Another City Visit

More than a year ago my wife and her sister bought tickets to "Romeo And Juliet" performed by the Australian Ballet  The tickets were for seats just a few rows from the orchestra pit and the stage.  Covid delayed the performance and then sadly my sister-in-law passed away a few months ago.  So this afternoon I attended the ballet with my wife instead.

Prior to the show we grabbed some lunch in the City, crossing the swollen Yarra River due to the recent floods, and also visiting City Basement Books.

City Basement Books always seems to have a good turnover of books.  

Today they had a hardback copy of "The Politics Of James Bond: From Fleming's Novels To The Big Screen" by Jeremy Black which I have only ever seen previously online.  I managed to resist purchasing it though.  There were also several Bond continuation novels by Robert Markham, John Gardner, Anthony Horowitz and Jeffery Deaver.  No purchases from me today though.

As for the ballet, I've previously seen "The Nutcracker" and "Swan Lake" and to be honest I thought they were meh, but this ballet was fantastic.  I guess it also helped already knowing the story too.  I know my sister-in-law would have loved it too.  Here's a couple of photos I took before the performance:

Clunes Booktown Festival Returns

For the first time in three years Clunes Booktown Festival took place this weekend.  

The two day event, inviting people to visit the small rural Victorian town, was thriving when my wife and I arrived on Saturday.  I've included a "few" photos below to try and express how the town shines during this festival and how many book sellers attended.  But there were also authors doing signings and talks, publishers explaining to future authors how to get an idea to print, people in costume exciting the crowds and others quoting paragraphs from popular books.  It's not possible to capture the full extent of this event in images.

It was impossible to look in every box or carefully view every trestle table however these are all the James Bond adventures, books about Bond or related/linked books we managed to find:

My wife ended up purchasing some nice books for herself.  Meanwhile I found an excellent copy of Robert Markham's "Colonel Sun" published by Pan Books in 1968 which I couldn't resist.

Overall my wife and I both thought the festival was very well organised and we'll definitely be back.

Berkley Paperbacks Arrive

Earlier this week I received seven James Bond novels printed in the U.S. in the 1980's by Berkley Books.  I already have copies of these editions in my collection however this lot sale contained books that were described as "unread in fine condition", and on opening the box I was pleased to see the books were indeed so.

Six of the titles are by Ian Fleming, with one by John Gardner.  As soon as I can I'll scan these covers and replace the images on my website that aren't in as good condition.

I like this series simply because of the matching covers by different Bond authors.  There aren't many series featuring this crossover, the last by my recollection was a series of covers by Michael Gillette where further Robert Markham and John Gardner titles were released by the German publisher Cross Cult.  Sadly I only have one German continuation novel which is shown below.  They were all numbered in order on the spine too with this title being 15.

Lastly, if you'd like to know more info about the Berkley/Charter U.S. covers I refer you to this post by Jon Cox on The Book Bond website which was written in 2011.

PS: You may notice on the photos of the Berkley Books there's a hole punched in some of the covers.  This designated these books as remainders (ie. unsold stock) that had been returned by the bookseller to the publisher and they would have later been sold at a cheaper price.  Living in Australia any Berkley/Charter Books without these remainder marks are extremely rare.  The images of the covers on my website "may" have been photo-shopped to remove the remainder marks.