While we were in Bristol we paid our customary visit to the Oxfam Bookshop in Clifton, masked-up like freelance book-surgeons, and spent an enjoyable half-hour browsing and deciding what not to buy. I was struck by the presence of some unusually desirable photo-books, most of which I already have – phew! – but also by a surprising number of Folio Society editions, which always intrigue me when they turn up in charity shops, given how expensive they are. Someone's shelves had clearly been given a radical clear-out.
If you don't know their productions, the
Folio Society is a book club, specialising in luxury or "crafted" editions of classic books, ancient and modern, which is to say large, illustrated, slip-cased, highly decorative books, with good printing on the best paper, the sort of thing that lines the bookshelves of a certain sort of reader. Not mine, though, I should say. Although some are quite beautiful, most are just rather OTT or, to be honest, even slightly naff to the true bibliophile. I mean, much as I have enjoyed reading Lee Child's Jack Reacher books – highly recommended to anyone who has ever fantasised about being eight-foot tall and an invincible dispenser of rough justice in an unfair world – why would I or anyone want a cloth-bound, illustrated edition of
Killing Floor, costing £50? It would be like having a jewel-encrusted bus-pass holder.
However, it did make me wonder what my own recent production Let's Get Lost would look like in a "sumptuous", no-expense-spared version. So I decided to mock up some page-spreads for myself – nothing too fancy, naturally – and I must admit I was quite pleased with the results, especially when presented as if "float-mounted" onto a larger sheet of rough-textured paper. I think they'd look pretty fine sympathetically framed on a wall, and are in a way more pleasing to the eye and certainly more practical than they would be contained within the covers of some actual, over-sized, over-produced book. As one astute commenter on the Folio Society's website put it, when reviewing their edition of A Pilgrim's Progress (illustrated by William Blake, and a mere £295): "A beautifully produced book which would look good on the shelf, but too heavy and unwieldy to actually read".
2 comments:
A few years ago I was mooching round the market at Machynlleth and found a stall with a near fine set of the Folio Society's edition of A Dance to the Music of Time (twelve novels in four volumes - current second hand cost over two hundred quid). They were presumably from a house clearance and the stall holder was happy to sell them for £35 - all the cash in my pocket that day. Before you ask - no, I haven't read them all yet. While I enjoy the smell and feel of a well-produced hardback, the reviewer you quote was exactly right - they're really hard to hold when you're lying on a sofa or in bed.
Of the mock-ups you show, I think the juxtaposition of the steps and the Eiffel tower works particularly well.
Thanks, old_bloke, I like that one, too.
I've never read the Powell, though I've been meaning to for years. Ditto just about everything else worth reading, of course.
I think the test for bedtime reading is twofold: 1). a book shouldn't make your wrists ache when holding it, or (for a paperback) be too tightly bound to hold open single-handed, and 2). If you fall asleep, it shouldn't wake you up when it falls onto your face. These are my main issues with the iPad or Kindle as reading devices, which under all other circumstances I have come to prefer.
Mike
Post a Comment