If you were FS literary editor for 2011 ...

Anybody feel like playing this game? Assume you are the FS literary editor for 2011 with the task of selecting 30 titles. What would you choose? Remember, you have to select across most categories, not just your particular interest. And you have to balance diverse reading tastes. But otherwise you have a free hand and are not bound to continue any series previously started. In particular, don't feel obliged to persist with the fatuous Patrick O'Brians that are such a blot on the fiction list. On your marks, get set, go - see how close you are to the actual list ... you don't have much time.

I made my comment on the "In defence of Tom Jones" thread, so all I care to say here is that one should be careful about the careless use of terms like "fatuous."

I would love to see someone, anyone, publish Haruki Murakami in a fine binding. The man is far and away Japan's best living writer, his work has been translated into something like 30 different languages, and I would be shocked if he isn't awarded the Nobel prize for literature before he dies.

On the non-fiction front, I'd love to see something on the Crusades by a more contemporary expert like Jonathon Riley-Smith. It would also be nice to see a fine binding copy of Pollard & Reid's "The Rise and Fall of Alexandria." A good argument can be made that western culture has more in common with Alexandria than either Athens or Rome, but there is surprisingly little scholarly attention devoted to this great city or the Ptolemaic dynasty that built and helped stock its great library.

Sooner or later, William Gibson's "sprawl" trilogy is going to be available in fine binding, and I think FS would do a better job with the novels than Easton.

Finally, there are a number of children's/young adult books I would love to see get published in a fine binding, like Lloyd Alexander's Pydain Chronicles, John Christopher's "Tripod" trilogy (I'm indifferent as to the much later published prequel) and Watership Down.

This is not a 5 minute task - at least not if it is taken seriously. Balancing the interests of different readerships is a delicate task - and, of course, even different national readerships have to be taken into account.

To give readers an incentive to take Felixholt's challenge seriously and produce a balanced list of 30 titles suitable for a FS year of publication, I offer a couple of prizes. Through a miscalculation on my part I found that I had ordered two copies of FS's The Persian Wars and these were already part of a set that I had. If Felixholt is willing to set a closing date for submissions and act as judge, I will dispatch one of these at my expense to the person whose list Felixholt judges to be the best suggestion. The other I will dispatch to the person whose list is judged by popular acclaim of those submitting lists to be the best and providing that no person may vote for her/himself.

Aspiring FS editors can put some of their summer vacation leisure time to (modest) potential profit. I will submit a list but, naturally, exclude myself from the competition. The copies of The Persian Wars are in mint condition - one still in its shrink wrap cover.

A great idea, appaloosaman, and very public spirited of you. Now I just need to think - as you say, this is not a five minute task.

I'll bite. Here's my list (which I did not try to coincide with the upcoming year--so no Brown Fairy Book even though we know that's coming (or at least hope that's the case)):

1. Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser
2. The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell
3. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
4. Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
5. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
6. The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
7. The Rape of Europa by Lynn H. Nicholas
8. The Texas Rangers by Walter Prescott Webb
9. The Seven Ages of Paris by Alistair Horne
10. Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins
11. Black Sun by Geoffrey Wolff
12. The Age of Reason by Harold Nicolson
13. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
14. The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher (W.H. Auden foreword)
15. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
16. An Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul
17. Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose
18. Five Days in London: May 1940 by John Lukacs
19. The First World War by John Keegan
20. The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler
21. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
22. My Life with the Chimpanzees by Jane Goodall
23. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
24. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien
25. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
26. Poems by Sylvia Plath
27. Poems by Ted Hughes
28. The Path to Rome by Hilaire Belloc
29. The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
30. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

>1 Felixholt:
"don't feel obliged to persist with the fatuous Patrick O'Brians that are such a blot on the fiction list."

Ooo...ouch! But I *enjoy* Patrick O'Brian. And (humbly I must admit) I listen to dreaded "chick lit" audios every morning when I'm doing my hair and putting on my face.

Don't knock Confessions of a Shopaholic; it introduced me to Prada shoes!

I read erudite literature in the afternoons and evenings to atone for my transgressions.

Heres my list (but I could easily add another 30 books) -

1. The worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry Garrard.
2. To the Ends of the Earth by William Golding.
3. The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker.
4. My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
5. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
6. Poems by CP Cavafy
7. Don Juan by Lord Byron
8. The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
9. The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Robert Calasso
10. Dickens by Peter Ackroyd.
11. USA by John Dos Passos.
12 Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean
13 Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas
14 The I Ching or Book of Changes (Wilhelm/ Baynes translation)
15 Flashman (and the subsequent novels as an ongoing series)
16 King Leopolds Ghost by Adam Hochschild
17. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Yates
18 The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch
19 The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
20 Tirant Lo Blanc by Joanott Martorell.
21 The Lodger by Charles Nichol
22 Montaignes Essays (Donald Frame translaion)
23 The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
24 Icelandic Sagas Limited Edition (Landmarks of Literature LE series).
25 A Place of Greater Safety by Hillary Mantell
26 The Master by Colm Toibin
27. A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul
28. The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux
29. Myths and Legends of China
30. Memoirs of my Nervous Illness by Daniel Paul Schreber.

> 8 I'm very glad you haven't got the job David.

> 9

Well, thanks for ruining my chances of winning Fiona. Not that it matters as I've got The Persian Wars anyway. But it was fun to compile the list, but looking back on it now there are a few things I would take out as possibly being to esoteric.

Let's have your list then Fiona. It's easy to criticise if you haven't had a go. It's not easy.

David, my only criticism comes from the fact that if that lot were published in one year I would be flat broke! I think it's an excellent selection - genuinely.

And no, I won't be submitting a list myself, that sort of task is far too close to my day job to count as a leisure activity.

Thanks Fiona.

Having compiled a list I can see why the job of an editor is not easy. We can all create lists of the books we like but it's tailoring the list to the hypothetical desires of others that's difficult.

Sounds as if you have a fun day job. Are you in publishing or a librarian perhaps ?

I do have a fun day job, I buy books - lots of books.

I do that as well, but only in my lunch breaks and at the weekend.

> 4. What a fine gesture, Appaloosaman! I intend putting up a list so that I think disqualifies me as a judge. I nominate your good self. And can anyone guide on a suitable closing date?

> 7. Long may you enjoy Patrick O'Brian, Susan. It is my misfortune that I can't follow you there.

> 6 and 8. Thank you both very much. Extremely interesting!

Great choices Podaniel and Quicksilver:

I second the Rape of Europa; saw the video recently, brilliant!

I also second King Leopold's Ghost (which I read about 10 years ago having visited the Royal Museum for Central Africa outside of Belgium); The Master (I meant to read this some time ago having finished the Leon Edel bio) and as for Patty Highsmith I second any and everything.

Shall take both lists and add to my 'soon to be read' file; thanks to you both!!

King Leopold's Ghost is indeed excellent, and a helpful background to gaining a greater appreciation of "Heart of Darkness"--as to its appeal to a broad audience, I'm dubious. I remember how many of this group were indifferent to The Zimmerman Telegram, which I consider a crackerjack read.

Shall add both these to my list as well; thanks Django!!!

>6 podaniel:

'23. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster'

Yes, yes, yes! I introduced my 9 yo son to this when we holidayed in the USA many years ago. He sat down on the floor in the bookshop we were in and must have read half before we left (with the book of course). This is a totally neglected children's classic.

>15 Felixholt:
Your list could win by popular acclaim! Since Fiona has bowed out of competition, perhaps she could act as judge?

Here is my stab at a FS list:

1. The Wonderful O and The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber
2. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
3. The Oresteia by Aeschylus (Trans Tony Harrison)
4. Selected Poems by Lord Byron
5. Wellington: The Iron Duke by Richard Holmes
6. Auto da Fe by Elias Canetti
7. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
8. The Old Munster Circuit by Maurice Healy
9. The Decipherment of Linear B by John Chadwick
10. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
11. The Romany Rye by George Borrow
12. The Bhagavad Gita
13. Round the World in 80 Dishes by Lesley Blanch
14. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
15. The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
16. Farewell Campo 12 by James Hargest
17. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
18. Dune by Frank Herbert
19. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
20. The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals by Simon Conway Morris
21. A New View of Society by Robert Owen
22. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov
23. The Art of Travel or Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries by Francis Galton
24. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Trans Royall Tyler) (Limited Edition)
25. Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
26. Against Nature by J-K Huysmans (Trans Robert Baldick)
27. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
28. The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles by Martin Gayford
29. Isambard Kingdom Brunel by L. T. C. Rolt
30. Confessio Amantis by John Gower

Edit note: I have had to edit this as I suddenly remembered that FS had already published one title.

20. I don't think that would be appropriate on several grounds, not least of which is that I have already expressed my opinion on one of the lists.

Oh, and I'd also go broke if you were editor - another great list.

I'm sure that podaniel's is too, I'm just not familiar enough with quite a few of the books on it to express an opinion.

1. The Egyptian by Mika Waltari
2. The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
3. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
4. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabakov
5. Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington
6. Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor
7. Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada
8. Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould
9. Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
10. The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
11. The Bottle-Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge
12. Let us now Praise famous Men by James Agee & Walker Evans
13. Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac
14. Parting the Waters/Pillar of Fire/At Canaan's Edge by Taylor
Branch
15. West with the Night by Beryl Markham
16. Goya by Robert Hughes
17. A Clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess
18. I Know why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
19. Short Stories by Raymond Carver
20. Poetry by Robert Burns
21. A Thousand Miles up the Nile by Amelia Edwards
22. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
23. 1776: America and Britain at War by David McCullough
24. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
25. Swords around a Throne by John R. Elting
26. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
27. Tarzan of the Apes by E.R. Burroughs
28. Dead Souls by Gogol
29. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven
30. The Day of the Triffids/The Midwich Cuckoos/The Chrysalids by
John Wyndham

Great idea appaloosaman.

Here's my tuppence worth:

1. The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald
2. The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
3. Microcosms by Claudio Magris
4. Libra by Don deLillo
5. The Pat Hobby Stories by F Scott Fitzgerald
6. Sentimental Education by Flaubert
7. The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
8. Great Plains by Ian Frazier
9. The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski
10. A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov
11. Naples '44 by Norman Lewis
12. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
13. The Fight by Norman Mailer
14. Amongst Women by John McGahern
15. The Washing of the Spears by Donald R Morris
16. Speak, Memory by Nabokov
17. Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
18. Connemara: Listening to the Wind by Tim Robinson
19. The Hunters by James Salter
20. Folio Poets: Wallace Stevens
21. A Season in Sinji by JL Carr
22. The Coral Island by RM Ballantyne
23. The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
24. Goya by Robert Hughes
25. Midnight in Sicily: Art, Food and Cosa Nostra by Peter Robb
26. Picture by Lillian Ross
27. The Aran Islands by JM Synge
28. The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
29. Poetics by Aristotle
30. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

>1 Felixholt:

I was tempted to compile a list consisting of books by Rose Macauley, Patrick O'Brian (One of my favourites), Pym, Von Arnim and Wodehouse, all to be illustrated by Paul Cox, but Appaloosamans intervention persuaded me to take it seriously.

Patterns are slowly emerging. Perhaps when the contest is over we can compile a list of the 30 titles most frequently included in our lists to to produce a "Best of FS Devotees' Lists" list. Who knows? A mole might report back to HQ and some actually get published.

What a great idea. Here's my list, probably a bit unbalanced by Folio standards as there are no interesting compilations or first person narratives. I have also included some books on sport and rock music, not very Folio, either.

