Folio Collectables

Collecting Folio Society’s Collectables:

Are you, like me, in love with the printed word…?  Despite many attempts to try, I simply can’t get used to reading a book on a kindle or similar.  I’m addicted to the feel of paper between my fingers and to the words dancing across the page in a perfectly chosen typeface.  The Folio Society produce some of the most beautiful editions of books I’ve ever seen.  My parents used to collect their books and I’ve inherited a few.  Always beautifully bound and illustrated, for me, they are the ultimate example of books.

But, they are expensive and, sometimes I’m just a little nervous about actually taking one of them out to read.

Bring on ‘Folio Collectables’ – a selection of classics, still hard-back but without the dust sleeve and with brightly coloured bindings and covers.  They’d sit perfectly on any library shelf but are actually just as beautiful to read as the classic Folio books.  Priced at £19.95 each, they are provocatively illustrated just like the mainstream collection.

Best of all, they are all classics – you could happily give these to a young bookworm or to someone in their first home as a way to introduce them to a range of titles.   The Folio Society’s beautiful new series includes titles such as Cider with Rosie, A Christmas Carol and Frankenstein.  I’ve read about half of the collection already – but, they are all the sort of books that you will read over and over again.  A Christmas Carol is a book which I used to read almost every December when I was in my teens.  And, Cider with Rosie is the sort of book I take away on holiday when I am staycationing somewhere in the UK.

The series is genuinely beautiful and as the name suggests, very collectable.  The whole set of eight books retails for £159.60 and would make a great gift for a housewarming, retirement or just for someone who has everything!  I’ve just read Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for the first time and am about to read Frankenstein!

Which ones have you read?  And, where would you start – if you were lucky enough, like me, to be sent the whole set?

Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Black Mischief, Evelyn Waugh
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Anita Loos
The Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell