Bye, bye, Book!

I sat in bed reading the new Folio Society  edition of Trollope’s The Duke’s Children.

It is as big as a dictionary.  Maybe a Complete Shakespeare.

It is a beautiful book.  It duplicates the design of Ye Olde Book, with a leather binding and gilded edges.

The Folio Society’s new complete four-volume edition of The Duke’s Children (it was originally published as a three-volume book and the missing volume has  been restored) has gotten good press:  John McCourt at The Irish Times loved it.  He wrote:

Standard editions of The Duke’s Children still read well and hold their ground against other works in the Palliser series, but the reborn text is of a much richer fabric. Shorn of its short cuts, and with all its details of plot, character, setting and narrative tone restored, it functions far more effectively both as a stand-alone novel and as the last of a long series full of familiar names, characters, settings and themes.

Alas,  it is too unwieldy to read in the supine position.

I know, I know.  I should sit up.

I am going back to my Oxford paperback.  I can’t read oversized books at my age.

What to do with my Folio Society edition?  Sponsor a contest at Mirabile Dictu?  Make everybody write an essay about why they deserve the book?

That would be crazy, wouldn’t it?

And so I donated it to the Planned Parenthood Book Sale.  I stuck it in a bag and put it in my bike pannier. Then I had to find the Planned Parenthood book drop.

The Jacqueline Blank drop for Planned Parenthood

I got lost in the inner city on my bike.  I was sure the map had said to head north.  Sure, it was north–north  of a street a few blocks south!

I  finally found it and dropped off the book.  After a decade of shopping at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale, I am happy to give them a valuable book.  I hope they make a huge profit.

I love the Folio Society’s clothbound books, and own one of the Thomas Hardy books.  They are normal-sized books:  a little tall, but readable in bed.

But I regard The Duke’s Children as a mirabile dictu folly!    What was I thinking?

Thomas Hardy set, Folio Society