1 Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabakov
2 The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
3 Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb
4 Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
5 The Fight by Norman Mailer
6 The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
7 The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald
8 Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac
9 The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
10 If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
11 The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
12 An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
13 The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
14 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
15 Poems by Robbie Burns
16 The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
17 Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
18 Poems by T S Eliot
19 The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
20 Last Train to Memphis/Careless Love by Peter Guralnick
21 Dune by Frank Herbert
22 Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
23 Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
24 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
25 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson
26 The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin
27 The Rabbit Series, John Updike
28 Letters on Literature and Politics by Edmund Wilson
29 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
30 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

>26 rdurie:

I know some people will be surprised by some of your choices, but I have both of the Peter Guralnick books and they are just a great read. Even if you were ambivalent towards Elvis Presley I bet you would still find those books fascinating - good list!

>20 appaloosaman:, 22, 23, 26

Good lists everyone and as appaloosman says it is amusing to see the common patterns emerging.

More than one mention so far for -

Worst Journey in the World
Great Railway Bazaar
Speak Memory
The Fight
The Sportswriter
Dune
Flashman

Also interesting also to see the same writers eliciting different books.

>22 celtic:

Lots of great choices here, celtic, but since Folio has already published Petronius , may I suggest replacing that title with Beryl Markham's West With the Night?

> 26 "Poems by T S Eliot"

A wonderful choice, and would certainly be on my essential purchase list, but I fear you may run into rights issues, which is, I suspect, why we have only seen one small volume of Eliot's from the Society thus far.

There's much to praise and choose from in every list. I'm a bit surprised that there is no more representation of modern writers in "other than English" languages in translation. Speaking for my own ethnocentric interests I would suggest the inclusion of some of the works by Javier Marías, Pérez-Reverte and Ruiz Zafón. I would also like to see some of the essays that George Santayana wrote while a professor at Harvard. And, certainly, to aim at the native English-speaking market, Mrs. Dalloway (which has been included by rdurie.) I also vote for The Master and Margarita. A selection of Robert Frost's poems would also be nice.

More excellent lists! These are indeed rich seams for future mining.

>23 ian_curtin:. I believe that Folio may have published some on your list: would you care to substitute? A Visit to Don Otavio (a personal favourite) and the Pax Britannica for certain, because I have them. And more recently the Angelou and TH White too, I believe.

FS has published The Once and Future King by TH White recently. They have also published similar titles for two other books listed:

Myths of India & Sri Lanka – FS published Myths and Legends of India
Collected Short Stories by Roald Dahl – FS published The Complete Tales of the Unexpected and Other Stories

>29 Django6924:

Didn't know that Folio had already published the Petronius. I would be happy with West with the Night - Great book and an amazing Woman - Thanks Django!

>31 drasvola:

I started with a long list that included Perez-Reverte The Club Dumas and Sigrid Undset Kristin Lavransdatter, amongst others, but as you whittle it down you realise 30 choices isn't that many!

I could have easily done a 'non-English' 30 work list.

>32 Felixholt:
Drat, I'd forgotten that they published the Bedford, and I'm sure I looked for the Morris set but evidently in the wrong place. I'll change them....

>33 LucasTrask:
More changes!

> 34

It is hard to limit the list to 30 books. The Club Dumas is a great read. It has nothing to envy when compared to, for instance, The Name of the Rose. But it's impossible to keep everyone happy. Very good try, thank you.

Typo

OK, out went Bedford, Morris, White and Indian myths...in came Magris, the Zulu wars, JL Carr and Tevis.

> 34

I seriously considered Kristin Lavransdatter as well. I am sure there would be a demand for that magnificent book.

> 31

I second Pérez-Reverte and Ruiz Zafón.

> 33

Thanks Lucas. I am going to take out Roald Dahl and substitue Tirant Lo Blanc which was a nearly ran on my original list.

> 39

Wow! Tirant lo Blanc! Congratulations!

> 40

I have loved Tirant Lo Blanc ever since my parents bough me a copy for Christmas when I was 14. I am surprised it's not been Folioised before.

Well, allow me to extend my congratulations to them. Quite extraordinary. The Catalans are very proud of this book, although it was written by a Valencian. But I don't want to get into regionalisms. Cervantes writes very highly about the work when the barber and the priest are burning Don Quijote's books, and it is saved from the flames.

I take this as selecting the books for the Prospectus (they had 26 in it this year), so I am refraining from any limited editions. I also am avoiding sets, as I don’t recall any included in past prospectuses. My list has a number of science fiction titles, but in my opinion FS has under-represented the genre. I would appreciate having titles already published by FS being pointed out (other than Fathers and Sons).

1. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White Jr.
2. A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
3. The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
4. Myths and Legends of North American Indians
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
6. The Grey Fairy Book edited by Andrew Lang
7. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
8. The War in the Air by H. G. Wells
9. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
10. Troubles by J. G. Farrell
11. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
12. Luck of the Bodkins by P. G. Wodehouse
13. Spanish Short Stories
14. Science Fiction Short Stories
15. R.U.R. by Karel Čapek
16. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
17. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
18. Somnium by Johannes Kepler
19. The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris
20. American Passage: The History of Ellis Island by Vincent J. Cannato
21. Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jethá
22. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
23. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, new translation
24. Waverley by Sir Walter Scott
25. Terry Jones' Barbarians by Terry Jones and Alan Ereira
26. A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters
27. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
28. King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict by Eric B. Schultz
29. The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir
30. Day of Infamy by Walter Lord

edited to replace titles already published by FS

> 43 Lucas, the Poe has already been published by the FS, and they have recently had a history of China, albeit a different one.

Fahrenheit 451 and the Spanish Short Stories are great choices, and Wolf Hall would be a fine addition to the Booker set.

Okay, here's what I came up with this morning. I did include sets and I went a little heavier on the children's literature. I know that Brave New World and House of Mirth have already been done, but I think both could use a new version. Also threw in a little sci-fi and a graphic novel to mix things up a bit. (And I see Lucas and I are of the same mind about Fahrenheit 451 and North American myths!)


1) Beauty - Robin McKinley
2) Little House on the Prairie series - Laura Ingalls Wilder
3) Ramona Quimby series - Beverly Cleary
4) The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
5) Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
6) Gothic Tales - Elizabeth Gaskell
7) Tales of the Jazz Age - F. Scott Fitzgerald
8) Complete Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Ralph Waldo Emerson
9) Short Stories - John Updike
10) The Giver - Lois Lowry
11) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
12) The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
13) Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
14) The Awakening - Kate Chopin
15) Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
16) 1776 - David McCullough
17) A Grief Observed - CS Lewis
18) Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
19) Poems - Robert Frost
20) Short Stories - Richard Matheson (i.e."Button, Button")
21) The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
22) The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
23) Poems - Christina Rossetti
24) Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
25) My Life in France - Julia Child
26) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27) The Color Purple - Alice Walker
28) The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
29) Writings (essays, letters, articles, etc.) - Benjamin Franklin
30) Myths and Legends of North America (Maybe two volumes? One of Native American/First Peoples legends and one of more modern folklore, like Paul Bunyan?)

>43 LucasTrask:

Fair point on 'sets'.

If they were excluded I would be quite happy to take the first books from Taylor Branch and John Wyndham (Parting the Waters & The Day of the Triffids) on my list.

> 45

Persepolis is a very good choice for a graphic novel. I second it.

Lois Lowry and David McCullough would be excellent additions, and it's nice to see science fiction getting a little love.

>47 drasvola: I'll add my vote too. But I can't help feeling that graphic novels may be a little too radical for the FS.

> 49

When I joined the devotees we had a heated discussion on just how much "radicalism" FS members were likely to tolerate. I felt then that I was clearly in the minority and have since kept my mouth (keyboard) shut.

>49 HuxleyTheCat:, 50

Haha, I knew it would be chancy putting Persepolis on the list, as I do recall the old discussion, but I thought 'why not'? We're just fantasizing in this thread, right?

> 51 hey, go for it, it's the 21st century even at 44, Eagle Street.

I don't wish to hi-jack this brilliantly entertaining thread, but a quick plug - for those who enjoy such things, the Library of America are just about to publish a two vol set of Lynd Ward's graphic novels.

I love Flashman but I think he will be happier outside of FS. Can't top the pulp paperbacks with topless women.

Not sure graphic novels (comic books?) are well served by the FS treatment.

Lots of great books listed.

God's Man, Mad Man's Drum, Vertigo and Wild Pilgrimage are favorites of mine. Fantastic woodcuts!

Touchstones not working properly, sorry

so far apaloosaman's list is most intriguing to me...

If apaloosaman comes out on top then he wins his own book.

We will have to think of something to send him in that eventuality.

It's early days - this group has 515 members and I think we have hardly scratched the surface of all those aspiring editors out there. If only 10% of members contribute a list, that's a long way to go yet!

HuxleyTheCat, thanks for the compliment on several of my selections. I selected Spanish Short Stories becasue Django6924 mentioned FS neglecting Spanish stories in the Classic Short Stories thread and I remembered his comment. As for Fahrenheit 451, it has always stayed with me since I first read it. And I immediately thought FS should put out an edition of Wolf Hall when it was published.

Thanks also for the information on the Poe and China titles, I have replaced them with The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn respectively.

beatlemoon, I also considered a graphic novel, but decided not to because I didn’t want to take the time required to select one. We also both selected The Master and Margarita, and I like your choices of 1776 and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

I couldn't resist a couple of sets (Bowles and Faulkner) and maybe a LE or two...

1 Blood Meridian - Comac McCarthy
2 Master and Margarita - Bulgakov (personally much prefer the Glenny translation even if 'less accurate' it flows like a real novel)
3 The Blind Assassin - Atwood
4 Letterpress Selected Poems of TS Eliot (LE)
5 The Common Stream - Rowland Parker
6 The Civil War - Shelby Foote (complete plus photos and better maps) LE?
7 Dead Souls - Gogol
8 Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman
9 Hunger - Knut Hamsun
10 Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun
11 The 4 Rabbit Novels - Updike
12 Selected stories - John Cheevor
13 Christ Recrucified - Nikos Kazantzakis
14 Danse Macabre - Stephen King
15 The Sheltering Sky/Let It Come Down/The Spider's House/Up Above the World - Paul Bowles
16 The Sound and the Fury/As I Lay Dying/Sanctuary/Light in August/Absalom! Absalom! - William Faulkner (well one can dream)
17 American Psycho - Bret Easton Eliis (the meeting to decide the illustrations would be fascinating)
18 Stalingrad & Berlin - Beevor
19The Plot Against America - Philip Roth
20 Libra or Underworld - Don Delilo
21 Letterpress Doctor Faustus - Marlowe (another dream)
22 Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
23 Pale Fire - Nabokov
24 Life A User's Manual - Perec
25 The White Goddess - Graves
26 From Ritual to Romance - Jessie Weston
27 Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
28 Journey to the End of the Night - Celine
29 The Witch Cult in Western Europe - Margaret Murray
30 In the Labyrinth - Alain Robbe-Grillet

and

31 The Street of Crocodiles and other stories - Bruno Schulz

I'd be very happy if they did even a couple of these

Leopold

> 59 "21 Letterpress Doctor Faustus - Marlowe (another dream)"

Have you seen the edition from 1993, with the fabulous George Tute woodcuts?

>60 HuxleyTheCat:
No - I didn't join till 97 and have never really looked at what they published before then... is this worth looking out for?

L.

Oh yes, very much so - happy to take some images if you would like.

