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 !

Annual Mornington Lions Club Book Fair

The  Annual Mornington Lions Club Book Fair began today, raising money for charity.  My wife and I always look forward to this event which takes place across the weekend from 9am to 5pm.

This year my wife's parents also joined us as my father-in-law is an avid reader.  As usual the books were of great quality and really well organised by the event volunteers into alphabetic sections.

As you can see from the photos below there were plenty of other readers looking for bargains with the books just $2 each.

After scouring all the crates of books I only found two copies of the same James Bond adventure, "Carte Blanche" by Jeffery Deaver in trade size paperback which I already have in my collection.

No luck for me today but my wife and her Mum and Dad managed to find plenty of books and jigsaw puzzles for themselves.  

The book fair continues again tomorrow and we'll definitely be back next year.

As an addendum, afterwards we travelled to Main Street Mornington for some lunch and I noticed this lovely E-Type Jaguar.  I know it's not a Bentley or Aston Martin but it still conjures up the thought that Bond could have driven this vehicle in literature or on celluloid in the 1960's...

... but sadly I suppose Austin Powers has taken that mantle now.

Annual Mornington Lions Book Fair

A year ago my wife and I attended the annual Lions Book Fair in Mornington.  And we really enjoyed the event; the books were well organised, they were great quality... and reasonably priced.  So a fortnight ago we attended the fair again along with my wife's brother.

I found several James Bond books, a couple of which I recognised from last year.

I also found this omnibus of spy novels including Ian Fleming's "The Man With The Golden Gun".  It included this still from the film featuring Christopher Lee as Scaramanga.

While looking through the "S" boxes I found this book club hardback copy of John Gardner's "Seafire".  Smaller in size than a normal hardback I wasn't even aware this copy existed and couldn't go past if for just $2.  This was my only Bond purchase for the day, however my wife and brother-in-law did find a few books for themselves.

All three of us left with some great purchases and are looking forward to attending again next year.

U.S. Versions Of "Carte Blanche"

It used to be rare to meet fellow James Bond book collectors.  Fortunately with the advent of the internet, online forums and Facebook groups it's now much easier to chat with like-minded bibliophiles.

On the weekend I caught up with a fellow collector here in Melbourne, Victoria.  It's the first time I've met another Bond collector in my own country.  He was selling some unwanted books from his collection to create more shelf space for other more desirable titles.  As well as the opportunity to see his collection (and what a great book collection it was) I was also able to purchase a paperback from him that I had a feeling could have slight cover differences to a similar copy on my own shelves.

The paperback in question was a copy of Jeffery Deaver's "Carte Blanche" published by Pocket Books in the U.S. in 2012.  At first when he handed me the book I immediately thought there was a very minor cover difference.  But on bringing the book home I realised the difference was much more noticeable.

Here's the copy I purchased.  The text appears to be a grey/white colour:

And here's my original copy.  The text appears to be more silver on the cover:

But those differences are minor when you place the books side by side.  Here they're also accompanied by the trade size paperback:

The size difference was an unexpected surprise.  Here's the back covers too:

The copy I purchased was "For International Sale" while my copy was a first U.S. printing.

It's always nice to still find these surprises.  However now I'm wondering if there are other variations of U.S. paperback printings of this title out there ?  I suppose only time will tell.

Warragul Book Fair 2022

My wife and I have just returned from Warragul in Gippsland.  Warragul, located 100km from Melbourne on the Princes Highway, is primarily known for its dairy produce.  However today we visited for the annual book fair held by the Lions Club.

Entry was gold coin donation with all money going to the local hospital and the Lions Club.  Walking into the hall was a strange feeling due to the lockdowns over the last two years cancelling these type of events.  So it was great to finally have an event like this back and be amongst people and books again.

My wife and I scoured all the tables of books and the only James Bond novel we found was this copy of "Carte Blanche" by Jeffery Deaver.

The Warragul Book Fair continues tomorrow (Sunday).  And in two weeks time (April 9 and 10) the next town along, Yarragon, will also be holding their own book fair to raise money for the local country fire brigade.  We'll be going to that one too and hopefully we'll see you there.

Lions Club Book Sale This Weekend In Glen Waverley

I've just returned from a book sale organised by Lions Australia in Glen Waverley, VIC.  The sale is on till 4 today and midday tomorrow.  The books were all second hand, in great condition, really cheap and amazingly well organised.  No luck for me today although I did find a couple of Bonds by Jeffery Deaver and Sebastian Faulks.

Missing Aston Martin DBS + Trigger Mortis On Oz Shelves

My Mum contacted me a fortnight ago as she'd read that a real James Bond car was temporarily on display in a building near the City until mid-September.  The car in particular was an Aston Martin DBS's featured in the film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".

So last Friday during my lunch break I drove to the VACC building to check out the vehicle.  I've seen this car twice before: once at Armageddon Expo 2012 when I also met George Lazenby and the other time at the "Designing 007 - 50 Years Of Bond Style" Exhibition in 2013.  The car is owned by fellow Melburnian, Sigi Zidziunas, and from my recollection of the conversation I had with him in 2013 he's owned the car for several years after importing it from Portugal.  He quickly gained provenance and has displayed the car at a number of conventions and exhibitions. And I have to say... every time I see this car it looks fantastic.

Unfortunately though I wasn't to see it that Friday.  Mid-September arrived a little early and the car had been removed from display on Thursday, September 10, the day before my visit.  I still managed to grab some snaps of the lobby where it was parked just 24 hours earlier.  (Maybe I could just photoshop it in !)

Here's some snaps I took of the same DBS back in 2013 at the "Designing 007 - 50 Years Of Bond Style" Exhibition at the Melbourne Museum.  There were actually two identical DBS's used during filming of the 1969 Bond film but I'm not sure where the other one is located.

Fortunately I was not completely out of luck last Friday.  This English Second Language copy of "For Your Eyes Only" published by Longman in 1982 arrived in the mail.  This is one of several ESL books I've purchased recently.  I think I'm getting close to collecting them all now.

With some warmer weather arriving last Saturday my wife and I decided to drive to Mornington. As well as visiting a few gift shops we also dropped into Farrell's Bookshop.  A great independant book store with a wide variety of new books I was pleased to see copies of  the newly released Bond novel "Trigger Mortis" by Anthony Horowitz on the shelf.  This was the first time I had physically seen the book.

 

 

We also travelled just down the road to the second-hand store Books By The Bay where many Bond paperbacks sat on the shelf but unfortunately I had them all.  Still it was good to pay a visit.

And finally... I noticed this pile of "Carte Blanche" books on a shelf in a local department store.  They were 25% off but considering "Trigger Mortis" has just been released and this book was published in 2011 I'd be increasing that discount.