"Solo" International Version... Finally !

A couple of months ago I received this paperback copy of "Solo" by William Boyd in the mail.  It's the US International Version published by Harper.  Unfortunately it arrived slightly damaged.  The online book store happily refunded my money without asking for it to be returned but I sat on the book, scouring the web for a better copy.

Over two months later and I'm still yet to purchase a better copy.  I did try to get a book store here in Oz to order a copy from the US but they were reluctant too.  So I've finally decided to bite the bullet and add the book to PizGloria.com anyway.  And when I do find that elusive better copy I'll just update the image.

This is the second paperback copy of "Solo" to be added to the website.  As recently reported by The Book Bond there are a couple more paperback editions coming soon, one from the UK in May 2014 and the other from the US in June 2014.  Nice covers too.

Second Visit To The "Designing 007 - 50 Years Of Bond Style" Exhibition

A couple of weeks ago my friend Jean-Claude, whose wedding my wife and I attended last August in Paris, mentioned he'd like to go the "Designing 007 - 50 Years Of Bond Style" exhibition at the Melbourne Museum before it ends on February 23.  So I admitted I'd be happy to see it again and we booked our tickets.

We attended the exhibition last Sunday and for me it proved to be just as good the second time round as the first.  I noticed a few props and exhibits I couldn't remember seeing previously, and as an added bonus the Aston Martin DBS Vantage from "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" on show near the Museum entrance last November...

... had been replaced by the Toyota 2000GT from "You Only Live Twice".  Excellent to see this car in the flesh!

Afterwards Jean-Claude admitted he'd enjoyed the exhibition a lot, and like me the first time was really surprised at the quality and presentation of the items on show.  It's such a shame the exhibition is leaving Melbourne forever in less than a week, but wherever it's travelling to next the people who visit are going to be very impressed.

As usual I took a few photos.  Here's some of them:

The queue to enter was much longer this time than in November of last year.

Great still from "Diamonds Are Forever".  I don't remember seeing this image last time.

Large canvas poster on display as we left the exhibition.

Bond-ish display hanging above the Bond Bar.

Another photo of the Aston Martin DB5 from "Goldeneye" with the gun-barrel style entrance to the exhibition in the background.

Larger than life villians.

Clarifying A Famous Bond Film Quote

This post is going to be a little unusual today as it's not book related.  Instead it relates to the film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and arguably George Lazenby's most famous line as James Bond from that film.

Commonly on the web this line is quoted incorrectly as "This never happened to the other fellow".

When Mr Lazenby was in Australia in 2012 at a Q&A in Melbourne he explained that during pre-production and then when filming commenced for "OHMSS" he felt rightly or wrongly he was being treated differently to the previous Bond actor, Sean Connery.  So he started using this line with the film crew and producers.  And when it came to filming the scene on the beach when Tracy drives off into the sunset despite Bond having just rescued her, Peter Hunt liked the line so much he asked Mr Lazenby to repeat it for the camera.

The thing is, Mr Lazenby is Australian and here in Australia when we used to use the word "fellow" like so many other words in the Aussie language it was abbreviated.  So "fellow" became "fella", and the quote is therefore "This never happened to the other fella".

Pedantic ?  Yes.  But also correct.

Two John Gardner Bonds Arrive

Two John Gardner / James Bond reprints arrived in the mail today.

"The Man From Barbarossa" and "Death Is Forever" are the latest books published by Pegasus in this series.  11 books now exist in this US series with covers designed by Dan Mogford.  Hopefully the last 5 will be published soon.

Revisiting Paris

Having revisited Vancouver tonight, I thought I'd also quickly revisit Paris from our holiday last year.  Here's a couple more photos and stories that I didn't previously include in this blog.

Unfortunately I didn't find the famous Shakespeare And Company while visiting Paris but I did find Gibert Jeune on Boulevard Saint-Michel near Notre Dame.  Gibert Jeune have a number of stores containing different types of books in Paris (eg. technical, art etc).  I visited the store containing both new and second-hand fiction books.  You can't see them in this photo but there are actually a couple of security guards out the front of this store to control how many enter I suppose.  On another day when my wife and I walked past there was a short line of people waiting to enter.

