

Just finished the heartwarming The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. Despite some early reservations, this quickly developed into a very good memoir. Just started on The Wintering by Katherine May.

>16 LesMiserables: The Salt Path has much to commend it. It's wonderful to see people not lose heart and bounce back from a very tough situation.

>17 Pendrainllwyn: Yes, I agree. There is much to take from this book.

>16 LesMiserables: >17 Pendrainllwyn: >18 LesMiserables: And my TBR list grows longer and longer.

>19 coynedj: My book purchasing/enablement/reading time has recently exploded. I totally lay the blame of at the feet of the book recommendations on a small Somerset bookstore in Frome called Sherlock & Pages. No connection.
I also ditched my smartphone a month ago which helps of course.

>20 LesMiserables: interesting re: smartphone. How are you finding that? (And can I ask if you’re retired? I’ve been contemplating ditching iPhone too, but need it for some work things still…)

>20 LesMiserables: >21 Jeremy53: The big time savers/reading time creators for me have nothing to do with the smartphone. I don't play games or do social media, and I pay little attention to sports. I concluded long ago that my life didn't change in the slightest if "my" team won or lost.

>21 Jeremy53: Hi Jeremy, yes just retired 6 months ago. My old job required me to have a smartphone but I transitioned to an old phone, by first implementing some fencing around my job, like for instance turning my workphone off and leaving at my desk, from knock off to swipe in.
That helped me experience the anxious draw to remain connected (in this case work) and also to overcome it, rather quickly with brute willpower.
That helped me deal with moving from personal smartphone to old phone a lot.
I still have a smartphone but it never leaves home, has no mobile connection, and is mostly used as a computer and sits on my desk.

>22 coynedj: I concluded long ago that my life didn't change in the slightest if "my" team won or lost.

I once met a man who "had to" take 9 months off work sick because his team got relegated.

>22 coynedj:
True enough. The smartphone success, and our demise, lies in the notification: light and noise. We're hard-wired to react. Yes you can turn it all off, even turn the thing off, but your hard-wiring also includes checking.

For me, and many others, it's just too hard. I just needed to unplug it.

This blog nudged me over the line.
https://open.substack.com/pub/schooloftheunconformed?utm_source=share&utm_me...

Just finished Wintering by Katherine May.

Starting Going to Church in Medieval England by Nicholas Orme.

Actually, this decision was a toss up between this and The Dissolution of the Monasteries: A New History by James Clark. I've opted for this order to get a broader context before focusing on the Dissolution.

I read Paul Fussell's "The Great War and Modern Memory". This was mentioned a couple of times in "Band of Brothers" and that prompted me to finally pick it up. It's a deep dive into WW1 writers and poets and how they viewed that war. It is well written in a clear style and a good companion piece to Pat Barker's "Regeneration".

If you're looking for a book that makes you want to read broader, this one is full of recommendations. Now I need to get to Sassoon's "Sherston" trilogy (which I own) and Blundel's "Undertones of War" (which I don't).

Highly recommended and the FS production is great, as usual, with a nice selection of photos and ephemera from the era.

>27 PartTimeBookAddict: Didn’t know The Great War and Modern Memory, which greatly impressed me when it first appeared, was available as a Folio edition. Do not seem to be many copies around online but can now make finding it a mission. Finally located Asa Briggs’ Victorian Trilogy in a local bookstore recently. Important to have a purpose in life.

>28 booksaplenty1949: It seems to have sold well on ebay recently, but I wouldn't be impatient. I see a German seller an ABE has a copy for about what I paid for it a few years ago. No photos or mention of a slipcase:

https://www.abebooks.com/Great-modern-Memory-FUSSELL-Paul-London/31543239967/bd

>29 PartTimeBookAddict: Apparently “LniS” in the listing means “in slipcase.” So I bought it.

>30 booksaplenty1949: Great. Hopefully it arrives in great condition.

>10 LT79: Finished Flights a bit ago, still sitting with it. It is not a novel in the traditional sense at all. A collection of recursive shorts ably capturing traveler's fugue.

Ordered a paperback of Seven Tenths, that seems right up my alley. Thanks!

This week I read the Brockway-illustrated "Rime of the Ancient Mariner and 3 Other Poems". I hadn't read Christabel before. That one will need some explaining for me.

wcarter did a nice review of the LE for anyone interested in the engravings: https://www.librarything.com/topic/360345
The version I have is the standard with black and white illustrations.

I also read Sayers' "Hangman's Holiday". I especially enjoyed the Montague Egg stories. Paul Cox is always very generous with the amount of illustrations.

Up next: The Life of Muhammad.

Heard an interesting lecture on Jane Austen and the fossil excavations in Lyme Regis which make an appearance in Persuasion. Had not read the book in many a long year so have pulled out my copy from the Folio Society Jane Austen Set and am enjoying the attractive font and the Joan Hassell illustrations.

Recently finished:

An Old Woman’s Reflections: The Life of a Blasket Island Storyteller, by Peig Sayers. The Blasket Islands are off the southwest coast of Ireland, and according to the introduction, life there was so hard that they’re now unpopulated. Some fun stories and a lot of words and turns of phrase that I was unfamiliar with. Quite a look into a different life.

Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. This is my third Bond book (though not in the FS editions), and it continues to be interesting to see how very different the literary Bond is from the film Bond. And let’s just say that society’s views on women in the workplace (or anywhere else, for that matter) have seen quite a change since the book was written. Very entertaining despite that issue.

Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Though you could quibble about a thing or two, I thought it was excellent, and definitely not an airport book (reference to another thread). Almost a fairy tale, and a fine choice for the FS treatment, to go alongside Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day. I still haven’t read Never Let Me Go, but this book isn’t as meticulously written as The Remains of the Day, which I think is to its benefit.

The Gospel According to St. John, completing my read of the FS edition of The Four Gospels in time for Easter.

Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford. I had read and enjoyed his Red Plenty previously. It’s a detective story set in a 1920’s alternative America. It started very well, but eventually my interest diminished, and while it had an opportunity for a satisfying conclusion, it didn’t take it. To almost quote Marlon Brando, it coulda been a contender.

The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester. What a wild ride this one was! Superb. I VERY highly recommend this for publication by the FS, to the dismay of those who think science fiction unworthy.

>36 coynedj: I did not care for "Klara". I think I've had my limit of Ishiguro's overly naive protagonists. Did you ever read "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" by Kate DiCamillo? Like "Klara" it takes on the Steadfast Tin Soldier narrative, but more interestingly, with better adventures and a three dimensional protagonist.

Too bad "Cahokia Jazz" fizzled. Sounds like an interesting setting.

>37 PartTimeBookAddict: No, I've never read that one - -maybe I should get around to it, once I plow through the 1800 books on my TBR list!

I read Ishiguro sparingly, so the naive protagonists don't really rankle me. And, in this case, she was naive by construction, after all.

>38 coynedj: "Edward Tulane" is a quick read. Aimed at younger readers, but it has a lot going on.

I revisited all (except The Unconsoled) of Ishiguru two years ago and found their protagonists to be very similar. Maybe I OD'd. I find his prose enjoyable. I just wish he was a little more experimental. If Klara was more like M3GAN, now that could be a book.

>36 coynedj: Interested in your thoughts on Red Plenty which I started but had to put aside for other pressing reading projects.

>36 coynedj: The Stars My Destination is on my Folio short list as well!

>40 booksaplenty1949: I recall that I really enjoyed Red Plenty, but it was several years ago that I read it, so I don't recall much detail. But it gives insight into a different world from what we capitalist westerners are familiar with.

>36 coynedj: Have you tried the Douay-Rheims translation, which the KJV is derived from?

>43 LesMiserables: No, I haven't. The KJV is of course filled with archaic language and sentence structure - I would imagine that its predecessor shares this.

Yes, definitely, though noticeable differences. The DR is more Latin in translation whilst the KJV is more Greek especially in spelling.
The DR is arguable a more faithful and literal translation of the Vulgate of St Jerome. It of course includes the Deuterocanonical books which most versions of the KJV do not have.
I have the Folio Four Gospels too. Would love(d) to have see the DR in a new Ed.

Finished John Fante's The Bandini Quartet. A masterpiece narrative of Americana, its dreams, myths and identity. Folio material?

>45 LesMiserables: KJV NOT derived from the DR. DR was translated from St Jerome’s Latin text, whereas the translators of the KJV used the Hebrew and Greek texts. Bp Challoner did revise the DR extensively in the 18thC to make its heavily Latinate style more similar to that of the KJV.

>47 booksaplenty1949: The Douay-Rheims Bible was a major source for the KJV's translation of the New Testament. The KJV published in 1611 borrowed heavily from the DR, published almost 30 years prior, both in wording and structure.

In the preface to this Bible the Protestants admitted that the early Church used the Septuagint as the standard, but the KJV instead used the Hebrew Masoretic in order to circumvent the authority of the Church, continuing, as they supposed, to go back to the original text.

The Challoner revision, around 170 years after the original publication of the DR, was not created to make it similar to the KJV, but to update the original English as the DR was completely suppressed in the British Isles at pain of death, because of the Protestants revolution, and so was never able to have the same cultural impact that the KJV had. Because of this, by the 18th century the English language had been shaped so much by the King James that the Douay-Rheims was extremely difficult for the average English Catholic to read. Bishop Challoner therefore made a significant revision of the DR in order make the English more readable. This Challoner revision was approved and accepted by the Church and this is the version that is read today as the Douay Rheims version.

Just finished reading Going to Church in Medieval England by Nicholas Orme.

Truly a great work of history. No wonder it got Book of the Year at The Daily Telegraph (UK).

Just started reading The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy.

>52 LesMiserables: Appropriate choice for Maundy Thursday.

>53 booksaplenty1949: Thanks, appreciated.

Finished Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Folio, 2023). First time revisiting this material in nearly thirty-five years and my time-weary eyes -- now that they've been witness to an accumulation of my own personal baggage -- have a far deeper appreciation of the pathos in Shelley's writing that was misspent on my unencumbered youth. Introduced by biographer Richard Holmes, this volume is exquisitely illustrated by Angela Barrett (whose art inspired the re-read in the first place) and wrapped in a beautifully marbled slipcase unique to the standard edition.

>55 HonorWulf: Ah, yes. One of the benefits of middle age and older is the accumulation of the knocks and bumps of experience and observation.

>56 LesMiserables: Yes, which makes Shelley's achievement even greater given that she was only 18 when she wrote it.

Just finished reading The Zimmerman Telegram in the Folio edition. Tuchman had such a lively writing style!

>51 LT79:
You won't be disappointed. Caustic sometimes, down-to-earth always.

I just put my bookplate into the Midwich Cuckoos to mark it as read.

>60 snottlebocket: Very nice. It looks like a stamp. Is that right? Is this stock art or commissioned?

How do you decide which books get a plate? Is it ones you've read or read and decide to keep?

>61 PartTimeBookAddict: Thank you. It's indeed a stamp. I tried both stamps and pasted in cards, both have their pros and cons. The cards have crisper line art since they're printed but stamps are much more convenient and I've grown to like the imperfect printing.

It's commissioned. I illustrated the original myself based on notions I love about reading. So I settled on the resting reader next to the path stretching to the horizon. The thing about looking at your own work is that you see every imperfection though. So I asked a couple of illustrator friends to draw their version of the image and I had my favourite made into a stamp.

I stamp books I've finished reading, mostly as a mark of affection really. All of them are keepers. A long time ago my apartment was bursting to the seams with paperbacks to the point where it was untenable. I gave all of them away and got into the habit of reading one-time reads digitally while buying fine editions of the books I re-read periodically.

That's how I got into Folio Society. Most books on my shelves are FS, Franklin Library and Everyman. I'm very glad FS is doing more and more scifi and fantasy. Classics are easy to find in fine editions and Franklin Library has me covered there. But contemporary fiction is a lot harder to find.

>62 snottlebocket: That's a good system. The stamp has a Tolkienesque style. Well done.

I've thought of having some Ex Libris cards printed, but my collection undergoes too much regular undulation, even with my nicer editions. What stays in my permanent collection is something I'll keep debating.

>63 PartTimeBookAddict: I'm more inclined to give books away than sell them. I like the idea of books travelling and spreading their stories around. I also like the idea of my mark of affection being in those travelling books to note them as a thing that was appreciated.

More on topic, I just bought Invisible Cities and the Howl's Moving Castle collection. I'm hoping FS will release Perdido in a non special edition version in the future for my next order.

Have just finished Royal Flash, so this seems like a good time to start The Prisoner of Zenda, whose plot Flashy claims Hope stole from the account of his adventures he shared with him once over more than a few drinks. I have a 1961 FS edition of The Prisoner of Zenda, with illustrations by Biro I picked up a few years ago. No slipcase: did FS editions have dust jackets in those days? Must look up. Anyway, a chance to give it some time off the shelf.
PS I see a copy for sale on ABE which has a slipcase.

>65 booksaplenty1949: "Zenda" is classic fun. I just read Agatha Christie's "Passenger to Frankfurt" where it was mentioned. I keep meaning to get around to the other Ruritanian sequels.

Currently reading "Fatherland" by Robert Harris. Great airport thriller. I keep picturing the recent Wolfenstein games. I don't think it needed a FS treatment, but I'm glad they prompted me to read it.

>66 PartTimeBookAddict: Apparently The Prisoner of Zenda only has a prequel and one sequel, although the term “Ruritania” is widely applied to a certain genre of romantic fiction.

FS version of John Prebble's Culloden (after reading the FS version of Glencoe). Prebble is a fantastic writer and his irony is Gibbonian. Up next: The Highland Clearances. Highly recommended (oh, and the illustrations are woodcuts by the late, great Henry Brockaway).

Forgot to mention that I read Persuasion in my FS edition, probably acquired long after I had read Austen’s oeuvre, so it was nice for this copy to get opened and have its charming woodcuts admired. Re-read apropos of a recent lecture on Jane Austen and the Pleistocene, referring to the fact that the novel is partly set in Lyme Regis, where significant fossil remains were discovered. Picked up a copy of The French Lieutenant’s Woman so may pursue the theme further when other projects permit.

>68 podaniel: Have you seen Watkins’ docudrama based on Prebble’s account?

>70 booksaplenty1949:
I saw the Massacre of Glencoe, a 1972 movie available for free on youtube. I thought it was well done and there's a spot of fancy highland dancing to bagpipes.

Finished Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake (Folio, 2024). Delicious prose that feels more painted than written, this is a strange world of indelible characters, opaque rituals and gothic fantasy that defies any traditional genre conventions that I can think of. The updated Folio edition is illustrated by Dave McKean, who emphasizes Peake's quirky fusion of weird and satire to complete a physical package that surpasses the build quality of most of today's standard editions. Will let this one digest awhile before moving on to Gormenghast.

>71 podaniel: Watkins’ docudrama was made for the BBC in 1964 and was groundbreaking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culloden_(film) Seems to be available on YouTube. Hair-raising.

>73 booksaplenty1949:

Thanks--I haven't finished Culloden yet. I'll look it up once I'm done.

Finished "Fatherland" by Robert Harris. Excellent detective story somewhere between the mundanity of a Le Carre and the luridness of an Ira Levin novel. I need to read "The Wannsee Conference" now.

I have to say, I don't think the illustrations fit that well aside from the frontispiece. They are too abstract and heroic, almost from "Sin City". The feeling the novel gave me was more oppressive, claustrophobic and paranoiac.

Up next: "Pride and Prejudice" - with the Puttapipat illustrations.

>76 LT79: It's a great production! That and Shakespeare were my two favorites from last year.

Recently finished:

Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. It looks at the issue of what is scarce in the U.S. which should be abundant, focusing mostly on how we have stupidly failed to make these things abundant. Given the political situation here (not only in the current administration, but also in past national, state, and local administrations), a lot of the solutions lie in “stop doing that!”, but how to get that across and change things is very difficult. I truly hope it makes an impact.

The Living Mountain, by Nan Shepherd, Folio Society edition. It has received a lot of praise on these boards, and I managed to find a used copy in fine condition for a good bit less than Ebay or Abe prices. The praise is justly deserved. The author clearly loved her time in the mountains, and I’d bet that it was a joy to go on hikes/walks with her. I wondered about the illustrations when I first looked it over, but they work very well in context.

I’m going to take a break from reading for a while. I do expect withdrawal symptoms to be severe, but I have several major projects around the house that I truly need to prioritize, and reading is unfortunately one of the things I’m going to forgo in order to free up time. We’ll see how long I can last.

>79 LT79: That's what I'm expecting - I treasured my reading time before bed. And I'm doing the same re the house - getting it ready to sell, which might take me months as well.

But now that you've finished the renovations, you have time to start reading again, right?

>78 coynedj: >79 LT79: I have a "10 pages per day minimum rule" which comes in handy when life/work makes it prohibitive to read sometimes. It's not a lot, but it keeps the sense of accomplishment trickling along.

