Collecting Piz Gloria: Hunting For 007 In New York

Sunday, September 08, 2013

Hunting For 007 In New York

It turns out maintaining a blog while travelling is not as simple as one would imagine. Despite having free wi-fi access in every country we have visited so far I have still fallen behind in keeping up to date with my current country of visit. So despite having more book store photos from Canada I am now going to move on to New York, a city we departed from over three days ago.

Due to limited time my wife and I visited three book stores in New York. The first was the new book store Barnes & Noble on 5th Avenue. We searched for both Higson's Young Bond and adult Bond novels and found only the Pegasus Gardner Bonds. They did have a copy of every new Gardner reprint currently available which was good to see.

The following day we caught a taxi from our hotel in Times Square to Greenwich Village. We had a fantastic (and cheap) breakfast in a cafe before walking to The Strand. This second hand bookstore promotes itself as having 18 miles of books. For those who don't know Greenwich Village is basically populated by uni students. Perhaps that has something to do with the low numbers of Bonds The Strand has on its shelves. I could only find a paperback/softback copy of "From Russia With Love" from Penguin. There were six hardbacks though. Last time I visited this store over 20 years ago I could find no Bonds at all so one paperback and six hardbacks was a definite improvement.

We then walked toward the Manhattan financial district using the "Freedom Tower" (One World Trade Center) as our navigation guide.

On our way we passed a chess shop (the Chess Forum on Thompson Street) that had a board on display featuring pieces that were Bond characters. I managed to grab a photo through the shop window.

Finally we reached The Mysterious Bookshop, and our effort in the warm NY sun was rewarded. This large store is jam packed with thrillers and mysteries. Half of the back wall alone appeared to feature Sherlock Holmes.

My wife found the Higson Young Bond novels while I Ian Fleming. I did have all the Fleming editions on display however there was a Higson cover I didn't have which was a great find. One staff member kindly visited PizGloria.com on his computer for me to check a few other covers they had on their shelves in case I was missing them. He also showed me a really nice first edition Cape of "The Spy Who Loved Me" from a back room somewhere.

For anyone visiting New York this store is definitely worth a visit. They also have a website.

Having spent four nights in New York, here's some other photos for those interested:

Times Square