>62 HuxleyTheCat: Yes please that would be really good

1 Tam O'Shanter - Robert Burns
2 Waverley - Sir Walter Scott
3 The Forgotten Soldier - Sajer
4 The Bloodless revolution - Tristram Stuart
5 The Law - Frédéric Bastiat
6 Chinese Cinderella - Adeline Yen Mah
7 Michael Collins - Tim Pat Coogan
8 Freedom - Nigel Warburton
9 Folio Poets - Burns
10 Scottish Ghost Stories - Gray
11 The October Sky Trilogy - Homer Hickam
12 The Chosen - Chain Potok
13 The Rains Came - Louis Bromfield
14 Big Bang - Simon Singh
15 Fermats Last Theorem - Simon Singh
16 The Cracking Code Book - Simon Singh
17 Eugene Onegin - Pushkin
18 Scottish Short Stories - Folio Society Short Stories Series
19 Underworld - Don Delillo
20 A Star Called Henry -Roddy Doyle
21 Papillon - Charriere
22 Against the Gods - Bernstein
23 Sahara - Michael Palin
24 Watership Down - Adams
25 Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
26 Long Walk to freedom - Nelson Mandella
27 Untold Stories - Alan Bennett
28 The Diary of Ruth Maier - Ruth Maier
29 A Beautiful Mind - Sylvia Nasar
30 The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

Time to join the fray. There are so many good suggestions that I am afraid my original list is in danger of being corrupted - so best get it out. I have divided my list equally between fiction and non-fiction and will try and provide some running commentary.

Fiction
As far as I can see Folio haven't published anything by Gissing, Samuel Butler, Updike, Nabokov, Roth, Faulkner, and precious little by W Scott, Woolf and D H Lawrence. So I begin by plugging some of those holes:

1 Gissing - New Grub Street
2 Updike - The Rabbit novels
3 Nabokov - Lolita
4 Roth - Portnoy's Complaint
5 Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury
6 Lawrence - Sons and Lovers
7 Woolf - Mrs Dalloway
8 Scott - Ivanhoe

Now some personal favourites:

9 Amis - Lucky Jim
10 Donleavey - The Ginger Man

For those who like the Pallids (Pym, von Arnim et al) I think Denton Welch will appeal:

11 Welch - A Voice through a Cloud

For a touch of the contemporary, crime, and New World the following:

12 Martin Amis - London Fields
13 Raymond Chandler - Farewell my Lovely
14 Olive Schreiner - Story of an African Farm

Children's: wish I had thought of Coral Island. But plump for Maxwell - still as evocative as ever:

15 Gavin Maxwell - Ring of Bright Water

Now turning to non-fiction

Travel
A double set by Jonathan Raban - I love his understated melancholy books and the combination of his Englishness and travel in America sets off all sorts of reverberations for me:
16 Raban - Bad Land
17 Raban - Old Glory

History
So much choice. Suely Beevor must force his way in but I am going to go for one of the less celebrated:
18 Anthony Beevor and Artemis Cooper - Paris after the LIberation
19 Charles Townshend - Easter 1916
20 Piers Brendon and Phillip Whitehead - The Windsors

Poetry
I am going to risk another double set combining the poetry of Edward Thomas with the very moving memoir by Eleanor Farjeon:
21 Edward Thomas - The Collected Poems
22 Eleanor Farjeon - Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years

And for an anthology:
23 Wavell - Other Men's Flowers

Science
Not my strong suit at all. Relying on some latitude from my fellow editors:

24 Deborah Cadbury - The Seven Industrial Wonders of the World

Biography/memoir
I am going to indulge here, because this is a strong interest. But these hardly do justice:

25 Rosemary Sutcliffe - The Blue Remembered Hills
26 Michael Holroyd - Augustus John
27 Dannie Abse - Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve
28 Joyce Cary - A House of Children

Religion
Again, a weak spot. I'll offer:

29 C S Lewis - Surprised by Joy

Art
I'll take this to include architecture and put up the excellent recent biography of Lutyens, which would lend itself splendidly to FS's high standards of illustration:

30 Mary Ridley - The Architect and his Wife.

There - I'm done. Food, philosophy, the classics, music, works in translation - all shamefully neglected this year.

> 66

Denton Welch. Very good. Have you got the two volume collected Denton Welch put out by Tartarus Press?

Some interesting ideas here - especially the Schreber and Confessio Amantis - the Gower untranslated & in LE.

Bad! Bad!! Bad Felixholt - for ruling yourself out of a judging role! And bad for reminding me of The Ginger Man. I am (or, more correctly, was) a 'ginger man' - and I loved The Ginger Man as a teenager. I confess (for those in the know) of once presenting myself gift-wrapped in a similar fashion as the Ginger Man to a youthful inamorata...

Well.

I started my list last night, when there were only a few others posted. I tried to avoid books already mentioned, but went to bed before finishing it and came home to find quite a few of my nominees on other lists. Here's what I have:

1 - The Book of Ebenezer le Page – G.B. Edwards
2 - The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
3 – Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968 – Heda Margolius Kovály
4 – A Canticle for Liebowitz – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
5 -The Singular Adventures of Baron Munchausen – Rudolph Raspe, et al
6 – Ali and Nino – Kurban Said
7 – With the Old Breed at Peliliu and Okinawa – E.B. Sledge
8 – The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
9 – The Good Soldier Svejk – Jaroslav Hasek
10 – Kaputt – Curzio Malaparte
11 – Islandia – Austin Tappan Wright
12 – Tirant lo Blanc – Joanot Martorell & Marti Joan de Galba
13 – The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy – Kenneth Pomeranz
14 – The Rise of the Image and the Fall of the Word – Mitchell Stephens
15 – The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
16 – Kamikaze Diaries – Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
17 – We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
18 – The Satanic Verse – Salman Rushdie
19 – The Federalist Papers
20 – The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money – John Maynard Keynes
21 – The Proper Study of Mankind – Isaiah Berlin
22 – In Praise of Folly – Erasmus
23 – High Fidelity – Nick Hornby
24 – Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond
25 – The Tain (Tain Bo Cuailnge)
26 – Flatland – Edwin A. Abbott
27 – West with the Night – Beryl Markham
28 – The Conspiracy of Pontiac – Francis Parkman, 2 volumes
29 – Memoirs – Ulysses S. Grant
30 – De Officiis - Cicero

Not as Anglocentric as the Society's offerings usually are, but I'm a Yank. The hardest part of this was keeping the list to only 30 books. And I'm very glad to see that others prize Tirant lo Blanc as much as I (and Cervantes) do.

> 66 No, I don't know that at all, thank you very much. I must research. I have never found Welch's books easy to come by.

> 68 Aha! And do you know The History of the Ginger Man? - Donleavey's account of its writing and publication - almost as good as the book itself.

> 69. To me one of the best things of this exercise is that the Anglocentric shackles are being undone and I am learning an awful lot about the non-English canon. Its great!

> 59 - Life and Fate! Superb!

> 65 - Folio published a letterpress collection of Edward Thomas' poems in 1988, under the title "These Things also are Spring's". I have a copy, and it is a lovely (though short) volume.

Here is one more list, in no discernible order, which repeats a few choices already made by other devotees:

1. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
2. Kabloona by Gontran de Poncins
3. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
4. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
5. Disraeli: A Picture of the Victorian Age by André Maurois
6. The Electric Kool-Aid Test by Tom Wolfe
7. Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
8. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
9. The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus by Jean-Denis Bredin
10. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
11. Troubles by J.G. Farrell
12. The Singapore Grip by J. G. Farrell (to complete the Empire trilogy)
13. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
14. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
15. Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler
16. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
17. Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy MacLean
18. Wickford Point by John P. Marquand
19. Folio Poets: Robert Burns
20. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (or any number of Maugham novels)
21. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
22. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
23. Truman by David McCullough
24. The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
25. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (a new edition to match the recent FS Gaskell series)
26. Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen
27. The Stranger by Albert Camus
28. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
29. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
30. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

>43 LucasTrask: LucasTrask: The Folio Society has published 2 editions of The Red Badge of Courage and there have been at least 6 printings of the 2nd edition. My copy was printed in 1998.

>70 Felixholt:

I haven't read The History of the Ginger Man - but if you recommend it I will track down a copy as vacation reading. I am in that unhappy position where I can't decide whether to attack some of the books I would like to read or whether I should buckle down and write a couple of law review articles before it's back to teaching in October. I only wish I had Cass Sunstein's facility for writing - I was at a conference once when the chair of a panel announced, "We'll take 15 minutes for coffee while Cass writes a short law review article."

In no particular order my preferences, and apologies in advance for the pro Irish bias: I've tried to include as many as possible of the usual catagories .

1. Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle
2. Selected Poems by Seamus Heaney
3. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
4. The Void Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton
5. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
6. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (to begin the series)
7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
8. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
9. A Peoples Tragedy by Orlando Figgis
10. The Cyclops by Euripides
11. The Rabbit Novels by John Updike
12. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (LE)?
13. The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
14. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
15. The French Lieutenants Woman or The Magus by John Fowles
16. Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchey
17. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
18. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein
19. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
20. Why I am not a Christian and other Essays by Bertrand Russell
21. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
22. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig
23. Brooklyn by Colm Tobin
24. Paroles by Jacques Prevert
25. Life: A Users Manual by Perec
26. At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
27. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
28. The Tain (Translation by Thomas Kinsella: Illustrations by Louis de Brocquy)
29. The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
30. An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

Edited to correct typo ! Again

My suggestions:

1. The Cantos by Ezra Pound
2. Selected Poems by Robert Frost
3. Being There by Jerzy Kosinski
4. The Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov
5. Black Spring by Henry Miller
6. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
7. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
8. USA trilogy by John Dos Passos
9. The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
10. The Dumas Club by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
11. Diaries by Anaïs Nin
12. Bomarzo by Manuel Mújica Lainez
13. Briefing for a Descent into Hell by Doris Lessing
14. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago
15. Scandals of Sydney Town by Frank Clune
16. Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
17. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
18. Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany
19. Lacoon by E. G. Lessing
20. The Nude by Kenneth Clark
21. Maus by Art Spiegelman
22. Asterios Polyp by David Mazzuchelli
23. Tamara Drew by Posy Simmonds
24. A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne
25. Tirant lo Blanc by J. Martorell
26. How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
27. Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno
28. The Last Puritan by George Santayana
29. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
30. Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell

Some great ideas here. I hope the mole is looking in.

> 75

Drasvola, did you know that Sir Kenneth Clarke's The Nude is going to be the presentation volume for the new membership year?

Interested to see Santayana on your list. I have never read him before but I was reading an essay about him this morning by John Gray in "Gray's Anatomy" (John Gray is a UK philosopher). When he began to feel opressed by the stuffy atmosphere at Harvard, Santayana upped sticks and left to do his own thing. That anyone with tenure at Harvard would leave was unheard of back then. It made me think that he might be good guy to become aquainted with.

> 76

Thank you, Quicksilver. Had no idea that The Nude was going to be the presentation volume for the new membership year. What a coincidence!

Santayana is in the line of Spanish thinkers who mix humanism, poetry and mysticism. According to one report, he was teaching a Philosophy class at Harvard one bright morning, the windows in the classroom open, when he turned to his students and said "Gentlemen, I have a date with Spring." He then left the room never to return to Harvard or the US.

But, I'm afraid that my list is a bit radical...

Cheers

I understand Santayana left Harvard because Harvard did not appreciate him, apparently he was never promoted from instructor though he was hugely popular amongst peers and students. One of my idols (W.E.B. Du Bois) was his student and was highly influenced by him.

> 78

An excellent source is George Santayana: A Biography by John McCormick.

dianp, thanks for the information on Red Badge of Courage. That's what I get for doing this without Folio 60 handy. I was trying to get an American author from the late 19th century, but I have given up on that and replaced it with The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

I would also like to offer a book, but I don't have any duplicate or other FS title I currently am willing to part with. However, I do have a duplicate of A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television by John Kenneth Muir I will offer as a prize (if it is wanted) so there can be three winners.

I have a duplicate (still shrinkwrapped) of Blake to offer as a prize.

(It said "skin"wrapped, which would have got me into a terrible hassle regarding accurate description of materials...)

I currently work in an Academic bookstore in the North of England. We have absolutely no customers, it being the summer holidays, so me and the rest of the rather bored staff have spent all morning coming up with this list.