>79 LT79: >81 HonorWulf: I think I've found a workaround. I perused my shelves and saw Eyewitness to History (edited by John Carey, not the FS set). I had read it when it first came out in 1987, thought it was fascinating, and as a bonus most of the entries are less than four pages long! I can easily read one or two of these each night, to keep my "reading muscles" in trim without taking up too much time.

I've finished the first (easiest) project. Now on to the major ones.

>83 coynedj: Great idea! Let us know if it still holds up!

>85 LT79: I started taking photos of the table of contents (it's unfortunately not on Amazon), and then I realized it's 23 pages long. Rather than jam up this thread with them, I have added them to my gallery, and I think I got them out of order at some point. With the book having been published in 1987, there's no entries on the fall of the Berlin Wall or any number of other things that would have made it into a later version.

>83 coynedj: >85 LT79: >86 coynedj:
See https://www.librarything.com/topic/345599

>87 wcarter: We're talking about a different book, with the same title. The one I'm reading is a single volume, with a different editor.

Edit: That said, what do you think of the four-volume FS edition? I see a set available at a quite reasonable price, albeit without a slipcase.

>88 coynedj:
Oops! I missed that. Confusing!
The FS four volume edition is similar with lots of essays on significant historic events arranged in chronological order. An excellent read.

>89 wcarter: Thank you - I might just procure that copy I saw. You are a boon to this community, sir.

I have just finished The Wheels of Chance in the Kings Langley Press edition. A glimpse of England in that brief moment when bicycles plied carless roads and the New Woman stepped out into shocked polite society. The most delightful book of the year, so far.

Trying to imagine “putting aside reading,” but failing. I never saw my parents at rest without a book in their hands, and I have grown up the same. I recall once my father eating Chinese food, which must have had MSG in it, and experiencing a reaction to mixing it with wine. He got up from the table and tottered towards the couch, no doubt thinking he was having a heart attack or some other medical emergency. But as he sank horizontally onto the couch he reached out for something to read that was lying on the coffee table. That’s my DNA.

>93 booksaplenty1949: 'That’s my DNA.'

Mine too: my parents had a house full of books; so do I.

How do I learn what's going on in the world? I read.

How do I understand myself and my friends and other people I meet? I talk to them but, also, I read: it gives me time to ponder and digest and try to make sense of everything.

And to escape for a bit, once in a while.

Finished The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany (Folio, 2025). I didn't quite realize how foundational this was to both the modern day high-fantasy and low-fantasy genres, so this was a very pleasant surprise, and Dunsany's flowery metaphors add a welcome literary dressing to it all. Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus) provides a plucky introduction, and Julie Dillon does an inspired job of capturing the beauty and whimsy of Dunsany's world in her illustrations. Was (once again) pleased with the aesthetics of the standard edition, which sports a striking and complementary cover and slipcase design.

I finished reading Mythago Wood last night and I didn't really enjoy it. I'm primarily interested in LEs for the reading experience so the easiest way to cut off interest (and save $$) is for me to actually read the book, but now I'm doubly happy I did read it because buying an LE only to end up disliking the book would've been unfortunate.

I'm making my way through Perdido Street Station in jumps and starts and I have to say, I'm really enjoying each of my sittings with it. The Gatsby LE was a pretty straightforward re-reading experience whereas I'm getting a lot more out of holding and reading Perdido and slowly becoming acquainted with New Crobuzon, so this is my preferred LE of the year so far!

>96 BooksFriendsNotFood: Good to hear you're enjoying Perdido Street Station - I've read and enjoyed some from Mieville before, and will be sorely tempted once the hoped-for SE is published. Pity about Mythago Wood - I was unfamiliar with the book and the author, but it seems to have a very good reputation. What was it that you found displeasant about it?

>97 coynedj: I hope you enjoy Perdido when the SE makes an appearance! This is my introduction to Miéville and I'm impressed.

Regarding Mythago Wood, while the idea of mythagos themselves was interesting, I felt that the entire story kind of boiled down to three men (a father and his two sons) being obsessed with and more or less fighting over one woman. It didn't really work for me, but I'm happy that other people enjoy it and are excited about the upcoming release.

>100 LT79: https://www.librarything.com/topic/351548

>99 newbiecollector4:

I have Mother Courage but haven't read it. I would be curious what you thought of it once read.

>102 LT79: For those who like to fondle the paper, I assume.

Yesterday, I received the FS Jane Austen set. This is the seventh impression set in the red slipcase from 1989. I started Pride and Prejudice last night before bed and am thoroughly enjoying it. I have the volumes on my shelf without the slipcase because trying to get one volume out of that thing is heavy!

Also, some FS ephemera was included in the form of an advertisement for the FS, stating that this Jane Austen set was an introductory offer for prospective new members, who, could get the set for $5 when joining at the time. Included is the offer of a free FS almanac. There is a card with the detachable portion missing, presumably sent in to the FS for membership. Finally, a member’s statement from the FS to the lady who joined listing her payment of $25.95 in February of 1991.

I just started FS's Mary Poppins and the edition is delightful! I resisted 101 Dalmatians by the same artist and I will continue to try to resist it but I've added myself to the sign up list to get notified when/if it returns.

I also saw the below review of Mary Poppins on the FS site which I thought was funny. "Not enough illustrations" is wild considering that there are illustrations every few pages.

"Not even close to the quality I expected..not enough illustrations..paper was of poor quality..binding was loose.. Will not EVER purchase from your company again."

To resurrect an old discussion - I see that a film version of Klara and the Sun is going to be released at some point this year, with Taika Waititi directing, Jenna Ortega as Klara, and Kazuo Ishiguro credited as one of the writers. I can't wait for this.

Just finished The Last Grain Race. Really enjoyed it, and a surprisingly moving ending and epilogue.

Just finished Daudet's 'Tartarin of Tarascon', a 1968 FS edition with lithographic illustrations, which I picked up recently. I am increasingly fond of these smaller publications from before the Age of Gigantism.

>103 podaniel: It was OK, but a bit superficial / lacking in substance for my taste.

>111 newbiecollector12:

Thanks--I'll leave it in the NOT-TBR pile.

Finished I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (Folio, 2018). The modern grandfather of post-apocalyptic survival tales, this is a rapid-fire, visceral page-turner that's easy to breeze through in a sitting or two. The final moral revelation is a novel twist and brings to question the various movie adaptations that have failed to convey it over the years. Dave McKean does an exceptional job evoking the uneasy undercurrents of tension in Matheson's writing and Joe Hill provides an introduction on the cultural significance of the work.

>113 HonorWulf: Love it. I wouldn't mind FS doing more Matheson.

I did a re-read of Kipling's "Kim" in the older FS version. I like the design of the newer production and would be interested in Jan Morris' introduction, but I think I won't break up the '90s Kipling set since they match so nicely.

Also read Mary Beard's "Twelve Caesars". A granular look at Roman emperor iconography over the past two millenniums. It was very interesting and I wouldn't be surprised if FS published it one day, seeing how well her books do for them.

Up next: "Piranesi" since everyone's so hot and bothered about it lately!

>114 PartTimeBookAddict: Highly recommend Quest for Kim. Gave the book a fascinating context and deepened my interest in “The Great Game.” Hopkirk casually mentions in the book’s opening chapter that as he took a flight to India to pursue his research he reread Kim “for perhaps the hundredth time.”

>115 booksaplenty1949: Great. Thanks. I'll look out for it. I have the FS printing of "The Great Game" which I have to get to as well.

>116 PartTimeBookAddict: I saw an exhibition of Afghanistan street art, now probably mostly destroyed, in a local museum, and it included background on The Great Game which piqued my interest in Kim and led to my seeking out Hopkirk’s book. Also got into Flashman. You can’t quit with just one, apparently.

>117 booksaplenty1949: I also need to read the Flashman books. I have most of them (maybe all?) but haven't started on them yet.

I read "Piranesi" last night. It was a very simple book. It took about three hours. It probably would only have taken two had it been interesting, but I had to force myself to keep at it. I kept checking the internet to make sure the book I was reading was the some one getting all the hype and what I was missing. The plot is very straightforward. Reviews kept mentioning the twists and how as we learn new information the characters keep changing on you, but they don't. I guessed almost exactly what was going to happen the whole time (e.g. who the Professor and Other were and who had written the scattered notes). At first I thought I had to pay close attention to the layout of the rooms (Twentieth North room from the Fourth Foyer) as if it was a puzzle book or an old algebra equation (A train going 50 mph leaves Chicago travelling southbound... etc.) but you don't. None of it matters. The magic system is not explained. And the final enemy fight was so anticlimactic.

If you have played the "Fallout" video games there is better what-the-hell-happened-here mysteries doled out in each and every Vault quest than in this book. My only hope is all the praise is leftover goodwill that carried over from "Mr. Norrell". I'm still hoping that one is great.

>118 PartTimeBookAddict: I steer away from books that have won prizes, on general principle, although I make exceptions if a book comes personally recommended or deals with a subject I am already interested in. But the award committee scenes in American Fiction lent substance to my suspicion that the whole process is probably bogus.

>119 booksaplenty1949: I was recommended "Mr. Norrell" a long time ago by a friend who reads a lot of Fantasy. I've put it off too long and the FS release reminded me to give it a go.

I was hoping "Piranesi" would be a nice appetizer. It's not that it is bad, but it should have been a 15 page short story in an Alfred Hitchcock mystery anthology.

Minor tangential SPOILERS: There is a Jennifer Lopez movie called "The Cell" that is an excellent version of this story. And it has amazing visuals compared to this book.

>114 PartTimeBookAddict: Yes, would buy more Matheson in a heartbeat. Looks like Suntup has a couple more.

>120 PartTimeBookAddict: Fantasy not my thing. Trying to see life steadily and see it whole, admittedly with mixed success. But generally feel that if story couldn’t take place in the world I know, why should I care? But of course if we all wanted to read the same things the price of books would be prohibitive and the “on hold” wait time at the library would be insane. As it is, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Reading Robert Graves’ translation of The Golden Ass in a 1960 FS edition with great illustrations by Michael Ayrton.

>123 booksaplenty1949: I’ll have to check this out - I really liked his Euripides illustrations for LEC.

I am reading The Tiger in the Smoke in the FS edition I picked up in a sale a while back. Lovely writing. I recently finished The Man in the Wooden Hat, the second of Jane Gardam's "Old Filth" trilogy - they would make lovely Folio editions.

>124 bacchus.: Book itself is surprisingly readable, both text and the physical feel.

I recently finished reading the FS SE of The Turn of the Screw. I found the story to be quite strange but in an enjoyable way. I like the design of the book and the illustrations are quite lovely. It's just a pity it was bound in paper.

I am currently re-reading Ulysses. I had not intended to read it this year but I took a notion on Bloomsday to read a chapter and just kept going. I have now finished the opening Stephen chapters and am about to begin Leopold. I'm using the older FS Ulysses LE for the first time which I picked up last year. I have to say I love the soft leather used for this edition. It just feels great in hand and was part of the reason I ended up continuing with the book. I also love the turquoise colour of the leather which I always thought before buying it was bright blue from pictures online. The cover design by Jeff Clement reminds of a street map which seems apt. The only drawback with this edition is the Mimmo Paladino etchings which I don't mind but add nothing to the actual story. This read will be an interesting contrast to the last time I read it which was with the newer FS LE.

>127 assemblyman: Have read Ulysses several (4?) times, most recently in the FS edition you allude to, with the help of not one but two commentaries on the text. Think I have now got all I can get out of this work.
Being “into leather” is another issue. I bought an Everyman book once just because its leather binding, which as you may know in Everyman editions is pretty fragile, was in pristine condition. Curiosity eventually led me to peek at the contents of this Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile and I got hooked on the subject of this 19thC quest. Now own 32 books tagged “The Nile.”

>128 booksaplenty1949: I can understand that. I intended to leave off reading it for a good while but got drawn in. I'm sticking with Terence Killeen's Ulysses Unbound as a commentary again as it's an easy to access reference book. My intended next read The Master and Margarita will have to wait.

Wow, 32 books. Any favourites?

>129 assemblyman: Alan Moorhead’s The Nile, two volumes available in a very nice FS box set, is a masterful overview. The novel Burton and Speke, later made into a movie as The Mountains of the Moon is more entertaining than the original accounts of the two explorers. Burton particularly is a shameless padder—-packing lists, descriptions of vegetation probably cribbed from botany textbooks, etc. Samuel White Baker gives us a much more readable contemporary account in The Albert N’Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile. He was accompanied everywhere by Lady Baker, a woman of Transylvanian origin for whom he outbid an Ottoman Pasha in a white slave market in Romania. They travelled through Africa with a full double bed, disassembled each morning and carried by native bearers. You can’t make these things up.

A Countryman’s Summer Notebook by Adrian Bell, slightly foxed do some wonderful editions, I’m buying more of their books than folio at the moment

Been reading through some of my LOA volumes: Ernest Gaines now James Baldwin (early novels). Some really well written, thought provoking novels. I actually like the LOA format because it gives me the chance to read through an authors best and not so highly rated works.

I'm doing he same, currently reading F Scott Fitzgerald Novels and Stories 1920 - 1922

Just finished the Fellowship of the Ring.

Just finished A Room of One’s Own (Folio). Great book.

Now onto Candide, Franklin edition. It was printed in 1979 and hasn’t been opened, ever. I bought it earlier this year. When I opened it, I felt like I was an archeologist opening Tutankhamun’s tomb for the first time - all the stale air and dust took flight, it breathed, I also inhaled and began to read the first page.) 😅

I finally read the Superman collection and enjoyed it much better than last year's Batman! I'd love for them to do a second volume of Superman comics.

The World Crisis, Churchill 5-volume set.

>137 LBShoreBook:

I read the FS version of that last year. It's much better than his six-volume work on WWII as no one was "helping" him write it.

Moving onto The Two Towers: just immensely enjoying this reread of The Lord of the Rings. It's a little bit like a purge of the infiltration and influences of the PJ Movies. Not that I don't enjoy the movies but they do attempt to rewrite on ones mind, scene alterations. Time and time again in this read, I've had aha moments when I realise what actually happened in the narrative.

>138 podaniel: Can you elaborate about the “help”?

>140 booksaplenty1949:

He was helped by Dennis Kelly who eventually published a one-volume version of the six-volume work. Here's a link about it (but there's lots of other stuff on the internet):
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/16/specials/churchill-me...

>141 podaniel:

There's a book about all this: In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War by David Reynolds (Allen Lane, 2004, ISBN 9780713998191).

Another research assistant was the historian (Sir) William Deakin, who worked closely with Churchill on a number of his books.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/jan/31/guardianobituaries2
(See particularly paragraph 8).

>142 boldface:

Thanks--not surprised you would know more about this than me. I always enjoy reading your posts.

Just finished "Roadside Picnic". It moves along very well and holds the tension throughout. I like Redrick's interior monologue as he's moving through the zone, apprising danger. It puts the reader on the ground really well. I remember seeing Tarkovsky's "Stalker" a while ago and not being that interested. The book is much more engaging. The afterword is also a valuable addition, telling about the process of writing under the Soviets.

McKean's weird junkyard illustrations go well with the story. A recommend.

>144 PartTimeBookAddict: Agreed. A great story and very well produced book.

Finished Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks (Folio, 2025). Unlike the first two Culture novels, this one doesn't grab you with a nifty plot hook. It's, instead, a character study that's told in two alternating chapter narratives -- one that moves forward in the present, and one that counts backwards through the past -- that combine to paint a picture of the agents that do the dirty work behind the Culture's utopian federation. It can be plodding at times, but it does build to a satisfying crescendo and is certainly the most contemplative of the three books. Once again, no introduction, but Dániel Taylor produces his most somber illustrations yet, which pair nicely with the overall mood of the book.

>139 LesMiserables: Both LotR and the hobbit are a ton of fun to plot out on a map with pins while you read. The narratives are so focussed on the physical journeys of the characters that a map provides a lot of ahah moments.

Seeing how close the barrows are to the shire for instance. Or how far off course the journey through Moria send the party. And the relationship between Rohan and Gondor makes so much sense when you see the geography of the gap of Rohan. It really explains how the two nations are keeping the realms of men and hobbit safe from orc incursion or why the system of beacons is necessary.

If you're reading with kids, plotting the trip on a map especially adds a whole new dimension as everything is contextualised.

>139 LesMiserables:
>147 snottlebocket:

Do you have either of the following? I highly recommend both:

1. Journeys of Frodo: An Atlas of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings by Barbara Strachey (1981)
This has fifty beautifully drawn maps, complete with contours, covering each stage of the journey.

2. The Atlas of Middle-Earth, Revised Edition (1992), by Karen Wynn Fonstad.
This includes maps and plans for both The Hobbit and the Silmarillion, in addition to LotR.

I've just finished a re-read of Wilkie Collins's No Name (FS, 1992), the revenge thriller to end all revenge thrillers, and The Hog's Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts (British Library Crime Classics, 2015, but in the hardback version offered by FS in about 2018, I think). The Crofts is set in a corner of rural Surrey I was driving through just the other day.

