City Book Hunt Before Comedy Show

Last weekend my wife and I visited the City for the final weekend of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.  We saw a fantastic show and can't wait for the festival to begin again next year.

While in the City we also visited a couple of book stores.  The first was Dymocks where I found copies of Anthony Horowitz's new paperback format version of "Forever And A Day".  I couldn't purchase a copy at the time as we were about to have dinner before the show so I had to leave my copy for another time.

Then we visited Kay Craddock Antiquarian Bookseller.  There were no James Bond novels on the shelves however I did find a first edition of Kingsley Amis' "The James Bond Dossier".  I always enjoy visiting this book shop.  It's definitely a quality store.

No books this visit but it was great to have a quick City book hunt.  I would have liked to have visited Basement Books too but unfortunately it had closed earlier in the afternoon.  Next time I guess...

South Australian Holiday - Part 1 of 2

Back in October of last year my wife and I drove to South Australia for a short holiday.  The trip took 8 hours and when we arrived in Adelaide there had been a major storm the night before and the power to the City had only just been restored.  Fortunately during our entire holiday we didn't encounter any of this bad weather so we were very lucky.

Our hotel was located just near Rundle Mall which had plenty of fine shops for my wife to visit.

While walking around this beautiful City we visited Adelaide Central Market.  This is the location of Central Market Books and the owner's name is Barry.  I spoke to him for a while and then checked out the James Bond books on his shelves and ended up purchasing two.  One was "Ian Fleming: The Man With The Golden Pen" by Richard Gant.  I'd seen this book before but I didn't have this particular copy.  The second book was a Pan copy of "You Only Live Twice" by Ian Fleming covered in the rare movie tie-in dust wrapper.  The wrapper wasn't in great condition but still a great purchase none-the-less.

We then continued walking around the busy market and came across another second-hand book store named Adelaide's Pop-Up Bookshop. The owners were really nice and very informative.  I ended up purchasing a Pan Books "Casino Royale" by Ian Fleming (second edition) and a Jonathan Cape copy of "The James Bond Dossier" by Kingsley Amis.

Leaving Central Market we then made our way to Michael Treloar Antiquarian Booksellers.  This is a really well maintained book store with lots of rare books.  I spoke to one of the gentleman behind the counter and was informed that the only Fleming they currently had on their shelves was a Jonathan Cape first edition of "You Only Live Twice".   It was a nice copy but I let it go.

Just five minutes walk from Michael Treloar's store is Adelaide Booksellers.  On entering the doorway there are stairs to the right which lead down to a subterranean basement.  The store is really clean and well organised, however there were no James Bond books on this visit.  And as is the owner's prerogative, on asking if I could take some photos of his store he replied "No", so I could only take these photos below.

New Morning Books is only a short walk from Adelaide Central Market and is well worth a visit.  There are loads of books, all well priced and the books cover a huge range of subjects.  I managed to find the three James Bond novels shown below.  This is definitely the type of store where anything could be lurking in a wrong spot on a shelf so it took us a while before we finally left.

A photo of central Adelaide including the tram to Glenelg.

Our walk in Adelaide literally went full circle.  We ended up at the Antique Market directly over the road from the Central Market where we'd started.  As usual there were a lot of books in the back room (somehow this store is linked to Michael Treloar's store I believe) and I ended up purchasing this really nice copy of the Pan movie-tie in of "Dr. No" from 1962. 

There ended our book walk of Adelaide.  I've got to say it's a great city to visit.  It's very quiet, relaxed and has some interesting old architecture.  

My wife and I then drove to Kangaroo Island and visited some other towns and second-hand book stores in South Australia which are detailed in Part 2.

New Bookcase + Collecting 007

Almost 30 years ago, when I was still living with my parents, I decided to buy a cabinet to store my burgeoning James Bond book collection.  When it was delivered to our house I remember thinking how huge it was and how I couldn't imagine ever completely filling it.

As my collection grew over the years, so the shelf space in the cabinet gradually disappeared until finally I had to store the books two deep.  And then as my collection increased further the books not only filled the cabinet but also spilt into other bookcases.

After searching for another bookcase to buy, and realising there are few around nowadays, I decided to get a cabinet custom made instead.  I carefully placed my books in plastic containers, sold my old book cabinet and waited for another to be built.  Yesterday the new custom made one was installed.

So along with the photo of it below I'd like to add these fateful words; this book cabinet is huge and I can't imagine ever filling it !

When I've placed all my books in it I'll add another photo, but for the moment I'm just working out how high the glass shelves need to be and how I'm going to organise the books.

On another note, today my Q & A about Collecting 007 was published on The James Bond Dossier website.   If you're interested in reading it please click here.