1. 'History of Reading'- Alberto Manguel
2. 'The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts'- Louis De Bernieres
3. 'Atonement'- Ian McEwan
4. 'Revelations of Divine Love'- Julian of Norwich
5. 'Real Fast Food'- Nigel Slater
6. 'Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England'- Alison Weir
7. 'Ivanhoe'- Walter Scott
8. 'History of Witchcraft'- Montague Summers
9. 'Stardust'- Neil Gaiman
10. 'Berlin Noir'- Philip Kerr
11. 'The History of Sexuality'- Michel Foucault
12. 'The Reader'- Bernhard Schlink
13. 'Dune'- Frank Herbert
14. 'The History of God'- Karen Armstrong
15. 'Long Walk to Freedom'- Nelson Mandela
16. 'Beloved'- Toni Morrison
17. 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas'- John Boyne
18. 'In Europe'- Geert Mak
19. 'The Well of Loneliness'- Radclyffe Hall
20. 'The Communist Manifesto'- Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels
21. 'The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat' - Oliver Sacks
22. 'Katherine'- Anya Seton
23. 'The Crucible'- Arthur Miller
24. 'American Psycho'- Bret Easton Ellis
25. 'Mein Kampf'- Adolf Hitler
26. 'A Brief History of Time'- Stephen Hawking
27. 'The Earthsea Quartet'- Ursula le Guin
28. 'Foundation'- Issac Asimov
29. 'Love all the People'- Bill Hicks
30. 'Inkheart'- Cornelia Funke

79: Drasvola I'd already ordered it via Amazon and thank you.

82: Witchylady333 I cannot believe FS has not already published Atonement; would love to see The Well of Loneliness published.

Interesting choices across the board - I'm liking a little bit on everyone's list! In particular...

>72 dianp:

I like the inclusion of Empire Falls! Excellent novel.

>82 Witchylady333:

Lots of good things on your list - I had trouble coming up with a drama title and I like your mention of The Crucible. Stardust is a good choice as well, but it makes me recall that I wanted to put The Princess Bride on my list and then forgot it! Oops.

> 82

I second the History of Reading on your list. A superb book which would make an ideal presentation volume. I doubt Folio would be brave enough to risk Mein Kampf - although Easton have published it.

> 83

You're welcome, Texaco.

don't know the back catalog...

1. Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch - Miller
2. The Tremor of Forgery - Highsmith
3. Angel in the Whirlwind - Bobrick
4. The Moral Animal - Wright
5. The Westing Game - Raskin
6. The Tain
7. Lucky Jim - Amis
8. The Day of the Locust - West
9. The Girl with the Long Green Heart - Block
10. The Phantom Tollbooth - Juster
11. The Mousehole Cat - Barber
12. The Postman Always Rings Twice - Cain
13. The Elementary Particles - Houellebecq (will not happen)
14. The Night Country - O'Nan
15. Aura - Fuentes
16. Little House on the Prairie set
17. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Aiken
18. Folio Poets: Louise Glück
19. Factotum - Bukowski
20. The 13 Clocks - Thurber
21. The Tooth Fairy - Graham Joyce
22. Rabbit books - Updike
23. Lonesome Dove - McMurtry
24. Ironweed - Kennedy
25. The Wapshot Chronicle - Cheever
26. Games People Play - Berne
27. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Jackson
28. Hotel de Dream - White
29. The Knight - Wolfe
30. The Disappearance of Childhood - Postman

The Master and Margarita - Bulgakov is due for the oncoming year illustrated by one of my favourite current artists Peter Suart

Dead Ned by John Masefield
Venus in the Kitchen by Pilaff Bey
The Bovo-Buch by Elia Levita Bachur
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Pauline à la Plage: Le Scénario (with facing page English translation
and DVD insert) by Éric Rohmer
Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho by Willis Barnstone (trans.)
Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman
The Saragossa Manuscript by Count Jan Potocki
Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon
Love on a Branch Line by John Hadfield
Pompeii by Mary Beard
Picture by Lilian Ross
South Wind by Norman Douglas
Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
By the Ionian Sea by George Gissing
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner
Good Evening, Everyone! - the Ghost Stories of A J Alan
The First Men in the Moon by H G Wells
Days and Nights of Service with Sir Gerald Graham's
Field Force at Suakin by Major E A Cosson
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Letters to Sir William Temple by Dorothy Osborne
Clochemerle by Gabriel Chevallier
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Greek Memories by Compton Mackenzie
Memoirs of the Boer War by Jan Smuts

Under the caveat that I only buy used Folio books (which most of the time look like new), this is my list:

1. A pattern language - Christopher Alexander (people hold on to this gem - try to get a used copy of this book at a substantial discount. The illustrations and photos look like they have been ripped out of the author's photo album. A better formatted and illustrated edition, even in two vol., would be wonderful.)
2. Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
3. The Best and the Brightest - David Halberstam (all Halberstam)
4. The March of Folly - Barbara Tuchman (with a newly commissioned essay on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars)
5. King Leopold's Ghost - Adam Hochschild
6. The Death of Woman Wang - JD Spence
7. The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators - G Grice
8. The Life of Billy Yank - BI Wiley
9. The Life of Johnny Reb - BI Wiley (with period illustrations by Alfred Waud and Edwin Forbes)
10. Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright - F Toker
11. The Life and Death of American Cities - J Jacobs
12. Voltaire in exile - I Davidson
13. Lincoln's Melancholy - JW Shenk
14. The Brontës - Juliet Barker
15. Marlborough - Richard Holmes (a good non-specialist biography)
16. The unrivaled self: Pepys - Claire Tomalin
17. Kafka: The Decisive Years - Reiner Stach (and the first volume, to be translated)
18. Q's Legacy - Helene Hanff (actually all her short personal books to join 84, Charing Cross)
19. The World of Yesterday - Stefan Zweig
20. In Europe - Geert Mak (probably a bit too continental and europhile)
21. Tales of the Alhambra - W Irving
22. Working - S Terkel (or some other work by Terkel)
23. Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
24. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
25. The three Kingdoms - translated by Moss Roberts (all four classic Chinese novels)
26. Lolita - V Nabokov (mixed with the travel notes and pictures about that journey by D E Zimmer)
27. Speak, memory - V Nabokov
28. A Collection of German Balads (Schiller, Goethe, Heine, ... deserve to be better known in the English parts of the world)
29. Flashman
30. A song of ice and fire: A game of thrones - GRR Martin (first three volumes)

I don't know about anyone else, but this is turning into a fantastic guide for me. There are books cropping up that I have never heard of and that has sent me scurrying to find out about them and see what I have been missing. My 'must read' list has suddenly got longer!

>93 celtic:
Agree, it's fascinating to see the different lists: overlaps, new titles (to me), and some daring suggestions (by Folio standards anyway).

Ok, I set myself a challenge to come up with a second, different list, allowing only that I may recycle authors (but not works). List 2:

1. Austerlitz by WG Sebald (may as well get that one out of the way)
2. Among the Dead Cities by AC Grayling
3. The Day of the Owl by Sciascia
4. A Simenon Compendium: Red Lights, Dirty Snow, Pedigree
5. Her Privates We by Frederic Manning
6. Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis
7. Battle Cry of Freedom by James M McPherson
8. The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
9. Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris
10. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
11. If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
12. Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King
13. Ask the Dust by John Fante
14. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
15. Written Lives by Javier Marais
16. Logue's Homer: War Music, Cold Calls, All Day Permanent Red
17. Blood Rites: origins and History of the passions of war by Barbera Ehrenreich
18. The Green Flag by Robert Kee
19. That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern
20. Rimbaud by Graham Robb
21. Karl Marx, A Life by Francis Wheen
22. That Sweet Sickness by Patricia Highsmith
23. LA Quartet by James Ellroy
24. Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski
25. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
26. The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
27. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
28. Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
29. The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles
30. On Murder by Thomas DeQuincey

typo

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and If Not Now, When? would be great

whilst there is much admirable about the McPherson do you not think he is a little zealous (dare not mention Dawkins) in some of his revisionism? I know that were I an American academic I would be worrying for my job for suggesting such a thing - but I am not so the worst I risk is being accused of being pro-slavery or an idiot, nonsensical charges (and not true, well not true as far as being racist anyway) but the sense is there, in his book and amongst his supporters (e.g. David Blight and co) that to not share their view is to be either an ignorant southern christian or a closet racist

sorry, it must look like I'm trying to get a rise out of people and I am not, I have read Battle Cry and do think it a superb one volume account of what happened (if not why it happened) and it is nice to discuss these things with people who have actually heard of it...

I agree these lists have already become a marvellous resource of books to ferret out and try

>95 lgreen666:
If I'm honest I wasn't aware of the "noise" around the book that you describe. But having encountered some curious views about the matter of the Civil War in southern states I personally found McPherson's "zeal" a relief.

There's always a danger of whitewash and the Civil War makes simplifications possibly uniquely easy...more so even then WW2. I'd have to read more to be in a position to critique McPherson, the Foote you suggest being an obvious point of departure.

Okay, here goes. I'm making my list before reading any of the posts so I'm not influenced by what others have already done. I've not included any that I know are already FS publications, but didn't go through my Folio 60 to eliminate any either. I know it's weak on poetry, mainly because I find I'm unable to say 'yes' to one when I know that means saying 'no' to so many others. I've included a few "children's" books, either because it's a great read for us old people too, or I know it was a big hit with my own children.

Also, there are many books published in the past 10 yrs or so that I would love to see as FS editions, but know that I might not feel that way in another 10 years or so, so my list tends to be older works. But there are a few pretty contemporary items - those that I'd rate head and shoulders above most of the really good books I've read lately (Eggers' "What is the What" and Lahiri's "Interpreter of the Maladies" come to mind).

I got down to 38 and couldn't justify cutting any one item out compared to any other still on the list, so, deciding I have enough stress right now, I left it at 38. Sorry.

Os.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In no particular order (and without too much checking for correct spelling):

1. A Canticle for Liebowitz - Miller
2. Beloved - Toni Morrison
3. Sexing the Cherry - Winterson
4. Sarum/London/The Forest (as a set) - Rutherfurd
5. Cannery Row/Sweet Thursday (as one volume) - Steinbeck
6. Breathing Lessons - Tyler
7. Trinity - Uris
8. Complete Short Stories - Wilde
9. In Cold Blood - Capote
10. Heart of Midlothian - Scott
11. Lay of the Last Minstrel/Lady of the Lake (set or one volume) - Scott
12. Essays - Emerson
13. Myth of Sisyphus - Camus
14. Geography of the Imagination - Davenport (what a mind!)
15. Brief History of Time - Hawking (perhaps designed to compliment "A Short History of Time"?
16. Collected Poems - W.H. Auden
17. The Faerie Queen - Spenser
18. Winesburg, OH - Anderson
19. The Americans (3 vol set) - Boorstin
20. Return to Akenfield - Taylor (designed to compliment Blythe's "Akenfield")
21. Lincoln/Burr (as a set) - Vidal
22. Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon
23. Journals - Lewis and Clark
24. What is the What - Eggers
25. Gould's Book of Fish - Flanagan
26. Duncton Wood - Horwood
27. Dune - Herbert
28. Foundation Trilogy - Asimov
29. Watership Down - Adams
30. My Uncle Silas - Bates (not to be confused with Lefanu's "Uncle Silas")
31. The Worm Forgives the Plow - Collis
32. Song of the Lark - Cather
33. Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
34. Invisible Man - Ellison (not to be confused with Wells' "The Invisible Man")
35. A Prayer for Owen Meany - Irving
36. Redwall - Jacques
37. A Wrinkle in Time - L'Engles
38. Interpreter of the Maladies - Lahiri

Thanks to the post about The Master and Margarita, I had to revise my list to delete that Reader's Choice from my list. I hasten to add that although I tried to think of the range of Folio Devotees as represented by the posters on this site, this is a very selfish list for the most part: if I already possessed a fine copy of a certain book (even though my edition wasn't a Folio edition), I didn't include it.