My light holiday reading continues with C. S. Forester's first (but chronologically fifth) Hornblower yarn, The Happy Return, from FS's second boxed set of the complete Hornblower (2019), and Stamboul Train, from the FS Complete Entertainments boxed set, 1996; 2004 reprint).

Forester and Greene provide a good contrast. They both knew a thing or two about telling a good story: the Forester strong on narrative, Greene revelling in character, the former set in Central America, the latter on the Orient Express.

>113 HonorWulf: The FS version was my first read of this and I agree with your opinion on McKean’s work - to date, his best work for Folio. One of my all-time favourites.

I picked up an inexpensive copy of 'Into the Unknown'. I think, given the current heat, I shall start with polar and mountain expeditions.

>147 snottlebocket: >148 boldface:
Yes, love both of them.
Just reading through Helm's Deep and surrounding geography. I love Tolkien's use of landscape and land-scope. The vastness for the foot and the mind, deeply contrasts with our modern sensibilities of travelling vastness distances sans experience.

>150 cottonoverwood: Agreed -- that was lightning in a bottle for sure!

I finished Camus' "The Plague" this week. It was very good. It captured the impatience and uncertainty of quarantine, but never becomes repetitious. Although it's labelled an absurdist novel, it doesn't contain anything near the strange amount of science deniers and conspiracy theorists who popped up during Covid.

Kitson's pen drawings are effective, if a little bare-boned. She also illustrated "Wind, Sand and Stars."

Tangentially FS: I also read "Agent Sonya" by Ben Macintyre. A biography of a Soviet spy during WW2. It goes on a little long. The steam runs out in the second half and it is just filling in data points in her life. Macintyre is much better with his books on isolated events or missions (e.g. "Operation Mincemeat" and "Prisoners of the Castle.")

Up next: Finishing "Cloudstreet" and then most likely Mary Beard's "Pompeii."

I recently finished A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates by Captain Johnson. An entertaining read, with a lengthy middle (the life of Captain Roberts). Interestingly, no-one knows who the author Captain Johnson really was - some theorise it was actually Daniel Defoe.

I read the shiny new 2018 version but wonder, given the subject matter, if it would have made for a more immersive read had I purchased the 1962 version, with appropriately browning pages...

Onto the Mutiny on the Bounty next! Arrrrrr, me hearties!

>155 Opinacus: Do any FS books have pages which brown!?

Currently a quarter into Piranesi and I am enthralled. The mystery of it all. The liminal spaces feeling without it being horror. The anticipation of forming suspicions about the other. I love it.

>156 booksaplenty1949: You should see my copy of Drake's Raid on the Treasure Trains (1954)! Nice and old, and also on a similar subject. Marvellous stuff.

>158 Opinacus: I have plenty of books from that decade whose pages remain sparkling white, however. I thought browning reflected cheap paper with too much wood pulp or something.

I finished "IT" and am still at a complete loss as to why anyone reads Stephen King. Every scene is so bloated and repetitive, easily four times longer than they need to be. The idea of kids revisiting fears 27 years later is a neat concept, but it is whiffed by his execution. The Pennywise alien creature is so poorly thought out and clearly being made up as he went along.

Also, the nervous tick of every character thinking in the pop culture stream-of-consciousness that is in all his books is so tiring. I recommend Jonathan Lethem's "Motherless Brooklyn" if any King fans want to see how this could be done right and with purpose to the story instead of just as filler.

Now to get back to good books after this unfortunate interlude. First up, finishing "Cloudstreet".

I am reading Goethe’s Italian Journey and have been wishing I had an illustrated edition so I could see the pictures and sculptures he describes. Looking to see if there were an illustrated version available I discovered that the FS did one in 2010. It looks very nice. Have ordered a copy and put my reading on hold until it arrives.

>160 PartTimeBookAddict: Have you read The Shining? I also disliked & was very bored by It but really enjoyed TS.

>162 BooksFriendsNotFood: Yes, I have. And "Doctor Sleep". I don't care for either of them. That's another one of his repeated characters that shows up in "IT": the Derided Popular Novelist. Also, the Deadbeat Alcoholic. His imagination is really hung up on certain things.

On the positive side, I love that King has made readers out of so many people, but I feel that he is something of a set of training wheels, where many of his readers don't want to challenge themselves with other authors. I read Lumley's "Necroscope" a couple of years ago and, although it's another potboiler, it has so much more narrative drive and better world-building than King. Same with Fracassi's "Boys in the Valley".

Anyway, to each their own. I hope everyone who wants one gets the "IT" LE at half-price off a desperate scalper!

Stephen King is a paperback writer; he's not a limited edition kind of guy but he is extremely popular, and these books please the fans don't they?

I know Tim Winton, stellar human, reads a bit of Stephen King too, something you have in common.
Give "Juice" a crack when you've finished "Cloudstreet". :)

Just finished The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien including appendices.

A thorough enjoyable rereading. It only gets better and better on every reading.

I'm on average rereading it every 3 years.

>165 LesMiserables: Ah, you're a slacker. My brother reads them every year. When I really want to get under his skin, I tell him that the movies are an excellent depiction of the books - that can get him to rant and complain for quite a long time.

>166 coynedj: Ha ha, I imagine that would get under his skin too.

>163 PartTimeBookAddict: I'm sorry to hear you didn't like The Shining, but I'm also satisfied that you gave his books enough of a try and it's not like you just didn't read THE book that would've worked for you :D

>168 BooksFriendsNotFood: I've probably read over 20 King books at this point. Mostly from anthropological curiosity. He's too much of a pop-culture powerhouse to ignore. I did like "Shawshank" and some of his short stories, but even those I now look at as reheated Twilight Zone stories. "Life of Chuck"... c'mon.

I'd like you to try "Boys in the Valley" and compare it to "Salems Lot" and see which you enjoy more. Not that I think BitV is amazing by any metric, but as a straight up thriller it really works and the pacing is on point.

>169 PartTimeBookAddict: Noted, thank you! (Boys in the Valley does sound quite good.) Salem's Lot is actually on my list as well haha.

I do think me enjoying King is rare whereas I usually find his books okay to meh. I haven't read too many though. I really enjoyed The Shining and I liked Carrie. Pet Sematary and Misery passed the time. It was a drag. You've read much more of his work than I have!

Finished Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Folio, 2025). This is a puzzle book told in the form of journal entries by an unreliable narrator that serves to unravel the mystery of a giant labyrinth and it's few living (and dead) inhabitants. It's short, breezy and not quite the profound experience I was looking for, but it makes for a nice thematic companion to Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (which I'm currently reading). No introduction, but Clarke provides an afterward into her inspiration, and Julian de Narvaez the illustrations evoking the magnitude and mystery of the labyrinth.

>160 PartTimeBookAddict: As an early King reader, "It" was where I felt the wheels came off the wagon. That's a book that clearly needed an editor to weed out some of the meandering and more questionable ideas, as well as a sounding board to work out a better ending. He's had a couple of decent books since, but most of them suffer from the same bloat and half-formed ideas. 'Salems Lot, though, remains a favorite, so I hope Folio gets around to that one day.

>172 HonorWulf: Probably my second favorite of the ones I've read--I read it alone in an isolated cabin in the mountains! I actually got scared, which has never before or sense happened to me (as an adult) while reading that book.

My thoughts on IT are the same, and posted earlier here or in another thread. I have not read much King, and the bloat keeps me from reading more. Even The Shining, which is my favorite and one of my favorite books, could have used a bit of slimming.

As an aside, I feel the same way about movies--if Casablanca could run under two hours, any movie should be able to run under two hours. :)

>173 Cardboard_killer: I suspect that when an author becomes a best-seller it is more difficult for an editor to suggest cuts to his/her manuscript.

Player of Games. I'm having a hard time getting into it to be honest. Gurgeh is not an appealing protagonist, so far.

>175 snottlebocket: Stay with it. Banks' Culture novels are just outstanding.

>173 Cardboard_killer: I think it was my late father who once said that the first half of "It" was the best horror book he ever read, and the second half was the absolute worst...

Many of my FS volumes are books I previously read in some beat-up paperback and then replaced with a worthier copy which has, however, only decorative status. But I am re-reading Nostromo with a friend and so have taken my FS copy out of its slipcase and am enjoying Conrad’s novel this time with nice paper and illustrations.

While I am not reading the Folio edition, I will probably purchase it at some point: reading Ford Madox Ford's No More Parades. I am reading the annotated paperbacks and am very happy with them. Normally, I do not blind buy expensive books, either for future reading nor shelf candy.

>179 Cardboard_killer: “Shelf candy”—-I like that!

>178 booksaplenty1949: Yes. I have just completed a reread of LOTR and it was in pb. As I have been travelling and hotelling quite a bit lately, it was both practical and prudent to do so.

I even dog-eared it.

>181 LesMiserables: Murderer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uNy3NbDR2U Found this great video where an enthusiast, who originally read Nostromo in a Penguin paperback edition, now has two different FS versions and gives us a detailed comparison of their respective merits. Penguin version gets tossed in a box to give away.

Finished Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming (Folio, 2019). I enjoyed Casino Royale enough to add Bond to the annual summer rotation, and this second installment certainly doesn't disappoint with it's emphasis on brutal death traps, voodoo cults, and the vibrant Harlem nightlife of the times. No introduction, but Fay Dalton is once again spot on with her lush vintage-inspired illustrations, and Fleming seemed particularly invested in this one -- having traveled the same route Bond takes from New York to Florida to his adopted home of Jamaica.

I read Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost" over the weekend. A grim, grisly, well-written piece of history. A highly recommended book, along with the modern day parallel: "Cobalt Red" by Siddharth Kara.

I borrowed a library copy of "Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet". FS did this character dirty by choosing to publish this bland, lethargic story instead of a collection of all-time great adventures that they did for the other Marvel heroes.

Coates can't write comics and this story has all the excitement of a middle-management board meeting. I recommend skipping this book, or at least reading it in another version first before shelling out for the FS version.

Up next: "The Towers of Trebizond."

Finished It.

Loved it. I read this book a long time ago. Probably nearly forty years ago, which is a bit scary. I had vague memories of bits but it was mostly like reading it for new because I had forgotten so much.

I didn't find that it dragged (unlike The Shining) although I had to spread it out over many nights due to working and stuff. (And it's a very long book.) I kept coming back to it. And I always wanted to come back to it.

It's not really plot-driven (the plot is there but I don't think it's really what this book is about); it's about characters, about children. It's about life and how we cope with it and how we connect with other people and how we survive bullies and other monsters.

>186 PartTimeBookAddict:

I, too, would be excited to purchase a collection of Black Panther's greatest hits just like every single other FS superhero offering. Why is FS picking on Black Panther?

>188 podaniel: The closest version you might find is the Penguin Classics hardcover:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/639757/

I might track down a copy on ebay. They are fairly cheap. Although it won't match with the FS volumes.

I read a paperback of "Endless Night" by Agatha Christie this morning. Enjoyable enough, but not top-tier Christie. The mystery doesn't really kick in until the final quarter. I can't help feeling that she just watched "Alfie" before creating this main character. It'll be interesting to see how the FS artist renders the central house.

>186 PartTimeBookAddict: >188 podaniel: I actually prefer FS’s Black Panther volume - both the outer visuals and the story - to all of the other FS Marvel & DC volumes, so to me, it feels like Black Panther got the special treatment and I’m wondering why we can’t have more like it!

>185 PartTimeBookAddict: Thanks. Cobalt Red wasn’t under my radar. I’ve been waiting for a decent price for KLG - it’s been recommended a few times in this forum.

>191 bacchus.: "Cobalt Red" is very good investigative journalism. The companies exploiting the Congo for astronomical profits are different, and it is battery minerals not rubber, but if you read both books back to back, not much has changed over the past 100 years.

I do think the FS "King Leopold's Ghost" is way over-priced on the secondary market, but it is easy to find a reading copy.

>190 BooksFriendsNotFood: The idea for a Wakanda civil war would have been interesting, but Coates is way out of his depth as a storyteller. There is no tension or narrative drive. The factions are muddled and T'Challa mostly waits around doing nothing. It is a mess. Even panel to panel the visuals don't flow and Stelfreeze's journeyman art is undercut by having him draw mostly boardroom meetings. There is that great scene when Iron Man shows up... for a zoom chat. It is boring.

A much better comic is "Black Panther vs. Deadpool" by Daniel Kibblesmith. Now that was fun.

>192 PartTimeBookAddict: I really admired the dialogue/writing but I get that not everyone likes the same thing! I appreciate you explaining why it didn’t work for you (I’d try to reciprocate but I don’t remember the details lol…which probably means it’s time for a re-read soon).

>193 BooksFriendsNotFood: Since you like it, you may want to check out the full Marvel Omnibus of the Coates run:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtSU-Jn4974

It can be found for about less than half the price of the FS book:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/135626967994

No connection to this seller. I think it is about 1200 pages or so and it completes the whole story.

>194 PartTimeBookAddict: I didn’t realize there was so much more — thank you!

Back from a trip and have very nicely illustrated FS copies of The Great War and Modern Memory and Goethe’s Italian Journey to replace previous paperbacks. Of course they don’t fit in the spaces their predecessors occupied. Even sideways space is at a premium. May be time for periodic reshelving (a tedious process although the results are always satisfying).

Finished Sharpe's Triumph by Bernard Cornwell (Folio, 2021). Following many of the same beats as the first book, the middle novel of Sharpe's India Trilogy advances four years to the Second Anglo-Maratha War and the Battle of Assaye -- a ferocious affair that saw the British forces outnumbered seven to one against a foreign army fortified by European mercenaries. The future Duke Wellington went on to consider this his finest strategic victory, and its events certainly elevate the material here. No introduction, but Douglas Smith provides the energetic scratchboard illustrations, albeit sparingly in short supply.

Finally picked up Wolf Hall. I can understand why the writing style is polarizing, but I am enjoying it massively. It helps that I love historical fiction. I find the writing and dialogue to be clever and engaging if stylistically awkward or obtuse at times.

Speaking for the Folio edition, I think it’s excellent. The next two books in the trilogy will definitely be in a future order. If I had to nitpick, an introduction would have been nice, but maybe it was assumed that the history is already well known (as an American reader, I wouldn’t say that is quite the case for me). Also, while the pencil illustrations are beautiful, the single color illustration for the frontispiece kind of makes me wish they were all colored.

I said I was going to take a break from reading, to get some house projects done. I haven't finished the projects yet (though progress has been made!), but I couldn't stay away from reading. I'm an addict.

Finished, since my last list:

Eyewitness to History, edited by John Carey (not the FS set by the same name) - very interesting, of course. People who complain about the current times should get more familiar with how miserable existence was in the past. I noticed that many of the older entries were written by Englishmen about English events, or Englishmen about non-English events. Availability of first-hand observations probably played a part in this - those English, always scribbling away!

Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem - very good, but given the praise heaped on the book, my expectations were higher. I need to see the Tarkovsky and Soderbergh film adaptations.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton - recommended by someone here. I can't imagine the flowchart he must have developed, to keep track of everything! Very entertaining and it kept me engaged, but there were some important points that weren't dealt with.

The Good New Stuff, edited by Gardner Dozois - a collection of space opera sci-fi, following up on the Good Old Stuff collection that preceded it. High average quality, lots of fun.

Upcoming:

Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline, by Paul Cooper - gee, I wonder why I might think this could have any relevance to what's going on in today's world. Really, I have no idea. Hmmmm.

Black Wings Has My Angel, by Elliott Chaze - an NYRB edition. I love film noir, and have enjoyed the book noir I've read previously (including an FS edition or two).

I'm currently 2/3 of the way through re-reading Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. I read it and taught it in a course on "The Literature of Plague" with my local senior citizen/retiree adult education program during the pandemic, and I wanted to give it a second go before the release of the film adaptation in a couple months. It's such an excellent novel, and it really seems like the kind of book that FS should publish a nice edition of.

>199 coynedj: Good for you! The Tarkovsky film is a classic, albeit very Russian. The Soderbergh film not so much.

I’m reading folio’s robin hobb farseer trilogy, it’s really really good. I normally switch up genres with my reading but I enjoyed the first book so much I went straight into the second.

The production and design of the book is also really high quality.

My first experience of her writing, she’s up there with le guin for me, I’m so invested in every character whether I love or hate them.

I'm currently oscillating between four short story collections - having fun!

- Carry on, Jeeves (FS)
- Dubliners (FS)
- Collected short stories of Doris Lessing
- Liberation Day by George Saunders

>202 anthonyfawkes: this is great to hear as I have CK’s edition on order and have heard mixed reviews about her writing. Comparing to Le Guin is high praise!

I was intending to follow the blood-soaked horror of It with the blood-soaked horror of The Iliad but the Jane Austen collection arrived. I'm getting stuck into S&S.