This particular store is four storeys high.  There is a single staircase around the inside of the building although I think I saw a lift somewhere.  I imagine the building is quite old too.  My pigeon French was sufficient enough to be directed by a staff member to the Action/Thriller/Spy section on the top floor where I found the following French Bonds including the two Fleming omnibuses below.  Both feature Timothy Dalton on the cover, one new and the other second-hand.

And a French copy of Deaver's "Carte Blanche".

I also asked if I could take some photos and the staff member said Ok as long as I didn't concentrate on any people.  I wish I'd taken another photo though.  There was a bloke with a poodle in the store.  He must have carried it up the four flights of stairs.

A quick stroll up Boulevard Saint-Michel perhaps just one block from Gibert Jeune...

...can be found a couple of second-hand bookstores like this.  Almost all the books are second-hand and people are always frequenting the store, even into the later hours.

In this particular store I found these two Bonds.

And here's another similar store opposite our hotel.  This one was two storeys of books, although upstairs seemed to be mostly Manga.  You can see how busy it was.

Along with the book stalls along the Seine, Paris appears to be alive and well with new and second-hand book stores.  And heaps of people are still buying the books too which is good.

Revisiting Vancouver

Early in September 2013 my wife and I visited Vancouver as part of our self proclaimed "world tour".  There we visited many of the second-hand book stores that exist in the Canadian city and took plenty of photos.  But, as others would also attest, updating a blog while on holiday is not an easy task and before I knew it we were in New York on the next leg of our trip.

Reminiscing tonight about our holiday while flicking through some photos I remembered I hadn't added all of the Vancouver books stores to this blog yet, so here they finally are.

After finding Kestrel Books a few days earlier I remember walking down West Broadway

and seeing this shop awning displaying the words Pulp Fiction Books.  Unfortunately the sign was all that was left of this store... or so I thought.

 

Because a couple of days later I returned to West Broadway and found the new location of one of their two Vancouver stores.  Pulp Fiction Books is very much open.  They have a huge collection of "pulp" which also included a few Bonds.  The staff were very friendly too.  Here's a link to their website.

I also found this massive children's book store called Kids Books with plenty of new copies of Higson's "Young Bond" novels on their shelves.

 

Brigid's Books was a nice, clean little store.  As can be seen they had a couple of Bonds.  The unfortunate thing was the store was about to close.  Hopefully it has since opened elsewhere in Vancouver.

Still walking along West Broadway, Tanglewood Books was a well organised second-hand store with a few Bonds on their shelves.  The owner was an interesting person to chat too as well.

I noticed this charity bin for books while walking along the road.  I'd never seen anything like this before.

At night I took a photo of this Thrift Store.  The following day I found an International copy of Deaver's "Carte Blanche" published by Pocket Star for $3 on one shelf.  A great find as I didn't previously have one.

Finally, Carson Books was about an hour walk from where we were staying.  We'd usually take one of the very efficient public transport buses but on this day we decided to walk instead.  This store was really well organised with heaps of books.  They also had a box titled "007 James Bond + Other Brit Spies". I almost purchased the hardback copy of "James Bond: The Authorized Biography" by John Pearson in the photo however I was concerned about international luggage weight restrictions as this was the first country on our holiday.   Now I probably regret it as it was a nice copy.

On our way back from Carson's we walked past "White Dwarf Books".  Specialising in science fiction and fantasy I still had to ask if they had any Bonds.  The answer was a polite "No".  Upon asking if I could take some photos the owner replied "Yes, but only if you take one of Juddy too".

 

Overall I was surprised at the number of second-hand book stores in Vancouver, especially on West Broadway.  Shame I couldn't just walk up the street and visit them again tomorrow to check if they had any new Bond books.