I did eschew my own (good, I think) counsel by including several works in translation, although I still prefer Folio restrict its activities to those works published in English (translations being such a messy issue). I have also included a few works in the Science-Fiction genre, although I have no affinity for this genre (or for Fantasy), but I have relied on the advice of people I know well and whose judgement I respect. I also, tried to avoid anything published in the past 40 years, feeling the jury might still be out, and the works should be readily available anyway. One thing I tried to do was to showcase deserving works that might not be so easily accessible. Readability was most important, and except for the Sci-Fi titles and The Constant Nymph, I read and enjoyed all of these titles (and again, when I hadn't read them, I have been well-advised. I also used as a primary criteria how well a book would respond to the Folio treatment, and in that respect, suggested illustrators I thought might do a good job (hopefully those suggested are still able to illustrate):

1. Kaputt, Curzio Malaparte, illustrated by Joseph M. Murphy
2. The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass, illustrated by Sam Weber
3. Joseph and His Brothers, Thomas Mann (translated by John E. Woods), illustrated by Harvey Chan
4. Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder, illustrated by Garth Williams
5. Hunger, Knut Hamsun (translated by Sverre Lyngstad), illustrated by Steven Devine
6. The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, Evelyn Waugh, illustrated by Beryl Cook
7. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Montserrat, illustrated with archival photos
8. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yukio Mishima, illustrated by Ian Stephens
9. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick, illustrated by Tim Laing
10. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin, illustrated by Max Scratchman
11. The Complete Plays of Aristophanes, illustrated by Graham Baker
12. Watch the North Wind Rise, Robert Graves, illustrated by Bill Bragg
13 The Middle Parts of Fortune, Frederic Manning, illustrated by the works of the Great War Artists--the Nashes, Wyndham Lewis, William Orpen, etc.
14. Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli, Ronald Firbank, illustrated by Clare Mackie or Jeffrey Fisher
15. The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K.Chesterton, illustrated by Beryl Cook
16. Non-Combatants and Others, Rose Macaulay, illustrated by Debra McFarlane
17 Lady into Fox, David Garnet, as originally illustrated by his wife, Rachel Marshall
18. Four Frightened People, Eileen Arbuthnot Robertson, illustrated by Lucy Weller using stills from the 1934 film
19 Peter Abelard, Helen Waddell, illustrated by Alan Witschonke
20 The Golden Warrior, Hope Muntz, illustrated by Melanie Hall
21 El Señor Presidente, Miguel Asturias, illustrated by Mark Summers
22 The Path Between the Seas, David McCullough, illustrated by archival photos
23 The Good Soldier Schweik, Jaroslav Hasek, illustrated by John Holder
24 The Ides of March, Thornton Wilder, illustrated by Stephen Devine
25. Apologia pro vita sua, John Henry Newman, illustrated by Peter Suart
26 The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton, illustrated with archival photos
27 Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond, illustrated by historical photos, art
28 The Coral Island, R.M. Ballantyne, illustrated by Chris Beatrice
29 The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, Herman Melville, illustrated by Sterling Hundley
30 The Constant Nymph, Margaret Kennedy, illustrated by Debra McFarlane

> 98

Joseph and His Brothers is a wonderful novel. I would be happy to see a Folio edition - but it would be a very fat volume. I suppose it could be broken down into its constituent volumes.

>99 Quicksilver66:

The Knopf edition is 1207 pages long and weighs 3 lbs! I would prefer to have it offered like the Durrell Alexandria Quartet or Scott's Raj Quartet.

>98 Django6924:

Books AND Illustrators - I'm in awe!

The Man who was Thursday/Beryl Cook - bet you had a smile on your face when you were thinking of that one. Inspired.

> 97
I'm glad you included My Uncle Silas - how could I have overlooked it. With its Ardizzone illustrations it would make a pocket-sized companion volume to the Society's Travels with a Donkey. (I think every membership year should include two or three such volumes.)

>102 featherwate:
Every list so far includes at least one work I feel I overlooked. That's why I didn't look at other lists until I posted my own.

Os.

>101 celtic:

I did indeed! She is the undisputed Master (Mistress?) of the whimsically bizarre!

>104 Django6924: - "was" - she died in 2008 ;-(

>105 overthemoon:

What a loss...she was my favorite Folio artist.

After seeing a couple of her illustrations in FS diaries, I bought Mr. Norris Changes Trains just for her illustrations. Turned out to be a fun read, but those illustrations!

Os.

>105 overthemoon:

Obviously I wasn't aware of this - very sad.

I remember a documentary about Beryl Cook and she 'held court' in her local pub surrounded by paintings she had given to the pub for free! She was not only one of the great humorous and individual artists, she was an entertaining character and lovely person who seemed totally unaffected by her fame.

I'll treasure the Folio books illustrated by her - there won't be any more.

My admiration goes for her illustrations in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, an FS edition which I regard as exemplary is every aspect. The story stands among the best works of fiction. I've forgotten how many times I've enjoyed the book and the film version with Maggie Smith!

>109 drasvola:

Couldn't agree more. The Folio 'Brodie' is one of their best in my opinion and I can't imagine anyone else playing that part in that film after Maggie Smith.

Beryl Cook also illustrated The Loved One - so maybe I have all her FS books? I also have two paperbacks, Bouncers and Beryl Cook's London, both of which are a joy.
Edited: don't know why the touchstone isn't working for the second one.

>111 overthemoon:

overthemoon, that edition of The Loved One was what made me think of her immediately when choosing a prospective artist for Gilbert Pinfold. Naturally when I was thinking of imagery for the Chesterton book, her inimitable style popped into my head.

It's odd, that I so strongly identify her as a Folio Society illustrator when she only illustrated those three books--but what books!!

I will add to my list as titles occur to me:

1. Texaco Patrick Chamoiseau
2. The Farming of Bones Edwidge Danticat
3. The Rape of Europa Lynn H. Nicholas
4. Constantine's Sword James Carroll
5. The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver
6. King Leopold's Ghost Adam Hochschild
7. Black Elk Speaks Black Elk and John G. Neihardt
8. Mister Jelly Roll Jelly Roll Morton and Alan Lomax
9. In the Time of the Butterflies Julia Alvarez
10. Atonement Ian McEwan
11. The West and the Rest of Us Chinweizu
12. White Teeth Zadie Smith
13. Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows Patrick Chamoiseau
14. Two Thousand Seasons Ayi Kwei Armah
15. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History Fawn Brodie
16. Morgan, American Financier Jean Strouse
17. Herndon's Lincoln William Henry Herndon
18. A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry

ian_curtin--I was tempted to put down Logue's Homer on my list and am glad you did so (truly one of the great ongoing poetic projects of our time).

django--great list; Newman's Apologia is an inspired choice. And I can't believe you included that very obscure Robert Graves--it took me forever to find a copy of Watch the North Wind Rise. Is that the only work of science fiction Graves wrote?

Many thanks to Felixholt for starting this topic. It's even more fun – and even more difficult – than selecting one's all-time England cricket XI.

I've tried to reflect the general mix of subjects in the present Folio list. With the help of Folio 60, I've also tried to broaden the scope by excluding not only works that have already appeared in FS editions but also any authors who've already had a book in the list. However, I couldn't give up my Beerbohm parodies, and I kept Cobbett's “Rural Rides” in the list because it's apparently coming up anyway. In fact, I mentioned the “Rides” in another thread as a work I'd like to see in a Folio edition, so maybe the mole deserves my thanks. Like Django (message 98), I've also overcome my resistance to translations of things that I can read (tant bien que mal) in the original.

My selection is a mixture of books I know and like and books I've never read but think I ought to know; so no doubt I'd have one or two disappointments if my suggestions were acted on.

ARTS:
Walter Pater: Studies in the History of the Renaissance

BIOGRAPHY:
Jenny Uglow: Hogarth

GENERAL:
Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa
David Landes: The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
Walter Savage Landor: Imaginary Conversations (selection, preferably biased towards classical antiquity)

FICTION:
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange
George Macdonald Fraser: Flashman
Peter Ackroyd: Hawksmoor
Keith Waterhouse: Billy Liar
Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim
Patrick Hamilton: The Slaves of Solitude
Compton Mackenzie: Whisky Galore
Sinclair Lewis: Babbitt
Robert Nye: The Voyage of the Destiny
Malcolm Bradbury: The History Man

FOOD AND DRINK:
George Saintsbury: Notes on a Cellar-Book

HISTORY:
Rosalind Miles: The Women's History of the World
Robert & Isabelle Tombs: That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present

HUMOUR:
Max Beerbohm: A Christmas Garland (illustrated with the author's own caricatures)

LANGUAGE:
Leo Rosten: The Joys of Yiddish

MYTH AND LEGEND:
Ken Dowden: The Uses of Greek Mythology

POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIOLOGY:
John Henry Newman: The Idea of a University

POETRY AND DRAMA:
Juvenal: Satires (a bilingual edition to go alongside the Society's Catullus and Horace; Peter Green's translation will do)
Robert Kehew (editor): Lark in the Morning (an anthology of troubadour poetry in the original with translations by W D Snodgrass, Ezra Pound and the editor)

RELIGION:
Ernest Renan: Life of Jesus

SCIENCE:
Stephen Jay Gould: Full House (a.k.a. Life's Grandeur)
Peter Medawar: Pluto's Republic

TRAVEL:
William Cobbett: Rural Rides
Thomas Coryat: Crudities (I suppose it will have to be abridged)
Samuel Purchas: Pilgrimes (selection)

An interesting list, TabbyTom. I particularly like your choices of Juvenal, Keith Waterhouse and Jenny Uglow. I personally would have chosen Hubert Creekmore's translation of Juvenal which, I feel, gives a good feel for the vigor of the original.

I'm a bit surprised by the inclusion of Margaret Mead. It's certainly an entertaining read - but I thought that Mead had been discredited as an anthropologist. As I recall, the jury was out as to whether she was naive and hoaxed or whether this was academic deceit. Are there any anthropologists on this list who would like to venture an opinion?

OK. I’ve abstained from other people’s lists to avoid being inspired by them, so there may be some duplication in “my” 30. Apologies for that.

I would suggest the following:

History:
The Mind In The Cave by David Lewis-Williams
Pilate by Anne Wroe
Life Of Alfred by Asser
Reformation by Diarmuid McCulloch
Liberators: South America's Savage Wars of Freedom 1810-30 by Robert Harvey
A Ride To Khiva by F.B. Burnaby (would fit the “Victorian” cover theme)
I Was Monty’s Double by M.E. Clifton-James (to go in the “espionage” series, like the Zimmerman Telegram)
Little Red Book by Mao Zedong (imagine this with an historical commentary – might be a bigger red book)

Science:

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
1, 2, 3, Infinity by George Gamow (would follow on nicely from the Feynman books)

Philosophy:

Ways Of Seeing by John Berger
The Greek Myths by Roberto Carozzo
I Ching (I can’t be the only one who would love to see this, with an explanatory commentary? Surely would lend itself to illustrations!)

Art:

Embarrassment Of Riches by Simon Schama
Matisse: The Master by Hilary Spurling

Children:

Charlie & The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (especially if this can be tied in with Hotel Chocolat or someone)

Nature:

Swifts In A Tower by David Lack (the monograph par excellence)
Leviathan by Philip Hoare (a cetacean prose poem, would go well with Moby Dick)

Literature:

The Tale Of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Comedies by Moliere
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (I can almost taste the illustrations)
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse (maybe in a similar cover to Brave New World? Shiny, exciting, futuristic – but cold and contrived)
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe EDIT: replace with The Famished Road by Ben Okri

Sport:

Beyond A Boundary by C.L.R. James (sport has been overlooked, so why not start with an acknowledged classic?)