And then A Bear Called Paddington arrived. I hope this is not just a one-off: it's a lovely big volume with many colourful illustrations and a nice choice of fonts.

>200 CJDelDotto: ... and then along comes the Christmas Collection!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=s4LpApBNhqm02DCW&fbclid=IwY2xjawNIpbtleHRuA...

Two months on from completing a rereading the Lord of the Rings, I have restarted it once more and am now on The Return of the King (book 5). This is a first for me, doing a back to back rereading.

Also reading the very interesting Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries by Sebastian Morello.

I'm currently reading Mansfield Park and greatly enjoying the subtle details of Regency life and manners and, of course, Jane Austen's wit. I've put aside the precious LE and instead I'm reading from the Cambridge Edition of the Novels of Jane Austen, which has a wealth of notes and background information, as well as being printed on nice cream paper in a proper cloth binding (beware the more recent laminated print-on-demand copies). It's not illustrated (except for a few bibliographical plates), so I'm also checking out Joan Hassall's incomparable woodcuts from the classic Folio edition.

I'm also reading from The Works of William Cowper His Life and Letters by William Hayley, Esq. . . . edited by The Rev. T. S. Grimshawe (London : Saunders and Otley, 1835, 8 volumes). This is a lovely set in excellent condition, bound in burgundy morocco, with elaborate gilt decoration inside and out, etc., which I found languishing in an Oxfam shop a few weeks ago.

And there's a felicitous connection between the two, as Cowper just happens to be one of Jane Austen's favourite poets, whom she often quotes in Mansfield Park and elsewhere.

>206 FitzJames: I saw! I had noticed that Hamnet was in at least one of the surveys that FS emailed out to solicit suggestions, but I had no idea that an edition was in the works! Given that the film adaptation is already attracting buzz and being pegged as a strong contender at the Oscars next year, it's smart of FS to capitalize on the wider recognition that the book is about to receive.

Finished Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle (Folio, 2020). Bumped this up the queue thanks to encouragement from the forum, which was well advised as always... Much more philosophical in nature than its movie counterparts, this is a meditation on the nature of intelligence and the impact of hubris and complacency in its potential decline -- a prescient message in this era of media overload and group think. Primatologist Frans de Waal provides an introduction, and I was particularly impressed with the colorful and delicate illustrations from David de las Heras.

Read The Bridge over the River Kwai last year and was very surprised to discover that the same author wrote Planet of the Apes. An unusual range of genres, I would think.

Reading The World as God's Icon: Creator and Creation in the Platonic Thought of Thomas Aquinas

I read a non-FS copy of the "Binti Trilogy" and was pretty unimpressed. Boring protagonist, lazy world-building and some deus ex machina plot solving.

I know it is for younger readers, but it is a lacklustre read. I would recommend trying a library copy before shelling out for a fancy edition.

I might try Okorafor's "Akata Witch" to give her another chance.

Just finished the monumental and unsurpassable The Stripping of the Altars (New Edition) by Prof. Eamon Duffy.

Pompeii. I really enjoy narratives set in antiquity. It's got that people have always been the same type of feel while at the same time lacking the sensory overload of our times.

Just finished my second reading of the year The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien.

Finished The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Folio, 2025). Two young mages engage in a contest of skills against the backdrop of a mysterious circus at the turn of the twentieth century... this is one of those books where you can identify its parts from other sources, but they stitch together well in a way that's novel and entertaining enough. The author introduces the work, while Cristina Bencina provides the spirited illustrations. Very nice Folio, by the way, with gold endpapers and a red ribbon bookmark that complement the black case and colored stamping quite well.

Just finished Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.
I think this may be my third reading of Brideshead. A truly remarkable novel. Both rich in gravitas and yet wickedly comedic in Waugh's style. I'm not sure if laughed out loud before in reading the jousts between Ryder and his father, but they struck me on this occasion as quite hilarious.

>218 LesMiserables: Waugh’s novels, which I enjoyed in my youth, now seem very mean-spirited to me but I suspect Brideshead might be an exception. May try a re-read.

>219 booksaplenty1949: Well I would recommend a rereading and curious to understand more about your disenchantment.

Having started collecting folio editions for a few years now, but not reading as much as I had wanted through most of the year, i have had a spurt of renewed vigour, reading a few books one after the other. With the temperature getting colder, the fireplace is now getting used once again, and nothing quite beats sitting by a warm fireplace, cat on lap, reading a Folio with a cup of tea or whiskey close to hand. I am currently 3/4 through Bram Stoker's Dracula, and loving every moment of it.

>221 mjlgardner1: A man of taste and leisure!

>220 LesMiserables: In my youth I read all of Evelyn Waugh’s novels with great enjoyment. Decided to reread about ten years ago, but found the first, Decline and Fall, distinctly less fun than I recalled. A recent interest in the Bright Young Things led me to reread Vile Bodies, which confirmed my sense of mean-spiritedness, even hostility, under Waugh’s humour. So I turned to his Diaries and read them. They explained a lot about Waugh’s inner conflicts. Revealed that he was an alcoholic from a relatively young age, with all the emotional see-sawing that implies. Fathers and Sons by his grandson also gave me new perspective. Interspersed the Diaries with Waugh Abroad, the travel books he suppressed during his later lifetime, mostly for good reason. Of course I don’t think we should base literary judgement on personal character—-bad men can write very good books, and vice-versa—-but it does cause problems where humour is concerned, I think.

>221 mjlgardner1: A “cup” of whiskey is a lot. Hope you pace it out over the evening.

>220 LesMiserables: On another note, I never understood why Charles and Julia have to go their separate ways. Julia’s marriage incurred Delict of Form and was hence invalid. If Charles converted, couldn’t he and Julia marry?

>218 LesMiserables:

I love Waugh, too--in part because he is mean-spirited (a feature not a bug). I am currently reading the world's best bathroom reader: The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh. His book reviews are delightfully acerbic. Highly recommended.

>222 NLNils: haha It is times like these I find the most relaxing

>224 booksaplenty1949: Of course! Just a small glass throughout the course of an evening. Not enough to feel tipsy, but just enough to warm the body and relax the mind

>225 booksaplenty1949: I'm no Canon lawyer, but I think that the Catholic Church recognises protestant marriages as sacramental and therefore indissoluble, which would mean in Julia's eyes, and probably later in Charles' eyes, that any marriage between them would be invalid in the law of the Church, due to their prior marriages. Again, and I'm only thinking out loud here, it may be the case that if the parties applied to the Church to annul their previous marriages (it doesn't matter what civil authorities consider to be legitimate) because of an impediment to their marriages at the time, then if these were both successful, a future union of Julia and Charles could be made. Of course the State would see no impediment to a union.
The sacrificial themes of the book certainly explore these theological duties, and Waugh brilliantly plots this out ultimately in Julia assuming the matriarchal role of Brideshead from her mother, both of whom choose a life of sanctity and personal sacrifice over all other choices.

>226 podaniel: I do share your enthusiasm for Waugh, and he reminds me that our temperaments are congenital and part of our nature.

>229 LesMiserables: As aforementioned, Julia (a Catholic) and Rex were not married in a Catholic ceremony so as far as the Church is concerned she was never married. Were Charles to have his marriage annulled and become a Catholic he could marry a Catholic woman with the Church’s blessing. This was of course Waugh’s own situation. Not sure why they have to make a sacrifice he did not find necessary in his own case.

>221 mjlgardner1: I'm quite envious, and I'm perennially reminded of one of consequences of 'autoderacination' in choosing the antipodean life, which is felt most keenly in this season.

>231 booksaplenty1949: But they did get married in a Protestant Church, both being baptised, which in the eyes of the Catholic Church is an indissoluble marriage.

>226 podaniel: I love his works too. Favourite?

>233 LesMiserables: No; I suggest you google “Delict of Form.” Why do you think the family was so eager to have Rex converted so they could be married in a Catholic church?

>228 mjlgardner1: Yes, a delightful prospect. I was just making a feeble joke about “a cup” ie 8 ounces.

>235 booksaplenty1949: I'm not sure you have the argument here. That was before they discovered he was married.



“What d’you want me to do? Who should I see?” Rex kept asking. “Don’t tell me there isn’t someone who can fix this.”

“There’s nothing to do, Rex,” said Brideshead. “It simply means your marriage can’t take place. I’m sorry from everyone’s point of view that it’s come so suddenly. You ought to have told us yourself.”

“Look,” said Rex. “Maybe what you say is right; maybe strictly by law I shouldn’t get married in your cathedral. But the cathedral is booked; no one there is asking any questions; the Cardinal knows nothing about it; Father Mowbray knows nothing about it. Nobody except us knows a thing. So why miake a lot of trouble? Just stay mum and let the thing go through, as if nothing had happened. Who loses anything by that? Maybe I risk going to hell. Well, ni risk it. What’s it got to do with anyone else?”

“Why not?” said Julia. “I don’t believe these priests know everything. I don’t believe in hell for things like that. I don’t know that I believe in it for anything. Anyway, that’s our lookout. We’re not asking you to risk your souls. Just keep away.”

“Julia, I hate you,” said Cordelia, and left the room.

“We’re all tired,” said Lady Marchmain. “If there is anything to say, I’d suggest our discussing it in the morning.”

“But there’s nothing to discuss,” said Brideshead, “except what is the least offensive way we can close the whole incident. Mother and I will decide that. We must put a notice in The Times and the Morning Post; the presents will have to go back. I don’t know what is usual about the bridesmaids’ dresses.”

>237 LesMiserables: He wasn’t married. He was divorced. Had he converted, like Waugh, he could still have been married in the Catholic Church. The family does make a stab at this, but when that fails the couple marries in a Protestant service, which, because Julia is a Catholic, would not be a valid marriage in the eyes of the Church even if Rex were not a divorcé. https://www.archbalt.org/marriage-tribunal/types-of-annulments-lack-or-defect-of...

>238 booksaplenty1949: I think you have to understand that they remain married in the eyes of the Catholic Church whether or not they were civilly divorced. Now, if Rex tried successfully for an annulment to his marriage, then he would be free to marry Julia. Indeed Waugh did this. The key thing is the annulment. Rex wasn't claiming any impediment to his first marriage and in the eyes of the Church he is married still. Only death or annulment breaks the bond.
On Julia. You are correct that Julia's marriage to Rex in the protestant church would not be considered legitimate by the RCC, but only because Rex is already married in the eyes of the RCC, not because it is a protestant service. Analogously someone baptised in a protestant Rite, is deemed baptised by the RCC.

>234 LesMiserables:

Obvious (and kind of cheating response): The Sword of Honor trilogy. I now have the FS versions and am looking forward to reading them soon.

As to annulments, a similar plot device was used by fellow Catholic Graham Greene in The End of the Affair.

>239 LesMiserables: No, Julia’s marriage to Rex in a Protestant church, even had he never been married, would have incurred defect of form. In any event, he WAS divorced, so from the Church’s perspective they were never married. So had Charles, like Waugh, gotten a divorce and converted, he and Julia would have been good to go. Why didn’t he? Back in those days, BTW, the so-called “Pauline Privilege” was about the only grounds for an annulment; ie, to enable a converted Protestant to marry a Catholic. Not like today, where 97% of applications are successful, usually on grounds of “faulty consent.”

>240 podaniel: Greene, also previously married, became a Catholic to marry his second wife. Tracing the breakdown of his faith through his novels is a sad business.

>234 LesMiserables: Brideshead is undoubtedly his best. I love the early comedies and also one of his later novels - The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. Pinfold is very under-rated - very funny

>241 booksaplenty1949:
That's simply not true my friend. A Catholic can marry a protestant in a protestant church with the permission of the Church (Ne timere 1908).
But these are irrelevant. Rex was married in the eyes of the Catholic Church and he could not marry Julia.

>240 podaniel: Sword of Honour trilogy is brilliant. The characters are monumental.

>244 LesMiserables: “With the permission of the Church” is the key phrase.

>243 RavenSeeker: The Ordeal I have yet to read. Thanks for reminding me to bump this up my TBR stack.

>246 booksaplenty1949: And irrelevant to the plot of the book. Look, this is simply a concern that Rex is married in the eyes of the Church, despite civil divorce.
If you read the text its simply obvious.

But, in order not to make this an ecclesiastical thread and take up any more of this space, I'd be happy to move the conversation to a more appropriate group/discussion to continue civil discourse.

>248 LesMiserables: Of course—-sorry to beat a dead horse. Let me leave the specifics aside and just point out that Charles and Julia had a way forward to marriage but did not take it, whereas the narrator gives us the impression that of course, for Julia, that ship had sailed, regardless of her or Charles’ inclination.

Just finished The Holy Bible - Douay-Rheims Edition.

>232 LesMiserables: Ah but perhaps there is some other time during the year you can take advantage? Unless you live in a non-seasonal climate on or near the equator.

>236 booksaplenty1949: The idea of having a cup-size of whiskey did make me chuckle. The only time I was served one of those was on a flight, where the stewardess clearly didn't know how strong whiskey was. Luckily it was a long flight!

>251 mjlgardner1: There is a cult of 'Christmas in July' down here, but its a farce.

>253 LesMiserables: I gather that despite the weather a traditional British Christmas dinner is served. I seem to recall this in a scene from the movie version of Peter Carey’s Bliss. Were people wearing bathing suits? In any event, the contrast between the weather and the menu was shocking to me.

>252 mjlgardner1: Probably why many airlines use/used those little pre-measured bottles.

>250 LesMiserables:

I am currently reading Bishop Barron's bible which is the NSRV-CE translation.

How was Douay-Rheims (I have that translation but have not read it, yet)?

>254 booksaplenty1949: I don't believe many do so at Christmas. Our household does as a rule, but Australians, the Anglo-Saxon descendants at least, are more likely to go for seafood and a shellfish BBQs rather than a roast. Perhaps that's just in the subtropics where I live, but its very popular.

>256 podaniel: I use the DR Haydock version. It is excellent and faithful to the Vulgate with good notes. Finished it last night and will start again on the First Sunday of Advent.

Interestingly although I have the beautiful FS Gill Four Gospels and the Songs, Jonah, and Genesis LEs, they remain ornaments.

>257 LesMiserables: Presumably stressing the colonial aspect of Australian life was relevant to Carey’s theme.

>258 LesMiserables: I'm unfamiliar with his writings though of course aware of him.

>223 booksaplenty1949: I just finished "Black Mischief" and it is one bitterly acidic comedy. I like Waugh quite a bit, but you need to be in the right mood for his stories. Although they always keep you guessing. The FS copy has a exuberant and slightly tone-deaf introduction that I quite enjoyed as well. I'll spare wcarter the time and link to his review:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/356307

It was actually the FS that got me started reading his books with their oversized volume of "The Loved One". It is a very quick read and really cheap on the secondary market for anyone wanting to try his style.

I also re-read "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd". This was inspired by the Suntup release, illustrated by the Balbusso sisters. I kind of want it, although I already have the FS copy. The illustration of the discovery of the body is especially awesome.

This was a Christie book that really benefits from a re-read. You can see where she's playing with the narrative just enough to hide the scaffolding of the plot. I got the sense that she had a lot of fun writing this one. I recommend going back to it a second time.

Up next: Mary Beard's "Pompeii" for a Nonfiction November pick.

>247 LesMiserables: Waugh wrote Pinfold shortly after having a nervous breakdown. He overdosed on his medication and suffered delusions. As usual, he put the experience to good use in this novel. I'm sure you'll enjoy it

>262 RavenSeeker: In Vile Bodies, the gossip columnist Simon Balcairn, having been expelled from a party, writes tell-all column he believes will outrage his publisher and then kills himself. In fact the column is a huge hit. In The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold a middle-aged man, clearly a self-portrait, who has seriously damaged his health with alcohol and drug abuse undergoes consequent hallucinations. Waugh is a brilliant writer but the “humour” in these dark, bitter plots is now too painful for this old reader. I had a similar experience reading A House for Mr Biswas.

Just finished The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith.

Very funny.

>264 LesMiserables: Love this book. “I left the room with silent dignity but caught my foot in the mat. “ We’ve all been there.

>265 booksaplenty1949: Yes. Too many to name.

Neverending Story, the nearly LE FS edition. I love the story, but my goodness does the polish, quality and style of the book make the whole experience so much more enjoyable.

>267 Goran: Agreed. An absolute favourite FS edition of mine also.

I've just started to read The Complete Oxford Shakespeare. Factoring in distractions, I expect this shall keep me busy for the next ten years! Not a FS edition I know, but the distractions likely will be.

Just finished Chartres: The Making of a Miracle by Colin Ward

I'm just finishing off Something Wicked This Way Comes, but I think i'll bump up Neverending Story to the next on my list now!

>270 LesMiserables: Your thoughts? Have owned for years but never read.

