but they are so pretty

[julesjones]

Note to self -- stop looking at the Folio Society listings on ebay UK. You have dumped quite enough of your bought-on-ebay bibliofix on watervole for collection later this year. The Eagle of the Ninth shall be the last for now.

Comments

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

Ooooooh, *Eagle of the Ninth* :-)

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

I picked up all three in the series when I took a detour from Lindisfarne to visit one of the old fortresses on Hadrian's Wall last summer.

[julesjones]

I've never actually read the book, as far as I can recall, but I have very fond memories of the 1970s tv adaptation.

[julesjones]

I'd been wanting to get the book anyway, and had it on my Amazon wants list for later -- then spotted a copy when looking through the Folio Society listings on eBay for something completely different (Greek Myths). So I kept a watch for a Folio edition at a sensible price, and got one this morning. :-)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

It was a Folio Society brochure (advertising their reprint of Runciman's History of the Crusades) that triggered the whole Outremer project. I have loved the FS for decades - but no longer. We are out of love. Recent books have just had too many misprints; I end up proofreading more than enjoying. Bah.

(Still got lots of their books, though. It's not like love affairs with people, you don't have to give 'em back...)

[julesjones]

I remember seeing something about you getting that brochure. :-) I was a member for years, but stopped when I moved to the US. I gather from comments in the Folio Society group at LibraryThing that misprints have become a serious problem of late.

I started the FS hunt on eBay because I decided that I really needed to get a Greek myths reference, and I'd fancied the FS edition when I was a member but reluctantly decided at the time that I couldn't justify the cost. Now it's a tax-deductible item, because I do in fact want it for writing research. :-) I know Graves is considered a bit dodgy, but it's also supposed to be a very readable edition, and a hardback edition would be nice. Especially for L7.50 plus postage. Unfortunately I then also succumbed to their new translation of the Satyrica, the centenary edition of Einstein's relativity, and the Eagle of the Ninth.

But given the prices I paid, I can see why there's also been bitching about the Society flooding the market with reprints, and destroying the investment value of the books. Oddly, the Runciman is one of the one's that's held some value -- I'd noticed because I was left with a mild urge to go read the thing after reading Outremer, but not a strong enough urge to pay $75 plus postage.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Graves is fabulous - idiosyncratic certainly (which I suppose some scholars would label dodgy), but - well, c'mon, he's Robert Graves. Read it alongside 'The White Goddess', and rejoice.

Also, the Runciman is another great read, also considered a little dodgy by modern historians, but I blow a raspberry in their general direction. And you can pick him up in nice cheap paperbacks, it doesn't have to be the Folio edition (tho' I did buy it on principle. And then give it away to my webmistress, in a mood of irreconcilable gratitude...).

[julesjones]

I have the FS editions of I, Claudius and Claudius the God, which I adore. (The BBC DVD is on my Amazon wishlist, waiting for the next time I feel like ordering DVDs, but I am not ordering more until I've watched the current stack.)

The Runciman will be paperbacks, or possibly the library, at some point in the future when I have worked my way through the TBR pile. But I'll keep an eye on the eBay listings, just in case...

Also...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I gather from comments in the Folio Society group at LibraryThing that misprints have become a serious problem of late.

Yup. I did actually offer them the perfect solution - my own services as proofreader, because nothing gets by me; and I'd work for books rather than cash, I said - and they took me up on it and then neglected to send me books, after I'd sent them proof corrections. Sigh. Thus do great passions die...

Re: Also...

[julesjones]

That really is very odd. It's not as if they don't have great stacks of books sitting around to give away in promotions. They're probably just too damned disorganised. :-/

Folio Society discussion group on LibraryThing here:
http://www.librarything.com/groups/foliosocietydevotee