Travel:

The Worst Journey In The World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Travels With A Tangerine by Tim Mackintosh-Smith

And I’ve got room for a couple of the usual extras:

Box set: The Complete Greek Tragedies (Grene/Lattimore translations would be good)

Presentation volume: The Ascent Of Man by Jacob Bronowski

I’ve tried to get a selection that covers the world by place and time, within the usual FS selections. More concentration on Europe, as that’s what I’m familiar with, but after all surely it’s fair that a book club in an English speaking country would concentrate on English language publications.

> 119 Lots of great selections there InVitrio. I particularly like your literature choices and Leviathan. Things Fall Apart has been done recently by the FS with sparse but beautiful illustrations by Kareem Ilya. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has also been Folioised, as part of the Dahl boxed set. As a self-confessed chocaholic I am absolutely intrigued by your tie-in suggestion with Hotel Chocolat - what on earth can you mean??

Augh, didn't realize Achebe had been Folioed. Maybe "The Famished Road" by Ben Okri as an example of modern African literature.

Tie-in with Hotel Chocolat? Thinking outside the box (of chocolates). Book comes with free snozzcumber pralines or something. Perhaps in a box, rather than a slipcase, with chocolate moulds based on book illustrations. It's not a particularly weighty book but would suit the whimsy.

>121 InVitrio: The second half of your post stands in strange counterpoint to "The Famished Road"...

Modern African literature and a Booker winner, sounds like a good choice.

Re. Hotel Chocolat - I'll be happy with a voucher; less chance of getting a sticky mess on the book.

I know HuxleyThe Cat has previously disavowed putting up a list - but can the feline mind not be changed?

>123 Felixholt: The feline mind is a fickle mind but in this instance not even a big bowl of seafood smothered in clotted cream could persuade me. Like most cats I prefer to lie around watching everyone work, besides which my proper job for the next two days is selecting about sixty titles, out of the approx ten thousand books published over the last three months in the UK, to keep my customers happy.

Shall we draw a line under this? looks as if all lists are in. Would a vote be too brutal - on another thread say, for tidiness sake?

It's not too late for stragglers to get their lists out - there are prizes to be won!

We do not have a judge yet. Although my name was advanced I feel that I am too likely to be swayed by those whose tastes are closest to my own list. Are there any public-spirited non-participants willing to swear by Sue Bradbury to judge contestants fairly and announce the top three? Perhaps we could have a panel of judges like the Booker Prize who could arrive at a winner and runners up by agreement?

Don't wait for me, I'm too lazy to think up a list that covers History, Politics, Science and Religion, though I have plenty of suggestions for fiction, travel and children.

Just a thought, but we have at least two members here, Quicksilver and foliomusthave, who are (very) frequent visitors to the Members' Room. How about we delegate to one, other or both, the task of persuading the two gentlemen who usually man the room to judge the entries for us. They would be unbiased and have the appropriate Folio insight. Whoever has been delegated could then report back to the group after a period of, say, a week.

Rafael Sabatini's "Scaramouche"

Alexandre Dumas "The Vicomte de Bragelonne" (which includes Ten Years Later and Louise de la Valiere, which fit neatly in between The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After)

Dorothy Dunnett's "The Lymond Chronicles" (6 books)

Mary Stewart's "The Crystal Cave"

Roger Caras "Dangerous to Man: The Definitive Story of Wildlife's Reputed Dangers"

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The White Company"

Sir Walter Scott's "Quentin Durward"

Henryk Sienkiewicz "With Fire and Sword" OR his Quo Vadis

Thomas Costain's "The Black Rose" and "The Silver Chalice"

C.J. Cherryh's "Chanur Chronicles" (the first 4 books, the 1st The Pride of Chanur is standalone, the next 3 are really one long book)

Kenneth Robert's "Lydia Bailey"

> 128

I stand ready to help if that's what the people here want to do.

>128 HuxleyTheCat:, 130

A cunning way to get the FS mole to emerge from his burrow and engage directly with this group. Perhaps he will then listen to other topics of concern.

Not a complete list but what I would like to see.

Tarr--Wyndham Lewis
The Ginger Man--Donleavy
The Sword of Honour Trilogy--Evelyn Waugh
Heart of a Dog--Bulgakov
The Castle of Otranto--Horace Walpole
Flashman--Fraser
The Latin America Trilogy--Louis de Bernieres
The Cheyenne Way--Llewellyn and Hoebel
Either/Or--Kierkegaard
Hells Angels & Fear in Loating in Las Vegas--Thompson
Boris Akunin--Azazel, as the first in the series
Mr. Vertigo--Paul Auster
The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion--Faulkner
and of course if it hasn't been published: Lolita

Either/Or would be an excellent addition to folio. Fear and Trembling would be an alternate, but I think Either/Or would make a beautiful volume, and I think they could really do something elegant with it

>132 prairiemeetsthepines:

Folio did a very fine Sword of Honour a few years ago, and The Castle of Otranto back in the 70s.

I would like anything by Nabokov except Lolita, and anything by Truman Capote except In Cold Blood.

I think Lolita is a good choice, except it can't be illustrated as Nabakov's estate has put a ban on this.

I would also love to see the Faulkner Snopes trilogy.

I still don't have any duplicate FS books, but beside my previous offer I will also offer the Subterranean Press edition of Rude Mechanicals as a prize.

OK. I threw one together without taking my "job" to seriously. By that I mean I picked books that I think the FS should publish but that might be disastrous if published in the same year from a business perspective, and certainly would be disastrous for me since I would want everyone of them. Also, I took a much more world-lit and American-lit centric view as the FS obviously has English-lit covered pretty well.

If I didn't get fired the first year, I'd try to be more balanced next year, I promise!

1. Hanta Yo by Ruth Beebe Hill, in series binding with Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
2. H.M.S. Ulysses by Alistair MacLean
3. Lion of Ireland by Morgan Llewellyn
4. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
5. Black Elk Speaks by John N. Niehardt, in series binding with Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
6. The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
7. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
8. The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda, if it sells well then continue the series
9. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
10. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. C'mon, you've published everything but this by Joyce...
11. The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. I mean, c'mon already...
12. Auto-da-fe by Elias Canetti
13. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula de Guin
14. Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan, in series binding with Darwin 8^P
15. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
16. Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʾo
17. Red Strangers by Elspeth Joscelin Grant Huxley
18. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
19. Shogun by James Clavell
20. Chesapeake by James Michener
21. The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer
22. Tao te Ching by Stephen Mitchell
23. Heimskringla: The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson, in series binding with Icelandic Sagas
24. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
25. Trinity by Leon Uris
26. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
27. The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
28. The Stranger by Albert Camus
29. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
30. The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander, possibly continue with the other Prydain books

Castaneda is an interesting idea. But I would stop after about book four - the first 4 books are clearly fictional, but the latter ones push credulity to the limit. Great books though.

>138 jveezer:

John G. Neihardt! You've brought back some memories with that one, jveezer. When I was an undergraduate back in Missouri, I heard Neihardt do a public reading of his "The Song of Hugh Glass." He was poet-in-residence at the time, and trying to complete his Cycle of the West epic.

I had The Forgotten Soldier on my list at one point, but it seemed like I was getting too heavily into WW I-themed literature so I dropped it. Glad to see other posters have nominated it.

139: Agreed. I think I made it through The Eagle's Gift but don't remember if I stopped on purpose or I just didn't realize there were more to go. Being a bit of a completist though always makes me want to complete a series even if individual books are much stronger than others.

Django: I've read The Twilight of the Sioux and would love to have that whole cycle in a good condition hardback or a nice new edition, maybe with the complete cycle all in one volume.

Have come a bit late to this, as have been away on holiday, but this is my contribution. Having put the list together, I've been to look at what others have listed (they're some really superb ideas, which I hope somebody in FS will take not of) and there are a few overlaps, but not as many as I thought. One or two have definitely been influenced by discussions on previous threads (M&M!!). I think (with one partial exception) I've avoided previous FS publications.

Fiction
Hawksmoor - Peter Ackroyd
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Harpole Report - JL Carr
2001, A Space Odyssey - Arthur C Clarke
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
The Bone People - Keri Hulme (1)
A Very Long Engagement - Sebastien Japrisot
Whisky Galore - Compton Mackenzie
Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley (2)
Short Stories - Edith Wharton (3)
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf (4)

Children's Fiction
The Dark is Rising sequence - Susan Cooper (5)
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell

Poetry
Collected Works - Ted Hughes (6)

Non-Fiction
An Outline of European Architecture - Nikolaus Pevsner
Pepys, The Unequalled Self - Claire Tomalin
The Life of Mahatma Gandhi - Louis Fischer
Small is Beautiful - EF Schumacher
Battle Cry of Freedom - James McPherson
The Identity of France - Fernand Braudel (7)
Africa: A Biography of the Continent - John Reader
Nature Writing - John Muir (8)
The Richness of Life - Stephen Jay Gould (9)
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush - Eric Newby
Rural Rides - William Cobbett (10)
Farthest North - Fridtjof Nansen
A Voyage for Madmen - Peter Nichols (11)

A few notes:
1 - to go with the Booker series
2 - maybe to start a Pullitzer equivalent to the Booker series?
3 - would need to be a set collected together by FS, but definitely to include a sample of her ghost stories. Would also like to see House of Mirth (and others), all published in series with Age of Innocence, but HoM excluded under the no previous FS rule.
4 - Or any one of other VW books that need FS treatment (Orlando! The Years! etc etc.) This might have gone well as a pair with Michael Cunningham's The Hours (another one for the Pullitzer series?)
5 - I've got this as an omnibus paperback, so could be done as a single volume
6 - as in the very full collection by Paul Keegan which included Tales of Ovid, Birthday Letters etc
7 - I've got this in 2 volumes, and looks as if it would probably need to be the same
8 - Somethign similar to what Library of America did - a collection.
9 - Or something like Wonderful Life. Listed this as it is an excellent selection of his essays from a wide range of books.
10 - Bits included in a previous FS publication of yore, Cobbett's England, but way overdue for a proper treatment in its own right.
11 - Has the FS published anything on sport ever? Can't find anything, so whilst this is not your conventional sport, wanted to include something in there related.

No food, no myths, no classical world, no philosophy, but hope there's otherwise a decent range.

>142 Willoyd: - A decent range, indeed. There are several books there that I would happily buy. This thread has been a lot of fun, but has provided me with at least two years worth of books to read. Maybe three.

Good list Willoyd. I would love to see Hawksmore and a Suitable Boy. A Suitable Boy is so massive it will probably have to be split into two volumes, like Clarissa.

>143 coynedj: I do agree - it was a lot of fun both putting that list together and reading everybody else's. It's also made me have more respect for the editorial team at FS: it's not easy putting a set together, and of course we don't have any of the other issues they face (like rights etc). I do hope there is a mole though that might take some of these discussions on board, even if we represent a very small percentage of their readership.

>142 Willoyd: The only FS on sport of which I can immediately think is Piers Egan's "Boxiana", which seems to be pretty rare.

>142 Willoyd: What a good list, Willoyd.

Without even thinking about it, I can see my four renewal volumes (Edith Wharton Short Stories, A Suitable Boy, Black Beauty and Small is Beautiful) - and I would definitely be buying more during the year!

I have suggested more Edith Wharton to FS previously, and would love to see them publish a series of all her books.

>147 Ooshie: Thank you. I sooooo agree about a Wharton series. I quite like their presentation of Age of Innocence as a template too.

Me too Ooshie and not to be presumptuous but might I suggest the following:

http://www.loa.org/wharton

>148 Willoyd: I agree, Age of Innocence is a lovely edition; my poor House of Mirth looks quite dowdy next to it.

>149 Texaco: Thank you, Texaco - now, restraint or indulgence, what will win...

Winston Churchill's biography written by Martin Gilbert

>151 carolineroche: - The Churchill biography was published in two volumes in 2004.