>272 booksaplenty1949: I think i said somewhere else, that this is an excellent production. Beautifully weighted paper, generous margins, a plethora of plates. The volume boasts a beautiful front piece, both simple and mesmerising, of the labyrinth of Chartes. Interestingly the author, an anarchist in political temperament, for the most part keeps in check his ideological underpinnings, and brings off a wonderfully secular yet profoundly deep and meaningful commentary of those whose religiosity and love of Christ, brought into existence the asymmetric but highly ordered and symbolically ornate, gift to the Glory of God.

I am reading Don Quixote in a recent translation by Edith Grossman, which I bought because I was concerned that the Tobias Smollett translation used in my FS edition would sound dated, and had only been used because it is no longer under copyright. However, while enjoying Grossman’s prose I find her translations of the text’s occasional poems rather prosaic and wondered whether Smollett made more of an effort to preserve their poetic quality. Not sure I had ever previously opened my FS edition; although the translation was less antiquated than I predicted and the poems were indeed more poetic, the print is microscopic and the illustrations, although by Quentin Blake, a favourite of mine, are monochrome and few and far between. A big disappointment.

>274 booksaplenty1949: Just about 9 years this coming week I noted my thoughts on finishing Don Quixote. https://www.librarything.com/topic/235595#5814901

Clifton Fadiman, in his book The Lifetime Reading Plan, strongly recommended the 1949 Samuel Putnam translation of Don Quixote. I read that translation in 1988 on Fadiman's advice, and I second that recommendation.

There is a Folio Society edition of the Putnam version, but it is the 1961 edition. My copy is a 1985 Modern Library hardcover printing.

Putnam's translator's introduction examines the history of English translations of the book. His advice was to avoid the Smollett translation and to read the Ormsby translation. (There is a beautiful Heritage Press edition of Ormsby that is based on a 1951 LEC printing.)

Putnam recommends Ormsby’s translation rather than his own? Why did he bother making a translation at all?

Actually it was I who was doing the recommending. Putnam explains why the Smollett translation is inferior to the Ormsby translation (because it is only a revision of a not very good earlier translation), whereas Ormsby is a more competent 19th century version.

I suspect the Folio Society went with Smollett in 1995 because the Viking Press had been absorbed by Penguin Random House and the rights to the Putnam translation were now controlled by one of the world's largest publishing houses. I have no idea why the Modern Library, which is part of PRH, replaced Putnam with Smollett in 2000.

Putnam's translation is quite readable, and it has a good introduction and great annotation that explains the nuances you are missing by not reading Cervantes in Spanish.

It looks to me like the only edition of Putnam that is still in print is The Portable Cervantes, which is the abridged version.

>278 EasternWapiti: This site https://welovetranslations.com/2022/03/28/whats-the-best-translation-of-don-quix... quotes the opening of the novel in every English translation, allowing a reader to see whose style he or she finds the most appealing.

>278 EasternWapiti: The Putnam FS edition is the one I have read and I got on alright with it. The annotations were very helpful along the way.

The 1961 FS edition is quite nice if you can get it in good condition. My own is in near fine condition which took me a while to find as the leather spine seems prone to damage.

Just finished William Dampier: Buccaneer Explorer. What a fascinating character! A seaman (initially a pirate) who lived from 1651 to 1715, circumnavigated the world three times in his life, and a natural-born scientist, he kept journals of which this book selects extracts. Lots of first contacts with other people of the world, and descriptions of flora, fauna and natural phenomena. His objective writings and scientific observations made him very influential in scientific and navigational circles, but his personality appears to have been rather polarising.

Also includes the hilarious story of Alexander Selkirk, a sailor under Dampier's captainship, who hated Dampier so much he chose to be marooned on the desolate Juan Fernandez islands, rather than continue sailing with him. Dampier, now not a captain but an officer on a separate expedition, then returns to the same islands four years later to find Selkirk has survived (having entertained himself by singing and dancing with the cats and kids (baby goats) on the island). They rescue him and bring him on board. He almost refuses to be rescued when he sees Dampier again, but is persuaded when he is told Dampier is no longer captain.

Just started reading The Sermons of the Curé D'Ars - St. John Marie Vianney.

Concurrently reading The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh.

For you aficionados de Don Quixote - toward the end of the book, when poor Alonzo Quijano's books are being pulled out and condemned to the fire, one was singled out to be saved, and praised very highly. That was Tirant lo Blanc, which I found to be a very entertaining read.

>281 Opinacus:

And Selkirk's life on the island is often mentioned as a putative inspiration for the adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

>280 assemblyman: I will be donating my FS edition to the annual book sale at my former college. It seems to have maintained its value on ABE.

Well The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold was very funny, unsettling, savagely accurate.

>286 LesMiserables: “Savagely accurate” about his own decay, certainly. Nothing is more fatuous than trying to convince someone that something is or isn’t funny, but personally I found the book too sad in its implications to be amusing. The snippet from the NYT review quoted on the novel”s LT page was close to my thoughts on the book.

>287 booksaplenty1949: Good grief, if I had wanted to convince anyone of anything, I would surely have made something of an effort. He went off his rocker for 3 weeks, and wrote a humorous account of it.

>288 LesMiserables: I was not referring to any effort on your part—all you did was say you found it funny. I meant that I wouldn’t dream of trying to change your mind.

>289 booksaplenty1949: Ok fair enough. I was fooled by you referencing my comment.

Recently finished:

Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline, by Paul Cooper - a very interesting discussion of fallen civilizations, but not much discussion connecting them into any pattern. That said, I did learn quite a bit, and I saw some common threads. Military overextension was a common theme, along with lengthy (and treasure-draining) succession battles and, of course, climatic changes. Apply those to current regimes as you see fit.

Black Wings Has My Angel, by Elliott Chaze - very, very noir. I loved it. But, I’m a sucker for that kind of story, in books and films.

The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family, by Joshua Cohen - the author is coy about how much truth there is in this story, and I would love to find out. It paints Benjamin, his brothers, and especially his parents as amazingly boorish people, causing destruction and blaming everyone except themselves. A very entertaining comedy of manners, or lack thereof.

Human Acts, by Han Kang - if we didn’t already have abundant evidence for how people can do great evil, here is a novel about an event that many westerners have no knowledge of, the massacre in 1980 in Gwangju, South Korea by federal forces under a thankfully short-lived military dictatorship. An excellent book.

These Truths: A History of the United States, by Jill Lepore. I recognize that slavery is a very large and disgraceful stain on the history of this country. But some authors, and Lepore seems to be one of them, seem to think that the history of the United States and the history of slavery in the United States are the same thing. After getting through her discussion of the American Revolution, in which the discussion of slavery in those times took up as much time as everything else that was going on, I gave up.

Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Yer History of the Human Body, by Neil Shubin. A well written and very interesting story of exactly what the subtitle says, along with a good bit about the author’s paleontological expeditions and how they are carried out.

Finished A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. (Folio, 2025). Part satire, part philosophy, and always poignant, Miller follows the fictional Order of St. Leibowitz through two thousand years of post-apocalyptic mayhem as they struggle to preserve the remnants of human knowledge. This is a lush standard edition that takes advantage of its Limited Edition forebear with a dozen rich illustrations by Elliot Lang, chapter drop-caps, dual color printing, Abbey Pure paper, and a pointed introduction by Michael Dirda. Brilliant all around.

>292 HonorWulf: I've been waiting for the winter sale before ordering this, aiming to limit shipping costs. But if there's nothing in the sale I want, I'd order this by itself. It's an all-time favorite of mine, I put it on every FS "what should we publish" poll, and it looks terrific. There's no FS publication in the past few years that got me so excited.

>293 coynedj: Agreed! It's definitely the best standard edition I've bought from them this year. The King of Elfland's Daughter -- which was also distilled from a Limited Edition -- was probably a runner up for me (although I have both Shogun and the Edgar Allan Poe collection on order).

>292 HonorWulf: I have pretty much zero interest in sci-fi but I make a few exceptions for book-themed works like Fahrenheit 451 and this one.

>295 booksaplenty1949: It's definitely a book that transcends the genre, as well as one that seems to fly under the radar.

I also just finished Canticle, a paperback to see if I wanted to add it to my next order.

It sticks with you. I wasn't sure about it through the first third, as it seemed too... Catholic for my non-Catholic taste. The latter two sections were less so IMO and adding it to my own 'abbey's' library seems somehow appropriate for someone to dig out of the future rubble.

>296 HonorWulf: There are 12,800 copies catalogued on LT—-translated into at least 10 languages. Seems like a sci-fi classic.

>298 booksaplenty1949: It's definitely a classic! It just doesn't have the same level of popular recognition that 1984, Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World has, probably due to lack of a mainstream film or TV adaptation. For example, on Goodreads, 1984 currently has over 5.3 million ratings, Fahrenheit 451 over 2.7 million ratings, and Brave New World over 2 million ratings, while Canticle barely has one hundred thousand, to use one popular measure.

Just finished Dumas' The Black Tulip. One of the nicest covers and spines, and the story is fairly light and entertaining - it is set at the height of tulipomania in 17th century Holland, and a competition is set to grow the first black tulip... The only let-down is the pencil drawings. I find they don't do much to enhance the experience. Still, nice to sample his oeuvre beyond The Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo.

Just finished The Neverending Story. The production of the book really lends to the quality of the reading experience, especially with a story like this. Starting on The Last Unicorn next!

Man, did I ever miss Folios

Started reading Hamnet yesterday and loving it. As a mom with young kids, one of whom had previously gone through some health challenges, some passages are so sad and beautiful. It also makes me feel so grateful that we live in a time where we have vaccines and better healthcare!

I just finished the FS edition of Norwegian Wood. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it’s a beautiful looking edition. I intend to hopefully pick up more of his books in the new year.

Just finished Candide (random house).

Read the Bronte Sisters poetry folio fine press today, really beautiful book and quite enjoyed their poetry, especially Emily's.

Going to read Wuthering Heights next.

Half the way through the immensely enjoyable and thought provoking Woodland Philosophy: Meditations on Hunting, Hiking, and Holiness by Sebastian Morello.

Just finished reading A Christmas Carol and The Chimes by Charles Dickens.

As part of my Christmas reads, I also recently finished reading A Christmas Carol, and the Nutcracker. While having seeing multiple film adaptations of A Christmas Carol, it was the first time I have read the book.

>306 mjlgardner1: I imagine in the wider population the screen has more or less supplanted the written word, so probably the norm to be honest. I hope you enjoyed it. A glorious tale of redemption.

>307 LesMiserables: Have seen a fun film version of A Christmas Carol created from clips of the dozens of movie/TV versions. The story certainly has enduring appeal.
The Chimes, on the other hand, is justly neglected.

After completing Barnaby Rudge, I’m making my way through the five Dickens Christmas novellas. While I read A Christmas Carol every year alternating various publications, this is my first time through the other four. I found The Chimes peculiar (needs a second read), The Cricket on the Hearth charming and The Haunted Man a worthy end-of-the year retrospective story. I’ll probably wait until next year for The Battle of Life. I’m looking forward to next year’s more eclectic list.

>309 EdwinDrood: I got a bit lost around the bell tower fall of the protagonist in the Chimes, and took quite a few pages to find the thread again, so I too could do with another reading.

>310 LesMiserables: Unlike Ebenezer Scrooge, the protagonist of The Chimes has no power to change “Christmas Yet to Come,” so it is unclear why he has been put through this distressing sermon. That’s a key failure in a work of fiction. Don’t bother putting yourself through it again either, is my advice.

>311 booksaplenty1949: Fair enough. I do however feel that there is a redemptive nature to this, albeit less forceful as the metamorphosis that Scrooge undertook.
In the Chimes, the heart must also be changed, not from a heart of stone, but perhaps something equally damning: that of despair.
I remember one actual sermon/homely that I heard one time in a really poor part of Glasgow, where the priest was telling by way of instruction, an anecdote where he had been giving pastoral care to a despairing young man who thought that he was nothing: 'I'm just rubbish, Father." The priest replied that God doesn't make rubbish and this simple but profound rejoinder has stuck with me to this day. And I think this is the message in The Chimes.
Given that A Christmas Carol is a difficult act to follow, I'm going to give this another go.
Blessed Christmas.

>312 LesMiserables: A work of fiction may have a “message”—-even a worthy message—-and yet be a complete failure. A work of fiction is not a sermon. It should create a coherent imaginative structure with a beginning, middle, and end which permits us to interact with the work on a variety of levels—-emotional as well as intellectual—-and find a range of meanings. The Chimes is basically a letter to the editor.

>307 LesMiserables: Oh yes I very much enjoyed it. I think it will become a Christmas staple for me.

>314 mjlgardner1: Wonderful. Glad to hear it. It is a perennial outing for me.

>313 booksaplenty1949: Interesting. I suppose beauty, even in prose form, is in the eye of the beholder! Having just now finished The Cricket on the Hearth by said Charles Dickens, I'm reminded of the perspective Dot takes on John, in that though rough around the edges, it's the heart that matters.

>315 LesMiserables:: An interesting note on changing tastes is that The Cricket on the Hearth was more commercially successful with Dickens's original audience than A Christmas Carol.

At least that is what I remember from my reading of The Christmas Books in summer of 2024.

>315 LesMiserables: In art, unlike life, intention is nothing and execution is everything.

>315 LesMiserables:

If you liked Dickens' Christmas Books, you are in for a treat as he also wrote some 1000 pages of Christmas Stories (I have them collected as volume XIII of the collected works of Charles Dickens published by Collier).

>311 booksaplenty1949: I recently read it for the first time and that really stuck out to me as well. I was dead sure it would turn out to be a failed attempt at writing what would become perfected in Christmas Carol, but it's actually a story published a year after, which was a real head scratcher. It's always strange when an author returns to the well, as it were, and seems not to fully understand what worked about the first story.

Just finished Kidnapped by RLS.

Finished Jonathan Strange by Susanna Clarke (Folio, 2024). In the middle volume of Clark's ambitious novel, the focus shifts from the bookish master to the adventurous student, allowing for a more lively narrative that intersects with the Napoleonic Wars and the Madness of King George. Clarke also has a firmer grip on her pen, with a more compelling pace, firmer rules of magic, and a devastating cliffhanger, while Charles Vess continues with his playful illustrations. Look forward to reading the conclusion next Christmas, assuming I wait so long.

Recently finished:

The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendahl. So many people’s lives seem to be centered on the central character, but I must say that for the most part I don’t think he deserves the extreme devotion he receives. Engaging enough to finish, but not a favorite. It had stylistic issues that seem to have been common at the time but which bother me. Firstly, everyone is a superlative - the greatest Italian poet in 200 years, the most beautiful/handsome in all of Parma/Italy, the greatest of counsel, the wisest of his time, etc, etc. And secondly, I would estimate that 85% of the dialogue is internal and never spoken aloud. Thoughts of a fleeting moment take up three full paragraphs; given a little time, a character’s thoughts can fill several pages. And then it finished very abruptly. I have the FS edition of The Scarlet and the Black, and based on this experience I doubt that I’ll read it.

Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, by Dan Wang. An excellent analysis of China’s approach to doing things, how it differs from that of the U.S., and the strengths and weaknesses of both. Very clear-headed - no jingoism regarding either of the contestants. Highly recommended.

Dr. No, by Ian Fleming (non-FS edition). After all the florid prose of Stendahl, I needed something more straightforward, and this fit the bill quite well. Not in tune with today’s views on women and non-whites, as always (though less so regarding women than others I have read). Quite different from the film version, as always. A plot that is maybe just a wee bit implausible, as always. And great fun, as always. I like the Honey Rider of the book much better than the Honey Rider of the film, and the last line of the book, spoken by Rider, is brilliant.

How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You, by Matthew Inman. We all know that they are. Now I’m better informed on what to watch out for.

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win, by Maria Konnikova. The story of a psychologist who took on as a book project the learning of and competing in tournament poker. It follows her story of course, but also (being a psychologist) the biases, unacknowledged assumptions, and mental challenges that such a game forces a player to admit to and deal with. Very interesting on both counts.

>322 coynedj: The Charterhouse of Parma clearly a novel in the Bildungsroman tradition established by Goethe with Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, which I am currently reading. As you say, a lot of inner dialogue by an endlessly self-regarding hero. I did enjoy Scarlet and Black more than Charterhouse. Don’t write it off.

Currently reading the humongously large Folio Twelfth Night illustrated by the Italian twins.

>314 mjlgardner1:
I also read A Christmas carol for the first time in the run up to christmas (the lyras version) and loved it. Regardless of what one thinks about religion or consumerism it was a wonderful reminder that it’s a time of the year that should inspire patience, generosity and compassion.

The lyras version also has an afterword from Simon callow and I learned that dickens critics all loved the story as well when it released and dickens himself was a fine actor who toured the country giving 3.5 hour readings of the book and acting out all of the parts which sounds wonderful. From its very inception it was a story that was intended to transcend the written word.

>325 anthonyfawkes: It’s generally contended that Dickens’ exhausting schedule of dramatic readings led to his premature death. ☹️

Just finished Australia: a History by Tony Abbott.

A very good history: credible, balanced, well written and researched.

