Saturday, April 18, 2026

Mornington Lions Club Book Fair

Every year my wife and I attend the annual Lions Club of Mornington Book Fair.  It's held in a big room full of thousands of books on trestle tables.  My wife loves attending because it's really well organised with great quality books alphabetised by author.



Entry is by gold coin donation (either $1 or $2) and the books are $3 each.  I'm not sure if it's because of the current "cost-of-living crises" however there were definitely more book hunters today than previous years.

While I've been fortunate to pick up a couple of Bond paperbacks in the past, even if they were doubles, I had no such luck today with only these two titles found which I left for someone else to purchase.



We did manage to purchase four non-Bond books for my father-in-law though and my wife picked up three books for herself.  So it was a successful book hunt for some... and I'll be holding out to visit again next year and hopefully have more luck myself.

The book fair continues tomorrow till 4pm.

Ps. I did score a snag in bread from the Lions Club sausage sizzle just as we were leaving.  Yum !



Sunday, April 05, 2026

"By Royal Command" Puffin Books Postcard

Back in 2008 Puffin Books released a series of free postcards promoting many of their recent releases aimed at children and yound adults.  One of those postcards was for Charlie Higson's Young Bond novel "By Royal Command".  It featured a photo of the cover from the hardback edition, as can be seen on the example below that I recently acquired.

I'm not sure which book stores had these postcards available at the time.  Perhaps one of my readers might know?  Regardless I never saw them here in Australia.

Coincidentally, Charlie Higson's name has again hit the James Bond socials recently.  Just a few days ago, on April 1, Ian Fleming Publications announced that the next James Bond novel "King Zero" will be published later this year, authored by Mr Higson.  Here's an image of the cover...


A mysterious sounding title, and an interesting synopsis, make this novel's release a highly anticipated event.