1. Year of Wonders~Geraldine Brooks
2. Girl with a Pearl Earring~Tracy Chevalier
3. Out of Africa-Isak Dineson
4. The Vicar of Wakefield~Oliver Goldsmith
5. The House of the Seven Gables~Nathaniel Hawthorne
6. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase~Joan Aiken
7. Fahrenheit 451~Ray Bradbury
8. The Brontës~Juliet Barker
9. Stardust~Neil Gaiman
10. New Grub Street~George Gissing
11. The Odd Women~George Gissing
12. Edith Wharton set
13. Little House on the Prairie set
14. Phantom of the Opera~Gaston Leroux
15. Essays~Emerson
16. A London Family~Molly Hughes
17. Kilvert's Diary
18. Beauty~Robin McKinley
19. Black Beauty~Anna Sewell
20. Poems~Christina Rossetti
21. The Christian Year~Keble
22. Dead Souls~Nikolai Gogol
23. Gothic Tales~Elizabeth Gaskell
24. Anne of Green Gables/Avonlea entire series
25. Sketchbook of Washington Irving
26. My Antonia~Willa Cather
27. Little Women (the complete version this time)
28. The Wives of Henry VIII~Alison Weir
29. Elizabeth I~Alison Weir
30. Moll Flanders~Daniel Defoe

>151 carolineroche:, 152

Unless you mean the full version! - 8 hefty narrative volumes and 16 (to date) companion volumes of letters, documents, etc. (The first 2 narrative and first 5 companion volumes were written/edited by Randolph Churchill.)

Are we getting any closer to choosing the winners?

^ yeah, why hasn't somebody collected this all into a spreadsheet and counted up mentions received by book. I will also expect that to be a sortable spreadsheet...

I was happy to let this slide for a while since I had posted that I had two copies of The Persian Wars to offer but discovered I could only locate one. Happily the other has now turned up and so I am ready for the prize giving.

What we lack is a judge or panel of judges. I have already declined to do this on grounds that I posted my own list and would most likely favor those whose choices most nearly reflected my own.

Can we have three self-selected volunteers who:

1) did not post a list of their own
2) are willing to scrutinize entries and rank them in order most closely resembling the mix of a real FS year's worth of publications or some other criteria agreed between them?

Don't all rush at once...

I didn't quite expect to get *no* volunteers after my mildly sarcastic remark at the end of >157 appaloosaman:.

We are in the position where some modest prizes have been offered and various people have entertained us with their thoughts about what might make an interesting FS list - but noone is willing to step up to the plate and be one of the judges.

There are plenty of people reading the messages in this group who did not invest time in offering their own thoughts on a list. Surely some of you can spend the time reviewing entries and choosing a winner on the criteria stated in >157 appaloosaman:?

To spare anyone opprobrium or argument and to reinforce the message that the judges' decision is final, can I please have some anonymous self-appointed volunteers willing to sit in judgment?

If you are willing to do this, please send me a message to my e-mail address as shown on my profile page. I promise not to divulge your identity to disappointed trainee editors. Judges can decide for yourselves whether or not you wish to confer as a group or send me your winners and I will act as go-between to arrive at the winners.

I really would like to get this out of the way this week since I am on vacation for the two following weeks and won't then be able to mail the prizes. It reflects poorly on the group that the challenge was taken up enthusiastically by some but nobody else is willing to make the judgment of Paris.

Come on now - don't be shy!

Since there are three FS books offered as prizes for the winners I will make the two non-FS books I previously offered plus some others available as rewards for the first three volunteers willing to be judges. The books available for judges to select from are:
Folio Society
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
Woodbrook by David Thomson
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Easton Press
Beowulf translated by William Ellery Leonard illustrated by Lynd Ward
(bottom corner on back cover is torn)
Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley
(top corner on back slightly ripped on inside
Other
A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television by John Kenneth Muir
Rude Mechanicals by Kage Baker

The Folio Society and Easton Press books are only available for judges. If the other 2 books are not selected by a judge they will remain available as prize selections, if wanted.

I will be willing to judge, and would be very much interested in the Easton Press Le Morte DArthur. September 8th will be the date I will have my decision by.

Ok - at the moment we have but a singleton judge. Clearly Sue Bradbury's shoes were difficult ones to fill since even a rewarded temporary appointment here is proving unattractive. Who would have thought that being fantasy FS literary editor was a poisoned chalice?

Come on guys 'n' gals - we need another two of you to step forward.

Personally,

I havent read (or heard off) even quarter of the books mentioned in all the lists and dont feel qualified to judge. I must admit to being scifi/fantasy buff and am not well rounded in my taste. The appointment isnt unattractive, maybe most just dont feel qualified to judge like myself.

> 159 LucasTrask

At post > 81, I offered Blake as a prize. I have not withdrawn my offer.

I hadn't volunteered as I am a very new member of the group. Also, I thought lots of others would be volunteering! However, I am happy to be a judge if no one felt to be more qualified asks to be so.

Chase and Ooshie, thanks for volunteering to be judges. Chase, send me an email or PM with your address and I will get the E/P Le Morte Dathur shipped out to you this weekend. Ooshie, send me an email or PM with what book you want, along with your address and I will get it shipped out to you this weekend as well.

We have a third volunteer by e-mail to me and so the triumvirate is complete. I hope to have their nominations by the end of the day - if need be I will ask them to confer like the Booker prize committee to settle the final order.

> 165

Thank you, LucasTrask; done!

> 166

I will get down to choosing my nominations right away.

Judge #1 has his top 3 submitted to appaloosaman.

Quot homines, tot sententiae! We have three prizes available for the aspiring editors and two can be awarded in the first round of voting among our judges. Based upon votes and rankings, the winner is Beatlemoon for her list at >45 beatlemoon:. The runner up is Osbaldistone for his list at >97 Ealhmund:.

A number of small animals are being slaughtered and their entrails inspected as I consult our judges as to their pick for third place. In the meantime I invite Beatlemoon to select either The Persian Wars offered by me (I have two copies on offer) or Blake offered by drasvola at >81 drasvola:. Once she has had her pick Osbaldistone can have his.

Brava Beatlemoon!

>> 117 - TabbyTom - my heart lept to see Newman's The Idea of a University on someone's list. I had been wondering about it for years, often reading Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road where she is in raptures at getting a first edition.

This year I joined the London Library and took out an edition from the 1870s to read and loved it. Having to acquire my own, rather salutory, paperback copy as I always have to have books I love in my own library. I would love an FS copy of this book, and think all our 'leaders' should read it!

Lots of other suggestions on lists I love too including : Beloved (Morrison); Farenheit 451 (Bradbury); Mrs Dalloway (Woolf); In Europe (Mak); Invisible Cities (Calvino).

Really enjoying discovering new possibilities too. Will ponder on my list.

I shall have to pull Speak, Memory and Master and Margherita off the shelves soon though as they seem to be the front runners on lists!

Wow! And to think, I just wrote up a list on a lark! :)

I'll take the Blake - thank you, guys! What a lovely way to start my morning!

> 171

Congratulations, beatlemoon!

Will ship the book this weekend. Enjoy!

After a further round of consultation with our judges I can announce that the trainee editor in third place is coynedj with list >69 coynedj:.

If osbaldistone and coynedj would like to e-mail me with details of their names and postal addresses I will mail out copies of The Persian Wars to them tomorrow.

Many thanks to our three judges who stepped up to the plate and helped select our winners. The judges can avail themselves of LucasTrask's offer at >159 LucasTrask: by contacting him to collect their reward.

Thanks to Felixholt for devising this interesting exercise - I'm sure we have all had pleasure in looking at different people's ideas of titles worthy of the FS treatment. I know that some books have been brought to my attention that I would not otherwise have known about - and they join my "must read" list as future purchases.

Who knows? - the mole(s) may have indulgently looked on and reported back a few ideas to HQ. All I need now is the much desired, long promised and (hopefully) yet to be delivered on a date known only to the moles - the FS The Master and Margarita!

I should think that thanks are also due to appaloosaman who has very kindly coordinated this contest.

As Folio devotees we are surely recognizant that his efforts have led to a successful conclusion.

> 174

Yes - It was a lot of fun and great for learning about new books!

I've 'favourited' a number of the lists for future reference.

Great idea by Felixholt brought (through some effort) to a satisfactory conclusion by Appaloosaman - and the winners got prizes provided by other Devotees - Wonderful!

Thanks to all involved in this thread - it was one of the most enjoyable reads on FSd in a long time.

Thanks all - organisers, participants, judges - great thread...

I was interested in seeing a complete list of all titles and authors mentioned in this thread so I put them all in a spreadsheet. If I didn’t make any mistakes there are 30 lists with a total of 889 books, series and sets. Of these, 117 titles are listed 2 or more times and 598 are unique titles*. There are 598 authors listed, of which 82 have 2 or more titles listed while the other 516 have a single title listed (including 10 co-authors).

The eighteen most listed titles are:
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov - 8
Flashman - George MacDonald Fraser - 5
The Rabbit series -John Updike - 5
Lucky Jim- Kingsley Amis - 5
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol - 5
Hawksmoor - Peter Ackroyd - 5
Speak, Memory - Vladimir Nabokov - 5
The Worst Journey In The World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard - 4
Dune - Frank Herbert - 4
Life: A Users Manual - Georges Perec - 4
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond - 4
Little House on the Prairie series - Laura Ingalls Wilder - 4
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury - 4
Poems - Robert Burns - 4
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - 4
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf - 4
Ivanhoe - Walter Scott - 4
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner - 4

The eighteen authors with the most titles listed are:
Walter Scott - 6
William Faulkner - 6
Alison Weir - 4
Edith Wharton - 4
Paul Bowles - 4
Anthony Beevor - 3
Christopher Logue - 3
Colm Toibin - 3
David McCullough - 3
Edward Rutherfurd - 3
George Gissing - 3
Georges Simenon -3
John Wyndham -3
Patricia Highsmith -3
Simon Singh - 3
Stephen Jay Gould - 3
Taylor Branch - 3
Vladimir Nabokov - 3

The top eleven mentioned authors overall are:
Walter Scott – 10 times - 6 titles
Vladimir Nabokov – 10 times - 3 titles
William Faulkner – 9 times - 6 titles
Mikhail Bulgakov – 9 times - 2 titles
Kingsley Amis – 6 times - 2 titles
Peter Ackroyd – 6 times - 2 titles
John Updike – 6 times - 2 titles
John Wyndham – 5 times - 3 titles
Ray Bradbury – 5 times - 2 titles
Robert Burns – 5 times - 2 titles
Virginia Woolf – 5 times - 2 titles

I also counted 14 titles that have been announced for publication in the 2011 membership year.

* One person listed an ‘Edith Wharton set’ without any further information

Well well: Sir Scott, most popular choice! Take heed mole.

And not a single Tolkien in sight! Must be a record for book lists!

Well done, all.

I "judged" all the lists, including my own, and I while I won't say I was surprised, only one of the three winners was in my top three: beatlemoon in second. I placed Osbaldistone 13th and coynedj 10th, while I put my own list 4th.

Thanks to all for a fun thread. I never expected to actually win a prize - I thought it would just be interesting to put a list together. I will email my address details forthwith.

The best thing about this thread has been the gathering of new titles to read. Now if I could only manage to become wealthy enough to not need to work, and to get a few extra hours added to each day, maybe I could actually read them all!