Apropos of recent reading of Henry Miller’s The Books in My Life I obtained a copy of Abelard and Heloise at his unexpected recommendation. 1977 FS edition is a beautiful book which I look forward to reading.

I just finished Richard Fortey's The Earth, an Intimate History which I thoroughly enjoyed. Much of the section about the Alps is set within 30 miles of home and it was a delight to be shown them with fresh eyes. His way of weaving the history, and historical figures of geology with the geological explanations made it easy to read, or at least encouraged me to keep picking it up. It's one of those books which I suspect I'll read again, and it will reveal even more on a second go.

Of course it's a beautifully published book with fantastic photos and illustrations.

On Christmas Day I finished Robert Burchfield's The English Language. I became interested in the evolution of language after reading Stephen Moss's Mrs Moreau's Warbler: How Birds Got Their Names earlier in the year. The Burchfield book was good though it was a bit more academic than I'd have ideally liked. I did wish for an updated version exploring how the internet has changed language use.

In December I finished Christopher Hibbert's Cities and Civilisations which was enjoyable but felt a bit disjointed. It's one to read a city at a time, returning at another time.

At about the same time I devoured H V Morton's In search of England which was a lot of fun. I hadn't heard of Morton or this book before adding it to an order (to benefit from discounted postage) and I was very glad I took the chance.

After having my brain stewed (in a good way) by the Fortey book I'm currently giving it a rest with 'The Wit of Oscar Wilde' which arrived in a bundle of humorous Folio books bought for next-to-nothing at the end of last year. I don't usually read fiction and have never read Wilde but it's recharging my energy before attempting something more substantial.

I have just finished a stretch of reading on Winston Churchill.

Churchill: A Life, by Martin Gilbert (Folio Society, 2004). Gilbert's 1991 single-volume biography was republished by FS in a slipcased two-volume edition. The last time I read anything by or about Winston Churchill, he was still alive. On revisiting the subject after more than sixty years, I was most intrigued by the new information that had come to light during Gilbert's tenure as official biographer, in particular the Venetia Stanley correspondence and the Enigma decryptions.

Churchill: A Photographic Portrait, by Martin Gilbert (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974). This book was the product of a major photographic research and preservation effort that Gilbert undertook between 1968 and 1973. And though no mention is made in the preface, it was surely intended by author and publisher as a centennial observance. Churchill's 100th birthday fell on 30 November 1974. Gilbert's captions to the photographs contain extensive quotations from the documents, and I found this book to be a welcome review text after reading the big biography.

Gilbert's archival control of the visual record resulted in the selection of 144 images (including frontispieces) for the illustration plates in the Folio Society set as well as the selection of 364 images for the "Photographic Portrait." Where the same photograph appears in both editions, it may be cropped differently in each edition, and the comparisons are sometimes interesting. The HMCO volume more often contains full-page reproductions of the photographs, and for identifying the picture credits, it is the better source. In the biography, Gilbert pruned back the editorial matter to pack Churchill's ninety-year run into 1,100 pages of text, leaving room for minimal picture credits and no bibliographic references.

>324 LesMiserables: You mean the one illustration? Enjoy this edition for the paper. Perfect time to read this play with so many memorable characters.

>331 BionicJim: Yes indeed—-Epiphany. Twelfth day of Christmas.

>330 EasternWapiti:

Thanks for the tip about the FS edition of the Martin Gilbert book. I had no idea FS had done that--and now I was able to purchase a copy second-hand for less than $40.00 (including shipping).

>333 podaniel: This was a rare case where I did not pounce on a Churchill book and buy it the moment they sent me the flyer. I actually bought mine several months ago and paid $52.00 for a set in fine condition or better.

I just finished The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner in the FS SE edition. I loved it and I found the colour coding very helpful following the different timelines. I shall seek out more of his work in the future.

I will now return to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Collected Short Stories which I had started before The Sound and the Fury. I love his novels that I have read so far but the short stories have been hit and miss with me so far.

Just finished
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and
A Call for the Dead by John le Carre

Finished Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams (Folio, 2016). Under normal circumstances, I'd say that Adams ends his five-volume Hitchhiker's trilogy with more of a whimper than a bang, but as this one ends with an actual bang, that analogy doesn't quite work so well... Written under a cloud of self-admitted depression, the occasional flash of comedic brilliance does manage to break through the storm clouds, but the narrative feels like three novellas hastily stitched together with a haphazard conclusion, all but clamoring for a sixth book that was never to come (at least by Adams). No introduction, but artist Jonathan Burton continues his inspired renditions to conclude one of Folio's better produced series.

Just finished A Murder of Quality by John Le Carré.

Just finished rereading The Spy who came in from the Cold by John Le Carre.

Going through the Le Carre books in order and fascinating to see the development of his writing and the characters of Smiley, Guillam etc.

Just finished reading The Looking Glass War by John Le Carre.

Just finished The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie , The Loved One and Mr Norris Changes Trains all with the amazing Beryl Cook illustrations.
A nice series of older FS books.

For the past few months I've been reading my way through the Rivers of London series (prose works, haven't got the graphic novels yet) which I had seen mentioned here a few times.

It's been fun. Police procedurals with a supernatural twist. Ben Aaronovitch is clearly fascinated with London and its history and architecture and he suckered me in by starting with a story based around Covent Garden where I used to work yonks ago.

We get revenant spirits, unicorns, the minutiae of day-to-day police work (e.g., the best places to pick up takeaway when you're on a stakeout), and the destruction of a few London landmarks, just to give a fairly random selection of what stuck in my brain.

And talking foxes.

I'm not crying out for a Folio edition (not sure it really warrants it) but it would probably be right up Jonathan Burton's alley if they did go for it.

My next read is a change of tack: Peter Turchin's End Times. If Asimov's psychohistory was a real thing, would it be this?

Currently reading FS 2008 edition of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight Simon Armitage translation as a group read over on It's a Good Thing Group Read if anyone would like to join in. https://www.librarything.com/topic/378224

I'm reading the FS version of Mary Beard's Emperor of Rome--she's excellent, as always. More Mary Beard, please!

>341 N11284: I really like the size of these volumes for novella length books. Be sure to also get "Goodbye to Berlin" to finish off Isherwood's memoirs.

I read "The Diary of a Bookseller" by Shaun Bythell over the weekend. It's not FS related (although a few mentions of them pop up in the book) I think it would be of interest to this group of second hand bookshop perusers. Has anyone here been to his Wigtown shop?

I also read "Lolly Willowes" because of a recommendation from a devotee, although I can't remember who. It starts off a little disjointed, but it did grow on me. If you're a fan of Muriel Spark or Angela Carter I would recommend it.

Just finished Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the second time this year.

>346 LesMiserables: It's only early February - that's a mighty quick reread.

>347 coynedj: Yes, soon after the first read, I decided to read the Smiley novels in order.

>348 LesMiserables: I always try to do this. Evolution of author/characters more evident in some series than others, but generally a rewarding exercise.

>348 LesMiserables:

Unfortunately, like the Dune novels, the first is by far the best. Unlike the Dune novels, where the second one is just a mild decline from the quality of the first, the second Smiley novel is a "large loose baggy monster" as by that time Le Carre had become fixated about the Vietnam war. However, there is a ray of hope, as the third novel is about as good as the Dune second novel. Although I read the entire second novel, there is no shame in putting it aside once it becomes apparent where it is going--or not--and picking up the third.

>350 podaniel:

Interesting. Are we on the same page? I'm referring to the below as the Smiley novels in publication order.

Call for the Dead
A Murder of Quality
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Looking Glass War
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The Honourable Schoolboy
Smiley's People
The Secret Pilgrim
A Legacy of Spies

I read my first Folio of the year. A re-read of "A Confederacy of Dunces." It is still funny after the ten years since the last time I read it and I noticed a lot more going on this time. I highly recommend it.

...But, not in the Folio format unless they reprint it. The secondary market prices for this title are very inflated.

>351 LesMiserables: A Murder of Quality is a mystery novel in an English village. More Christie than Le Carre. Smiley shows up for a second (although you could have changed the name and the novel will still it work) but it is so very different from the rest of the series that it almost does not belong. But it shows a developing author and his evolution to where he eventually goes with his writing so I’d read it anyway (I did and I liked it for what it actually is and not for what I thought it should be).

The Looking Glass War is the other odd one out here - it feels like Herron used it as a template for his novels later on. It shows a very different side of the spy game from the one in the previous novel. There is a reason it is rarely mentioned when talking about the series but I am glad I read it and I ended up actually liking it.

>353 AnnieMod: I enjoyed both. The latter read somewhat like a satire.

>351 LesMiserables:

I'm just referring to the FS three-volume set (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy/The Honourable Schoolboy/Smiley's People). It's The Honourable Schoolboy that I found disappointing.

I would be curious if you think any of the others (besides The Spy Who Came in from the Cold) are of comparable quality to the other two.

>355 podaniel: Ah okay. I'm quite enjoying The Honourable Schoolboy as it happens. Around the halfway point.

Just abandoned reading the FS collectable edition of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

I enjoyed the first few chapters, but it quickly became repetitive - a one trick pony of a book was my impression, and just not very interesting once the joke wears off.

I just finished The Other Wind, and enjoyed the Earthsea books very much. I have picked up some of the LOA Le Guin collections, and I look forward to digging into those at some stage. For now, I have started the SE Canticle for Leibowitz, which is a very solid and impressive book.

I have just finished reading The Great Gatsby (LE). A great story made better by excellent illustrations and a very well presented book. The only think I didn't care for was the afterword which I thought was awful. Putting that aside, it was a wonderful read and exactly why I buy quality books.

Just finished The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carre.

>355 podaniel: In the end, I really enjoyed this. Lots of room for Le Carre to develop multiple threads and bring them together. I found the metamorphosis of Jerry Westerby fascinating, from that of a mild auxiliary agent to the brutal field agent. At times I thought the transformation too forcing, but surrendered instead to just enjoying the character.

I just finished Doctor Zhivago. It was the FS Pasternak Slater translation. The story was engaging and the writing was quite beautiful throughout. Although I found there was some over reliance on coincidence at times and Yuri did make some strange decisions, I found the story very entertaining overall. It’s been years since I saw the film version, so I may do a rewatch just to compare.

I am now starting the FS one volume Legends of King Arthur.

Either of the last two books I finished would make fine Folio volumes.

I picked up Report to Greco on a recent trip to Heraklion, Crete, where the airport is named for Kazantzakis. Labeled an autobiographical novel, it was left unfinished at his death but brought forth by his widow. Kazantzakis describes his childhood vividly, then sets out on a spiritual journey. He explores Christianity via Cretan monasteries, the angry Old Testament God via Bedouins in Sinai (brushing on but not really grappling with Islam), and Nietzsche in Paris. Buddhism is explored in Vienna of all places, and then he meets the emerging Soviet man in 1920s Moscow shortly after the death of Lenin. Finally he returns to Crete to meet Zorba and relish in earthly temptations.

An interesting read, I was surprised to find Folio had never published Zorba, it seems to me it would have been a natural fit at some point over the years.

Prior to that I read A German Office in Occupied Paris, excerpts from Ernst Jünger's WWII diaries. Jünger is always a fascinating writer and his real-time observations on what was happening, and his predictions on what the future would hold were prescient.

Recently finished:

Tinkers, by Paul Harding. An almost plotless book that asked no questions and provided no answers. There are some lovely descriptions of feelings and events, but they lead to no real consequences. A Pulitzer Prize winner, but even at 191 pages, I couldn’t wait to finish it so I could move on to something better.

Open Socrates, by Agnes Callard. I found it very informative regarding Socrates’ intellectual process and how it still can be applied today, but you can tell that it was written by a philosophy professor. She often overexplained, and overestimated the rationality of her fellow humans. But still quite worthwhile.

Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson. Very short, at only 116 pages, but very good, though there was one plot element which was quite predictable, and a bit silly. I understand that a film has been made of this; I look forward to seeing it.

The Human Scale, by Lawrence Wright. Superb. It excels not just as a novel, but also as a Middle Eastern history lesson that doesn’t seem like a history lesson, and a sociological study that doesn’t seem like a sociological study. This man has done his research, having lived and worked in the Middle East for many years - I learned a lot. I think the new FS publication of Jerusalem will work as an excellent complement. Highly recommended.

Up next:

Enslaved by Ducks, by Bob Tarte. The title alone got me.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai. I've heard high praise for it - I hope it lives up to it.

Finished The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy (Folio, 2025). Was a bit underwhelmed by All the Pretty Horses (especially on the heels of Blood Meridian), but The Crossing was McCarthy at his melancholic best, serving up a thoughtful, profound and visceral coming of age story set against the backdrop of a dying Old West. The first part, in particular, was a devastatingly haunting piece of writing that I've found hard to shake since reading it. No introduction, but the quiet, understated Gerard DuBois art is a well suited companion for this somber work that is all but the antithesis of the book that preceded it.

>366 HonorWulf: The Crossing is probably my favorite of his works honestly and I'm a big fan of everything he's done.

>367 abysswalker: I'm still working my way through his oeuvre, but of the seven novels I've read, it's definitely in my top two or three. I need to read Pretty Horses again, though, now that it's more clear that there's a thematic construction / deconstruction relationship between the two books. Having read the rest of the books pre-Folio, I really enjoyed reading The Crossing in the Folio format with its comfortable margins and typesetting... very much looking forward to doing the same with Cities of the Plain later in the year.

Today we are all too familiar with partisanship, ideology, disregard for time-honored customs, and a decline in civil behavior disrupting the work of the US Congress, but between 1830 and 1860, we had Congressmen lurking in ambush in the Capitol and the streets of Washington, and lying in wait to commit assault and battery against their fellow Congressmen.

I just finished reading The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018).

Surprisingly, much of the disorder that happened in those years was covered up by the Washington press and glossed over in reports of Congressional debates. Professor Freeman has undertaken a mountain of work to uncover the real story, and with 135 pages of endnotes and bibliography this is a historian's book. Her most effective angle is to center the narrative around the eleven manuscript volumes of diaries left in the Library of Congress by Benjamin Brown French, a contemporary civil servant who had a Forrest-Gump-like knack for always being on the scene when something happened.

Remarkably, the Charles Sumner-Preston Brooks affair owes at least some of its notoriety to technological advances in media. By 1856, the invention of the telegraph had caused the rise of an independent press, and the new breed of New York reporters had little interest in downplaying the actions of Congressional ruffians. One man's affair of honor was another man's breach of privilege under the debate clause (Article One, Section Six) of the Constitution.

Reading Smiley's People by George Le Carre.

Just finished Paul Brickhill’s The Great Escape. (FS 2016). It is probably about 60 years since I read it first as a teenager. It’s still just as as gripping and exciting as it was all those years ago when I couldn’t get enough of those sort “escape” stories. It really was a boys own adventure sort of thing albeit with a a rather tragic ending for many. Not many books like this are written nowadays.

>368 HonorWulf:
I’m reading Blood Meridian at the moment and while I love his writing I forgot how relentlessly miserable he can be (the only other books I’ve read are The Road and No Country) even if he paints that misery with great prose.

Are the books in the pretty horses series in a similar vein?

>372 anthonyfawkes: Blood Meridian is definitely McCarthy at his darkest and most relentless -- arguably one of the bleakest books I've ever personally read. But, no, All the Pretty Horses is a lighter book (by McCarthy standards), even flirting with melodrama at times. The Crossing is somewhere in-between where it's not physically violent like Blood Meridian, but shares some of the same themes of despair and indifference.

>372 anthonyfawkes: not to the same degree.

I'd also recommend Suttree if you like his prose but want something with a bit more humor and moments of lightness (though note that the same perspective lurks underneath the surface).

>372 anthonyfawkes: Similar, but less so. For Blood Meridian he cranked it up to 11.

>374 abysswalker:

Second re: Suttree. I believe that is his true masterpiece.

>370 LesMiserables: LesMiserables: "Reading Smiley's People by George Le Carre."

Would that be John Smiley? Does he swap identities? :)

>377 boldface: ha ha. Gotcha! Well he is a spy after all 😆

I finished a re-read of "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" today. A great read. The endpapers are perfectly Victorian. The illustrations by Chichester Clark are good, but a little cartoonish. I prefer her work in the Du Maurier novels.

Up next is a library copy of Montefiore's "Jerusalem".

>379 PartTimeBookAddict: I eagerly await your views on Jerusalem - it's one of the few recent FS books I have my eye one.

>380 coynedj: Will do. It might be a few weeks as it is a chunker for sure, but not nearly as long as another of his books: The World!

Happy Sunday for those in this hemisphere.

Just finished rereading To Have And Have Not. Now, I'm not starting another book until Canticle gets here and I can finally read that one. It will be my first time.

I don't see tracking, but I'm assuming it will arrive here in VA next week based on other reports on delivery times.

While waiting on Canticle, I decided to reread Raymond Carver’s Cathedral short stories, 1983.

Cathedral is the most famous story in this collection, but A Small, Good Thing is my favorite.

I decided if Canticle shows up today, I can stop reading Cathedral at the end of whatever story I am reading without the guilt of not reading the “entire” book. 🙂

Memoirs of a Georgian Rake is an entertaining memoir of late 18th century life in Britain (and some colonies) by William Hickey. Fairly tame by our modern standards, but he did have amusing amorous adventures.

Quite funny, and at the same time sad, that the young gentlemen of the day had very little means of (and often also little inclination to) earning their own money, so were constantly gambling and worrying about debt. Hickey is obviously an example of one of the more profligate such youngsters. When he did have money, Hickey would throw lavish dinners, then the party would pop over the road to one of the many bordellos, to continue the evening... A constant cycle of hardcore drinking and partying, then panicking about funds, which leads to him embezzling his father's business.

His connections keep him afloat and eventually he establishes himself in India where he practises as an attorney, earning a fair bit of money as an attorney.

There is a cross-reference to another FS book - An Illustrated Journey Around the World. The Daniells (the artists of that second book) visit Calcutta to make drawings while Hickey is there. He supports them, but doesn't think too highly of their pictures. The episode is also recounted in An Illustrated Journey.

I'm not a genre fiction reader. I've never read Agatha Christie, Tolkien, Asimov, Clarke, etc. (I read the Lion, Witch, Wardrobe series and Hitchhikers Guide back in college, though).

One of the things I like about The FS . . . I'm using it as a bit of a curator for reading more genre fiction. (I know many here do not approve of The FS direction, with more genre/pop titles.)

I just finished reading A Canticle For Leibowitz. It is a fantastic book. I really enjoyed it and felt compelled by many of the characters and themes. The writing style, with its short, direct, clean prose, was right up my alley. However, there was much less plot than I was expecting.

Is it really sci-fi? That is a genuine question, not a challenge. I don't know enough about the literary tropes of sci-fi (outside of movies) to have an opinion.

I read a lot of general history, particularly European/American history (not military, as a rule), and history of the arts. This novel feels much more like an exploration of the ecclesiastical function, both moral and politically, in the (post) modern world than a sci-fi adventure. But again, I have my biases as to what I think sci-fi should be.

(I know genre discussions can be sticky, because there are so few that actually fully align with genre expectations, but I do enjoy that type of discussion: hard bop vs bebop, for example.)

Particularly the last section, with a lot of the end-times moral and spiritual internal and external debates. Does two pages at the end of the novel, with the space settlers boarding a space ship, make it sci-fi? Again, not challenging, wondering.

I would assume that the world building in Canticle is very limited compared to other sci-fi. In fact, this would be one of the failures of this book, imo. I was hoping for much more interaction between the present as future as past. But, after finishing, I see that was not the point of this book.

Be gentle my fellow readers, I'm out of my depth with sci-fi. :)

>385 BreakBeatDJ: Yes, Canticle is terrific, and I do consider it science fiction. The setting is enough for that designation, as is the last section as you noted, but maybe my definition is rather loose.

And, for me - hard bop.

>386 coynedj: "And, for me - hard bop."

Yeah, most of my jazz collection is either hard bop, 50s/60s or modern, fusion-ish.

Okay, but how do you feel about post Sidewinder Blue Note soul-jazz? You a hater? The hard bop crowd often hates that shift that happened in the late 60s. I love it, I love it all. Donald Byrd's Places and Spaces is a fantastic example of that funk-jazz that came out of Blue Note, and imo it's just as "good" as Speak No Evil.

Finished The Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor (Folio, 2025). Reading this on the back of Cormac McCarthy certainly put it at a literary disadvantage, but there's something about the straight-forward language and kinetic plotting that made it a suitable palate cleanser... A coming of age story about a young African woman in a far future that is thrust into an intergalactic war between a stubborn humanity and a race of warrior octopus creatures, Binti packs enough twists to make it a serviceable read, but I'd recommend reading a paperback before splurging on a Folio (although I wouldn't have read it otherwise, so there's always that). No introduction, but the dynamic vibrant art by David Palumbo is a real highlight.

I want to add something to my post above, a bit of a confession I guess.

After finishing reading my first FS book, A Canticle for Leibowitz, I realized I have never read a really nice book. All these decades of reading and I think this is the first well-made book I've ever read, iirc.

And the difference is absolutely profound. It's much more significant than I thought it would be.

The type, the layout, the way the book feels in the hand, the way the pages lie, the illustrations, the paper, it's just a different experience reading (much more enjoyable) from the paperbacks and cheap hardbacks I've been reading all this time, which always left me feeling like I was battling the book while trying to read it.

For many years I've been reading statements like . . . it's a very readable edition. I was dismissive of it, because I didn't understand. Now I do. I get it, 100%.

I'm making my way quickly through The Last Unicorn, which also "reads nicely" imo.

>389 BreakBeatDJ:
Welcome to the slippery slope of FS book purchasing!

>389 BreakBeatDJ: My condolences to your wallet :P

Canticle and Last Unicorn are both very good introductions to Folio books I have to say, both being derived from limited editions and therefore being a bit nicer than a regular standard edition.

Just finished Smiley's People by John Le Carre.

Started reading Cranmer's Godly Order by Michael Davies.

>391 zorg2099: yup. And I can thank this community for guiding me to these two books first.

>393 LesMiserables:

Stop telling us what you are reading! I had never heard of Cranmer's Godly Order. So I head over to amazon and find out it is part of a trilogy which is being offered there in an attractive hardback edition. And now it's heading my way with me having a much lighter wallet, thank you very much.

I just finished reading The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh which, sad to say, will not set you back almost a hundred bucks.

>395 podaniel: Ha ha. Enjoy the indulgence. It too have the 3 vol Angelus Press hardback, abutting my similarly dressed 3 vol Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre by the same author.

I'm currently reading the 2nd edition of Sarah Ruden's Translation of Virgil's Aeneid and am really enjoying it. The second edition apparently has expanded notes and some revisions to the translation itself. It got me thinking it would be great to have a new standard edition of The Aeneid by Folio.

A sample of the first few pages + the intro is available here for anyone curious: https://obibook.com/assets/book_photos/Yale%20University%20Press/Aeneid/sample%2...

Putting aside the Fagles LE, the only edition Folio seems to have done is Dryden and having seen a sample I'm not so keen on it. I am quite leery of translations that use rhyming couplets as adding the additional constraints of rhymes while trying to preserve meaning from another language strikes me detrimental. I may still pick up the Dryden one at some point perhaps if I find it at a good price but a new edition would be very welcome!

>389 BreakBeatDJ: I am always sad when I see a FS book, published years ago, offered for sale still in its shrink wrap. FS books are expensive, but they are meant to be held in your hands, opened, read. Although perhaps not in the bathtub.

>396 LesMiserables:

Luckily, that one is OOP. And, no, do not send me a link to a good, used copy.

>398 booksaplenty1949:

Don't be too sad--some resellers buy shrink-wrap equipment and re-shrink-wrap FS books to increase their sales price. I have seen this for DVDs, too.

>399 podaniel: Sad, for a different reason.

>399 podaniel:

Not OOP, sent you an enablement.

Well, I finished The Last Unicorn.

When I don't enjoy a book, I'm one of those that, 90% of the time, thinks I'm the problem and not the book. I don't apologize for what I enjoy or don't enjoy. But, I also freely admit that a book can be great and I can still not enjoy it. I'm okay with both of those being true and don't need validation for either. Many people I respect love this book and think it's fantastic and I assume they're right, even though I didn't enjoy it.

Sometimes books require some prior context, or some literary "training" to fully engage with the text. I think that was part of it here. I never read The Last Unicorn as a kid, so it was completely new (and we never have seen the movie).

Because I don't read fantasy, there were times I was confused about the magic vs reality scenes and where one came in and the other left. Sometimes I had to reread a passage a couple of times to understand. It was difficult to get in to the flow of the narrative because the action description and imagery seemed slippery to me.

I know in some way this is the magic of reading fantasy, and I did lean in to that. But I often felt lost as a reader and not simply bewildered or intrigued by the magic of the journey, the place, or a character. I was a bit off balance and not grounded in what was actually happening.

Still, I'm glad I read it. We will probably watch the movie now (more out of curiosity than necessity). And my guess is reading The Last Unicorn provided some literary "training" on how to read fantasy. It did get more fluid as I moved through the book. So the next one will be a more natural read. Maybe. :)

The FS SE is a wonderfully illustrated and designed edition. I love the texture on the cover. AND . . . I love there is no title on the front or back. I found myself staring at the cover for quite a while after reading for a bit. Great design choices by The FS imo.

I'm turning to Paolo Maurensig's Canone Inverso. I loved The Luneburg Variation.

I'll come back to my Folios after that one, probably The Martian.

>402 BreakBeatDJ: Sorry to hear you didn't care for The Last Unicorn. I can totally understand how one might not immediately take to it, for a number of reasons. The mix of real-world/fantasy I could see being a bit challenging to adjust to, and it is humorous in ways that might not stick the landing for some. As far as "training" for reading it, something like The Hobbit is a good start, as well as The Lord of the Rings, both fairly obvious influences on it, as well as White's Once and Future King (which *I* find unreadable because what I view as its overblown jocosity) and maybe The Princess Bride (Goldman was on record that TLU was one influence on that). TLU is my favorite (not to say I think it's the best I've ever read) novel, so sorry for the extended apology.

Just as an aside, I personally don't consider it a children's book (it's pretty damn dark in places), and find it difficult to understand how it would strike someone as such. The animated film, to warn you *is* a children's movie--most of the adult parts are cut out, Beagle having written the screenplay as well. I guess cartoons were all for kids at the time.

>403 dhowarth333: Thanks for the response. I know the Tolkien movies very very well, I have three premium editions of them, but have never read the books. As I said in another thread, I read the Lion, Witch, Wardrobe back in college, but I don't remember that series that well.

And, thanks for the context for the movie. We'll still watch it, I'd like to see what they did with it.

>404 BreakBeatDJ: While I waited in quiet desperation for 33 years after reading The Lord of the Rings for a (decent) movie version to be made, and I did enjoy the films and think Jackson did as well as anyone could have, there is simply no comparison and no substitute for the original. Haha, I also chased that LotR's feeling with Narnia in my early teens, but IMO Lewis's talent doesn't hold a match to Tolkien's achievement. Anyway, about to wax fanboyish about The Silmarillion or something, so I'll quite while I'm ahead :-).

I finished Montefiore's "Jerusalem" this week. I read it pretty slowly, about three chapters a day, interspersed with bunch of Harlan Ellison short stories.

Jerusalem was okay. It's the same kind of history that Tom Holland does, where is skims the surface on a lot of little events and moves on quickly. Frankly, not much better than a wikipedia entry.

I much prefer Mary Beard, Erik Larson or Steven Runciman's type of history writing. I guess this is a good book to have as a resource to see what was going on in Jerusalem at any given time throughout history. But, quite often the answer is: not much. There are some events during the Roman empire that are interesting and then after the fall of the Ottoman empire and the creation of a zionist project is interesting, but mostly the book wants to focus on other events and Jerusalem shows up as a small tangent to history, despite the inclusion of hyperbolic epigraphs in each section.

Montefiore is a fair writer, but has no personality and the book lacks narrative drive. He is also quite credulous about biblical events and the existence of Jesus. I would take a lot of the first section with a grain of salt. Montefiore seems fairly evenhanded about the fighting in the mideast. The ebook I read was updated for 2024, but there is no mention of Israel's ongoing genocide or the October 7 attacks. Either he updated it too soon, or didn't want to mention it for whatever reason. Either way, it makes this book somewhat of a relic.

Overall is was competent, but dull. But, it did make me want to pick up some of my FS books that cover events in that area, including Roberts oversized "Egypt, Nubia, Holy Land".

But first on to my recently acquired FS Maigret collection for some lighter reading.

>402 BreakBeatDJ: The Last Unicorn is overrated. I wouldn't worry about not getting it. Tuck into Lord of the Rings and have a great time!

I just read Simenon's "Maigret and the Calame Report." Maigret is called in to unravel a government coverup about a missing document predicting a collapsed building.

I like these FS volumes. Nice weight, cloth binding, good typography as always. The Harry Brockway illustrations are perfectly noir-ish and very detailed. They are only a third of a page though, more like spot illustrations, but they fit so well.

There is only one introduction for the whole set, by Julian Barnes, but it is very good. Well researched and funny.

>406 PartTimeBookAddict: That's disappointing to hear - I had high hopes for it. I may still read it, but probably in a lesser edition.

That leaves only Perdido Street Station on my to-buy list, with Dominion and 1Q84 as possibilities (I have the other Murakami's, but I already have this in the trade hardcover edition and on CD - I bought the latter for $3 brand new at a thrift shop).

>409 coynedj: I don't think it's a bad book by any means. It does deliver on the promise of ALL of Jerusalem's history in 700 pages. But, that means it skims. 50 pages on the crusades is going to be mostly surface. It's not my preferred type of book.

I really liked "The Fall of Constantinople 1453" by Runciman and "King Leopold’s Ghost" by Adam Hochschild that I read last year. I feel like I know a good amount of those subjects now, whereas Jerusalem made me want to delve deeper in certain spots, so it does have that going for it. I think Montefiore probably would really like to do a whole book from WW1 to the '60s and the start of Israel. That's where it felt he was most invested.

I would mention that "Dominion" is also this kind of a book. I didn't enjoy that one either. (And don't pay the enlarged secondary prices, it says it will have a reprint.)

Canone Inverso - Paolo Maurensig (1996) trans. Jenny McPhee

I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as The Luneburg Variation. There was a different translator, Jenny McPhee, and the language felt like a different writer altogether to me. The story and themes felt similar, but I never vibed with the text itself.

The narrator is telling someone else's story (I believe there are 3 different storytellers). But it's not as interesting as say Ethan Frome or one of those others that shifts POV and person for some real effect. Here it overly complicates the narrative, imo (unless there are some translation choices that make it seem overly complicated). And the layering of (unreliable?) narrators made it difficult to keep multiple motivations in mind as the story unfolded.

The doppelgänger thing is telegraphed and by the end it's reasonable to think that we are headed to some sort of Dostyevsky's The Double territory. In many ways it's hard to tell what was real and what wasn't real as the two lives intertwine (which is The Double-ish). Here, their lives do intertwine and are connected and what is real and what isn't comes in to focus to a certain extent. But it all feels a bit clumsy and added on, which made the twist, the reveal, in the final chapters less punchy.

Not really recommended. Not a waste of time (I did enjoy hanging out in a Viennese music conservatory for a while) but it won't get a second read.

I'm curious if anyone else has read Maurensig.

Next up The Martian

I asked this question in the Facebook group and got no takers, so I thought I'd try here.

I have Folio U.S. Prospectuses, from 1989 through 1996. Might anyone want them, before they go to the recycling?

I finished off the first Simenon box set this week.

Maigret and the Saturday Caller

Maigret is visited by a man who wants to kill his wife’s lover and then disappears in this psycho-sexual thriller. It’s very reminiscent of a Highsmith novel.

Maigret and the Wine Merchant

An odious womanizing petit bourgeois is killed with a long list of enemies. More familiar Maigret terrain here except that he has the flu this time.

Both were very good.

Reading The FS The Martian.

The pages aren't lying as nicely as Canticle or Last Unicorn. It is a bit harder to read (physically managing the pages). Is there a binding difference? Is there a paper weight difference?

Thanks.

On to the second Simenon set with "Maigret's Mistake." An excellent mystery with a great sociopathic, megalomaniacal villain.

Unfortunately there is no introductions to the books in this collection, but they still have the masterful Brockway art.

I also read the short spoof "The Ascent of Rum Doodle." It is a sendup of mountaineering accounts in the style of "Three Men in a Boat" or Steve Zissou. It was very funny. It felt like the kind of book FS would have done in the '90s.

I just finished my FS edition of The Martian.

I would say overall I enjoyed it, it was an easy read. I was expecting a plot heavy sci-fi adventure, but I wasn't expecting so many science experiments. I leaned in to it for a while, but then got a little bored of it.

The thing that bothered me more was the dialogue. Wow. This book felt like it was written for the movie adaptation. Not hating (too much) on it, as I said, it was a good read.

I don't know enough about book making to have any insightful comments on the book itself (although this forum is helping me learn quickly). But someone here pointed out to me that this is a square back binding which imo was not nearly as comfortable reading as the round back binding of Canticle and Unicorn.

I like Taylor's illustrations in general, he has done some beautiful AMPs, but all of these illustrations were a bit too on the nose for me, still solid, but they could have been mood boards for the movie.

The die cut slip is a nice touch.

Next up . . . The FS Gatsby, replacing a well-worn paperback from college.

>416 BreakBeatDJ: I'll give The Martian a go from a library copy soon. I'm interested in it, but not enough for a FS copy.