I "judged" all the lists, including my own, and I while I won't say I was surprised, only one of the three winners was in my top three: beatlemoon in second. I placed Osbaldistone 13th and coynedj 10th, while I put my own list 4th.
Somewhat inevitable I suspect, but with three judges working on it, some of the individual slants will have got evened out. I had a look down as well, and of the three selected, one I hadn't heard of two-thirds of the books and another I had 'disqualified' for not being within the 'rules', whilst some imposed extra rules on themselves (e.g. not previously published by the FS) and some didn't. That is not a complaint - merely to illustrate that as individuals we will have all come to different conclusions!
Thanks to FelixHolt for the idea - great thread! - and to all the judges, prize donators, and above all to the list writers - they've certainly given me plenty to think about for future reading - and, obviously, books that I need to find out more about! I like the stats LucasTrask - provides an interesting overview.
On a personal note, I'm delighted to see that both Rural Rides and Short Walk in the Hindu Kush are actually being published this year. A wee bit disappointed that FS have decided to do Gandhi's own autobiography, which I didn't find the most stimulating of reading (to put it mildly), the latter reason being why I selected Louis Fischer's more readable biography, but can't have everything!

>183 Willoyd: - I had a look down as well, and of the three selected, one I hadn't heard of two-thirds of the books and another I had 'disqualified' for not being within the 'rules', whilst some imposed extra rules on themselves (e.g. not previously published by the FS) and some didn't.

I agree with some of Willoyd's comemnts - but I'm not carping. I was just grateful to find three people willing to make a decision and I certainly wasn't going to start criticizing the way they went about the task or their choices. There was a real danger that the prizxes wouldn't be awarded at all for lack of judges. This topic was Felixholt's good idea and I was the one to turn it into a competition without any clear ground rules being set out.

I was one of the judges and I can say that it was tough. There were no entries that could simply be dismissed right off the bat--yet there were more than 30 entries and only 3 could win. So, speaking for myself only, I eliminated half immediately and then another half and then it got really tough. For me I had to eliminate several entries which I personally liked very much, but which I felt were either too narrowly focused (say too much contemporary fiction) or contained more than one title which I did not think Folio Society would publish. But we could have had a prize for everybody because every list was full of very good choices made by thoughtful people. I had a blast, though in retrospect I'm a bit disgruntled in that there were more than a few books that weren't on my reading radar. My to read shelf is already double stacked as it is!

>178 LucasTrask:

thanks LucasTrask this is really fascinating! there is more continuity than might be expected... it is particularly pleasing to see that there is demand for folio to 'do' faulkner i am always surprised that they haven't and think there is a good opportunity for them here - not the least because the easton press set is really not good and the rabbit books, etc

>184 appaloosaman: I agree with some of Willoyd's comemnts - but I'm not carping.
Just in case, can I make it clear I'm definitely not either - far from it. I think Huxley summed it up neatly in >176 HuxleyTheCat:.

I have put my spreadsheet of all the titles in this thread up on Google Docs for anyone who might wish to see the complete list. There are three sheets, sorted by author's last name, one sorted by title and one sorted by number of times mentioned then title. Rows in red are being published in 2011.

When updating it for proper sorting I found another author with two books listed (misspelled name) and another title being published I had missed, bring the total up to 14. I have also edited my earlier post to reflect this information and I also included the 10 co-authors I overlooked previously.

>169 appaloosaman:, 173
Sorry, appaloosaman. I've been away for a few days.

After reading the lists submitted on this thread, I wouldn't have picked my own, but I'm happy to add "The Persian Wars" to my library. On every list I saw a work that made me wonder why I didn't think of that one.

I'll email my mailing address shortly. Thanks for the adding a bit more fun to the thread.

Os.

Wonderful.. I wish I had participated in this .

but been to ER for slitting my wrists after seeing "tirant lo blanc " and Ruiz Zafón in the same list...:)

PS: ecclecticism.. yes

It is quite fun to review this thread 5 years later and see how many of the books proposed have in fact been published by Folio since - quite a surprising number. Appaloosaman generously gave prizes for the three best lists. In hindsight, none of those lists was especially prescient. Although predicting what Folio would actually publish wasn't the point, the person who got the most hits appears to have been ... ahem .... me, but then only a measly 7 out of 30. Not too late FS ....

It is also interesting to see how many of the posters have fallen by the wayside - Appaloosaman himself, Quicksilver, django, Huxley, all giants in their day.

>191 Felixholt:

Huxley continues as a giant today ... although perhaps a bit exhausted!

>192 drasvola:

I fear not. I have always thought her posts among the most interesting and thoughtful (as indeed are yours, Drasvola, and long may you continue) but her profile is now a wasteland - the result, I surmise, of some vile invective flung during that wretched Brexit exchange. I used to follow her acquisitions with interest, since I shared with her (and others) a cross-over interest in the world of George Macy.

>193 Felixholt:

Have checked Huxley's profile and, indeed, there are many changes. Hopefully, normalcy will be restored because I will be missing her posts. The Brexit exchange was dismal, I agree with you. Somewhere, it just got out of control. Sign of the times, perhaps. A pleasure to hear from you.

>193 Felixholt: I have always thought her posts among the most interesting and thoughtful

This is terrible news. I'm a great fan of her posts and have noticed a marked decline on FSD in her absence, which I assumed was because of the Brexit "debate" but I also assumed it would be temporary - indeed I check daily for Huxley posts.

Maybe if we send her enough love she'll understand she is missed. Come back, Huxley - we need your wit and intelligence.

>195 folio_books:

I second the call.

I believe that `Brexit` post has been removed also. Like most threads conserning politics, hunting, religion etc, they all goes into a variant of say, Godwin`s law, that`s why i prefer to read about books rather than topics that devide`s (yes, books divides also, but in another more relevant way)

Hope Fiona will be back though, but i understand it completly if she wants a break, she probably also need to save up some money for the next enablement - it`s healthy to do other things for a while (and then to come back) :)

Greg also, long time, but he comes with the Bayeaux or at least the Edda in early `17 and those editions will not be cheap, so i understand it if he saves up some

If i were the literary editior for 2011: I would have kept aside some LE`s for future member Pellias, naming Moby Dick, Morte`d Artur, Wind in the .. an others, because it were in my powers to do so

I too hope to see a speedy return of Huxley/Fiona (we can never have enough cats!).

Looking back at our earlier selections, I see that four of my candidates have been published in the last five years - viz Pater's "Renaissance", Amis's "Lucky Jim", Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" and Juvenal's "Satires" (though not, alas, in the bilingual edition that I hoped for). I think I can be reasonably happy.

I don't know anything about any Brexit post: what did I miss?
Whatever it was it could not have been as bad as the old FSD Australia Pricing wars 😂

I think it all went overboard when Iceland beat England in EM. Maybe Fiona were from Wales (still is) - you didn`t miss anything Stephen, but you seem to know how though these wars can be, but there were a member not much present who wrote something not very relevant. That went something like this: Can`t you stop speaking all the time, you are a ¤&&")¤ etc .. and that were not very pleasant, whereupon Fiona wrote: life is to short for this, she got some backings and i have not seen her since (maybe others have)

Oh my, i don`t feel like myself when i write about someone not present - so in short: Fiona were (probably very much) engaged in a topic, and she met up on a hater .. nothing to irregular in internett debating

Why she removed the cat from the profilepicture, that i do not know, i miss that cat :)

I have heard about the battle of the Australian pricing wars (oh, the agony) - that monster is sleeping, don`t wake it

>191 Felixholt:

I hit a grand total of four--and there is no excuse leaving Flashman unpublished at the top of my list! As you point out, there is still time for FS to address these injustices.

Re Huxley: I thought she was on holiday, how naive is that? It's tough to leave a chat room. You have to be pretty well pissed off to do it. I've done it and found it quite hurtful. I discovered I just couldn't bring myself to go back. If that's the case here then...sympathy..

>199 LesMiserables:

I lived through the FSD pricing wars - they certainly lasted a while. Especially memorable for the climax when a man from deepest Queensland announced that his love affair with Folio was over, the devious grasping old hag, never another Folio, and he was taking up with a new inamorata, the Library of America. He soon came back.

>198 TabbyTom:

Juvenal was an astute pick - you get double points for that one. Still only makes five. Actually, I still quite like my list, although why I included Ivanhoe I cannot now conceive. Lucky Jim - how my hopes were raised when it was announced, but what a misfire when it appeared. Oh my Lord - just noticed that you had Flashman as well - Go directly to Jail.

>201 podaniel:

Four - not bad - bit average, and you lose two points for choosing Flashman.

>204 Felixholt:

:-) Yes, but it took a while. I think the hiatus was a few years. And yes Library of America had a flat rate shipping for the whole order. And their volumes are rather nice too.

I'd like to think my persistence (and I did take it all the way to the top) paid off in the end for all AUFSDs as we now have a much better postage deal.

>205 LesMiserables:

I'm just being mischievous, you had a good war, as they say. And I myself esteem LoA books in small doses. Interesting that in the latest financial year Folio sales to Australia dropped a whopping 34%, against 18% for UK and N America.

Actually, one of the pleasures of Folio Society membership for me is the discovery of a book that I had a vague or no knowledge of. I fondly remember receiving the annual paper Prospectus that listed about one book each month to be published. Usually, I had a difficult time selecting just four. With a greater selection now, there is a bit less element of discovery.

>205 LesMiserables:

Might be time to offer free delivery? ;-)

Just ran into this thread while searching for something. Wow. Absolutely unbelievable how many books were actually published by FS in only 7 years since then - I counted... drum roll.... 72 titles!!! I threw away a few suggested titles that were published already by then, and a couple of too obvious ones, like continuation of Lang's Fairy books. A-ma-zing. I think this is a pretty strong argument suggesting when Folio's Golden Age is. As Twain would have said, the reports of Folio's decline are greatly exaggerated.

And looks like the real winner so far is >82 Witchylady333:, with whopping 10 out of 30 titles published. Not sure if she's still active on the LT, but I think this witch's powers of clairvoyance deserve a prize. Witchylady333, if you're still around - please shout!

Again, unbelievable. Below are the titles from this thread that have been published since, and I might have even missed a few. We should probably repeat this exercise. I'll start a new thread when I have some more free time to come up with my 30 titles.

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
The worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry Garrard
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas
King Leopolds Ghost by Adam Hochschild
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Bhagavad Gita
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor
Berlin by Anthony Beevor
A Clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess
The Day of the Triffids/The Midwich Cuckoos/The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Science Fiction Short Stories
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Fermats Last Theorem - Simon Singh
Eugene Onegin - Pushkin
Nabokov - Lolita
Lawrence - Sons and Lovers
Gavin Maxwell - Ring of Bright Water
Anthony Beevor and Artemis Cooper - Paris after the LIberation
Edward Thomas - The Collected Poems
The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
In Praise of Folly – Erasmus
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
A Peoples Tragedy by Orlando Figgis
The Nude by Kenneth Clark
Atonement- Ian McEwan
Revelations of Divine Love- Julian of Norwich
Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God, Queen of England- Alison Weir
The History of God- Karen Armstrong
Beloved - Toni Morrison
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Foundation trilogy - Issac Asimov
The Earthsea Quartet - Ursula le Guin (Note: only the first novel was published; also not sure why referred to as the Quartet)
The Postman Always Rings Twice - Cain
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Aiken
Pompeii by Mary Beard
The three Kingdoms
Her Privates We/The Middle Parts of Fortune by Frederic Manning
The Faerie Queen - Spenser
A Wrinkle in Time - L'Engles
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
The Ascent Of Man by Jacob Bronowski
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
The Dark is Rising sequence - Susan Cooper
Anne of Avonlea
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush - Eric Newby

Mmm, not entirely sure we need yet another thread of what we'd like Folio to publish but hey, whatever floats your marine vessel :)

>210 folio_books:
Not just another wish list thread, I agree that simply listing our suggestions can be done in existing threads. More of a game of prediction, and I'm thinking to offer a prize (a Folio book, of course) to whoever will guess the most books that will be published by Folio in the next 2-3 years. If anyone would be interested to participate in such a game, I'll create a thread and set the rules.

>211 elladan0891: More of a game of prediction, and I'm thinking to offer a prize

Good idea, make a competition of it. Not for me, though.