I finished "Maigret Sets a Trap" over the weekend. This one was actually a re-read for me (I didn't realize it until the button clue). Maigret is on the trail of a serial killer of women in a sweltering summer. One of the more urgent Maigret mysteries. It is a really good read!

>417 PartTimeBookAddict: "I finished "Maigret Sets a Trap" over the weekend. This one was actually a re-read for me (I didn't realize it until the button clue). Maigret is on the trail of a serial killer of women in a sweltering summer. One of the more urgent Maigret mysteries. It is a really good read!"

Did you get both sets 1 and 2? When I started surfing Folio, set 2 was going OOS and I almost got one. I remember Maigret from PBS (the Michael Gambon version), but have never read one.

I'd be curious what you think of The Martian if you want to share once you're done.

>418 BreakBeatDJ: Yes. I recently received both sets as a present. It's a nice collection. I've read maybe a couple dozen Maigret novels over the years. I highly recommend them as tight mysteries. They're only about 150 pages each and I haven't yet encountered a dud. Each is a standalone, so they can be read in any order.

Both Picador and Penguin have done really good trade paperback translations.

I'm currently 22nd on my library waiting list for the Martian, so it'll probably be a summer read.

>418 BreakBeatDJ: Some years ago I bought the complete Maigret published by Editions France Loisirs. All of the Maigret novels and short stories. Eight volumes in total plus volume nine which is Simenon before Maigret. They are all in French and I started on volume eight and I'm (very) slowly working my way through this volume which consists of 28 short stories plus 4 novels. Rowan Atkinson starred as Maigret in an ITV series in the UK a few years back, very watchable.

Finally started reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Didn’t buy the FS edition, because I wasn’t sure I’d like it, very differing opinions out there.
I absolutely loved Piranesi though. Just 170 pages in and the writing is very good.

Just finished half of a yellow sun and really enjoyed it. Definitely going to buy the fs version but hoping it shows up in the summer sale given its massive stock number and relatively low sales.

>421 woodstock8786: I'm making my way through JS & MN as well. Almost half-way through and i'm loving it.

Really, really disliked Piranesi though.

>422 bfoster1905: A great book. I had read author’s later novel-Americanah-and did not find it up to much, but glad I gave HofaYS a chance, because it is well-worth FS attention.

I took a break from my pipe-smoking Parisian detective to read "Slouching Towards Bethlehem".

This was the first time read, although I've read many of Didion's later writing (and visited an exhibition about her at the Hammer museum a few years ago).

These neophyte writings are a little "try-hard" at times. She lacks the effortless cool of Hunter S. Thompson or Eve Babitz. There is also a little snideness in her writing that I didn't care for. She seems to be punching down at points. There is an unwelcome toughness that seems to come from insecurity. I've never noticed it before in her other works. I'm going to be re-reading "The White Album" and "The Year of Magical Thinking" soon.

The Folio versions is nice enough, but with only a paper binding and an inexplicable ribbon marker. Definitely wait for at least a 50% off sale.

I finished Gatsby.

I'm always amazed at how thoroughly modern the women in this book are. My grandmother would be about 6 years younger than Daisy at this time and I have all of her journals and letters from her teenage years. I see so much of the transitional identity playing out in her journals and letters. I never talked to my grandmother about this book, I wish I had.

A little serendipity—when the Summer Collection was announced and Baldwin's Beale St. was on the list, I had just finished reading chapter 8 of Gatsby, in which Nick describes life for the young Daisy in her home, and he notes the band playing Beale Street Blues.

When I've read this scene in the past, I've always "heard" Marion Harris's version of Beale Street Blues, which would have been a huge hit in the early twenties. On this reading, it stuck out to me how that rendition would not have been in the air in the late teens, and it sent me on a mission to listen to other versions and possible performance nuances of what that band sounded like in Daisy's home. Fascinating, that era of music.

I also became aware that when I think of Baldwin's book, I "hear" Louis Armstrong's late 60s (IIRC) version of Beale Street Blues.

Both versions are evocative of the book's themes and settings, Handy was a fantastic songwriter/musician.

An aside. The best verse of that song was often eliminated by white bands/singers in the 40s and 50s. But the early versions in the 20s, and the versions by black musicians later kept it in.

"You'll see pretty browns in beautiful gowns
You'll see tailor-mades and hand-me-downs
You'll meet honest men, and pick-pockets skilled
You'll find that business never ceases 'til somebody gets killed!" - W.C. Handy

What next?

I have all the Fantagraphic's Peanuts Complete. I've enjoyed reading them on occasion. I didn't grow up with them, but I find them culturally interesting, like tiny time capsules buried in 4 panels, and also pretty funny.

I'll read 1950 - 1951, the first year and a half of the cartoon.

Then I'll move back to Folio world, probably Band of Brothers.

Norm Mcdonalds memoir

>427 brokenwolf:

How is it? Is it laugh-out-loud funny? I have a copy in my TBR pile but haven't picked up for fear it won't be as funny as the man himself.

>428 podaniel: if you like Norm it’s a fun read. His cadences surely come across just like the Norm you know. I’m not going to say it’s perfect or an all timer but if you like him then I’d recommend it.

>429 brokenwolf:

Thanks! I'll move it up to the top of my TBR pile.

I finished the Simenon collection over the weekend with "Maigret in Society." Another murder mystery. This time of a diplomat who left behind a trove of love letters to a very recently widowed Princess. Who didn't want them to get together?

It was a good ending to the Maigret set, having him interact with a different strata. I've really enjoyed these books, and I could see a Maigret fan wanting to own the full 75 novels in this format. The Brockway illustrations are perfectly in sync with the stories and the size is nice. The selection is a little odd. The books are from the latter half of the series (the earliest being "Mistake" at number 43). I think Folio knew they were only going to do a "best of" collection.

My library hold for "The Martian" is available, so I'll be reading that next.

>429 brokenwolf: brokenwolf: I could really hear his voice when I read "Based on a True Story". It is a pretty melancholy book as well as humorous.

>431 PartTimeBookAddict: It's not surprising that Folio selected only later Maigret novellas. In the earlier series he was a more sedate character, riding a bicycle and wearing a bowler hat. When the movies caught up with him they tarted up his image to a more up-to-date (and conventional) standard. Impressed by his share of the profits, Simenon took the hint. In 1950, when he was living in the USA, Simenon wrote "Les Memoires de Maigret," in the first person by the detective, in which Maigret explains that he was writing himself because some hack called Simenon had been hanging around the station picking up gossip and publishing a load of inaccurate nonsense. It was the only first-person exemplar, but the following books depicted the detective as the movies had shown him, and incidentally provided a more ready basis for a possible script.

>432 Jayked: Interesting theory. Sounds like another mystery author trying to monkey around with his creation. I read a few of the early novels and wasn't thrown by any real differences in his characterization. Maybe, he's a little rougher in the first few, but I think a pretty consistent character overall. Also, he doesn't drive in the books, so I guess Simenon didn't mind that he used to ride a bike.

Julian Barnes's introduction to the Folio set doesn't have any info on their editorial choices.

I'll have to check out "Maigret's Memoirs" soon. I'm always interested in a unique outlier in a series.

Finished Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Folio, 2025). Ishiguro returns to his favorite thematic well of memory and identity with this tale of a futuristic "Artificial Friend" that is tasked as a caretaker for a physically ill, yet spirited teen. But what made this really work for me was a bittersweet undercurrent around the inherent nature of a parent's sacrifice in raising children, which has strongly lingered in the weeks since I finished it. No introduction, but Isabel Seliger provides the crisp and clean art, as well as an exceptional cover and slipcase that are particularly striking.

I read “The Martian” this week. There were some interesting elements. Obviously there was a lot of thought and research on the technical aspects of what a Mars trip could look like. I can see how engineering students would debate the ideas in the book and get a lot of enjoyment out of it. But, as a narrative it is very flat. The first few chapters and the final chapters are interesting, but the pacing of the story overall is a huge slog. Too much of it feels like reading a dishwasher installation manual. The solutions are presented immediately after a problem arises. No idea is planted early and paid off later, so the reader is not involved in playing along. It violates the maxim “show, don’t tell.” The thrills are minimal. It’s like a d-tier Michael Crichton book.

Also, the humour is very forced and awkward. Isn’t it funny that he’s watching ‘70s TV shows? Funny right? Not really. It’s the same wooden characterization Stephen King puts in his books. Better to watch the movie. At least you get the great visuals and Matt Damon’s charm goes a long way to make this story engaging.

Up next: A re-read of “The Grapes of Wrath.”

I’m also putting the audio book of “The Starless Sea” on hold from my library. I really didn’t like “The Night Circus,” but I’ll give it a try. Maybe I’m just a sucker for punishment.

>435 PartTimeBookAddict: Same for me on all your points. I don't know if you saw what I wrote above, but for me it was the dialogue that was painful. Not a human conversation or response in the entire book imo.

And the 70s music/TV dissing . . . I agree it got old. Not only was it tiring, anyone who knows anything about TV/muisc knows that 70s is peak TV/music and everything since then is derivative of some show/album that came out from 1967-1980. If I ever meet Weir, I will have words for him in defense of Abba & The Fonz.

>436 BreakBeatDJ: The dialogue is very rough. This is a thought experiment in the guise of a novel.

The use of disco works better in the movie (another point in its favour). Or just watch Apollo 13 instead.

My pals at work (mostly young women librarians in their late 20s to late 40’s), all seem to have Goodreads accounts, and are always posting on their social media about the books they’re reading. I have no interest in a Goodreads account, nor most social media, but last year I started jotting down what I’ve been reading. Here’s my list. No making fun of anything is allowed! :)

I also crafted an extremely well composed review of each book next to its title. ;)

The Night Tiger (very good)
We Ride Upon Sticks (hilarious, perfect for an ‘80s adolescent like myself)
Sword of Shannara (guilty pleasure)
Elfstones of Shannara (see above)
The Saturday Night Ghost Club (not what I expected)
The Book Thief (wonderful)
Boy’s Life (a tremendous Bildungsroman)
The Serpent King (very good)
Station Eleven (pretty good)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog (meh… somewhat pretentious)
The Miracles of Santo Fico (pure delight)
The Shadow of the Wind (very good)
Winterset Hollow (intriguing premise, ridiculous execution)
Shadowland (unsatisfying)
Cloud Cuckoo Land (took a while to get into it, but I’m glad I stuck with it)
A Canticle For Leibowitz (I regret not having studied Latin. Intriguing and ominous, yet hopeful)
The Knight and the Moth (awful)
The Sound and the Fury (finished today; mercy, that was a challenge, but what a work)

>438 betaraybill: I loved the Shannara books when I was a kid. There are too many now to take another stab at the whole series. I didn't keep up after the first five or so.

I read "The Grapes of Wrath" over the weekend. This was the second time through and I really enjoyed the sweeping, dreamlike interstitial chapters more this time. The first time through I was mostly focused on the Joad family travails. The Studs Terkel introduction is very good. I think they'll be keeping it for the new printing (I think I saw that on reddit). It'll be interesting to see the new illustrations, but I doubt I'll be buying the new version. I like the Bonnie Christensen illustrations quite a bit. This is a very worthwhile book and a very good reminder to keep fighting against the greed of capitalism.

Up next: An audio book of “The Starless Sea”.

I am also reading "The Grapes of Wrath" (in the old brown version). I haven't read it before and am enjoying it immensely. A lot of food for thought.

>439 PartTimeBookAddict: I’ve only read the first three Shannara books. The first two are the ones I’ve reread, since I wasn’t as fond of Wishsong. Elfstones is a lot of fun. :)

I never read The Grapes of Wrath. I’ll have to tackle it someday.

Hope you like The Starless Sea. It may be nice to listen to.

Next up for me is probably Pride and Prejudice.

Presently doing a reread of The Lord of the Flies, as Netflix is coming out with a new movie version, and it was time for revisiting the book!

Recently read:
Schindler's Arc
Raising Hare
The Great Gatsby (FS)
The Secret Garden (FS)
The Railway Children (FS)
Shakespeare's Sonnets (FS)
The Way of Wyrd
Project Hail Mary

Currently reading Oliver Twist (first time - Burgundy Nonesuch). Loving it so far - like warm porridge (not gruel). Very sad, of course.

Recently finished The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Rushdie) - loved it for about a half, then its super-intelligence and density got tiring and a bit repetitive, tbh.

To above comments, I did a re-read of Grapes of Wrath a couple of years ago. When I first read it when I was 18 it blew me away, and it was still exceptional, but I did find that the characters / portrayal made me feel a little too hopeless, which I know is the point (things happen to them in great big arcs of social injustice), but I guess it wasn't what I needed at the time, and I just wanted some mongrel fight-back. ;-)

I finished "The Starless Sea" last week and really didn't enjoy it. It is overlong, overwritten and very boring. I also didn't like "The Night Circus" and now can put this author behind me. If you like "The Night Circus" this is more of the same.

Up next is a non-FS book, "Wait for Me!" by Deborah Mitford. I've read "Hons and Rebels" and the two Nancy Mitford's published by the FS and quite like the Mitford clan.

Finished Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin (Folio, 2023). Not quite sure I've seen an author deconstruct their own work as savagely as Le Guin does here, but she returns to Earthsea eighteen years after the initial trilogy was published and seeks to unravel the heroic myths that she once so memorably wove. With her heroes now broken and frail, and Earthsea itself no longer the magical place it once was, Le Guin eschews a traditional plot in favor of a character-driven piece that explores a swath of feminist themes, often in brutal circumstance. In many ways, this feels more like The Left Hand of Darkness than anything she wrote before in Earthsea, which isn't a bad thing, per se, but a bit jarring as the fourth book in a series. There's no introduction, but Le Guin pens an afterward explaining her choices, and David Lupton provides artistic continuity with the previous books.

I finished "Wait for Me!" by Deborah Mitford this week. The first half is very interesting. She gives a lot of perspective on the family division during WW2 and the reactions to the publications of "The Pursuit of Love" and "Hons and Rebels". I would recommend it to anyone interested in the Mitford family and only after having read the FS Nancy Mitford books.

Up next are Agatha Christie's "Five Little Pigs" and a re-read of "Dune: Messiah".

I re-read "Dune: Messiah" and enjoyed it less than the first time. It is mostly exposition dumping and a bridge to "Children of Dune". I read it in anticipation of the new movie. It'll be interesting to see how they represent Bijaz and the Guild Navigator Edric (I like the art for him in the FS book). It'll also be interesting how they do the Scytale Mexican standoff scene at the end.

Up Next: "A Wrinkle in Time".

>447 PartTimeBookAddict: I agree, Messiah was the weakest novel to me. It's one part epilogue to Dune, and one part prequel to Children of Dune and doesn't really stand-up on its own. It's also the one book that Herbert really struggled with, in part because of the fan reaction to the original Dune, which prompted him to rewrite parts of it to give it a darker tone. A bit disappointed that Villeneuve is ending his movie series with Messiah. It's kind of like ending Star Wars with The Empire Strikes Back.

>448 HonorWulf: For sure. I think the movie will be changed somewhat, but if you're just ending the Paul Atreides story then it makes sense.

>449 PartTimeBookAddict: Yeah, it'll definitely be changed -- he already changed the ending to the first book significantly. But Paul's story really ends in Children of Dune. The conversation towards the end between Paul and Leto II is one of the most significant in the entire series. I suspect Villeneuve is only interested in a "fall of Paul" story and not particularly in the broader macro-story of the Golden Path.

I read Christie's "Five Little Pigs". Poirot investigates a 16-year-old cold case using the Rashomon recollections of the murdered man's circle of friends and family. I partially figured it out. Great Davidson illustrations (within illustrations) with a nice hidden element on the cover. The nursery rhyme theme is forced. Otherwise, it is a very solid mystery.

Up Next: "A Wrinkle in Time".

I finished "A Wrinkle in Time" for the second time. I really like the FS treatment. I don't know why they didn't do the whole quintet. I think it would have been popular. It's an odd book, but has great momentum. I can't help thinking that Stephen King was influence by it for his most famous eponymous villain.

The introduction let me to Meg Rosoff and I also read her book "How I Live Now" which was a strange YA survivalist adventure. It was interesting.

Up next: Either "Culloden" from the Great Battles series or a Jane Austen novel.

I re-read "Howl's Moving Castle" this week. This time in the FS SE edition. It is such a fun fantasy fairy tale. It is the perfect spring read. Calcifer remains my favourite character.

Up next: "Culloden" from the Great Battles series.

I just finished "Crooked Cross" by Sally Carson, published in 1934 and long out of print, re-discovered and published by Persephone Books. I highly recommend it. It's about a German family in 1933. They have just published the sequel - "The Prisoner". It is a trilogy - a Folio set would be wonderful.

>454 DZWB: Thank you so much! I had never heard of this one before and it looks excellent, and chilling. Appropriate for the time.

It is all three! It came to my attention late last year, when it got some press for being a 'surprise hit': see, eg, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/18/crooked-cross-hitler-1933-...

https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/the-nineteen-thirties-novel-thats-be...