Adelaide Getaway - Part 3 (Wednesday)

Continuing our getaway in Adelaide, we visited several more book stores this morning before continuing on our way to wine country in McClarinvale...

10) East Avenue Books, Clarence Park

This is one book store in Adelaide that everyone has to visit.  The owner, Peter, loves books.  As you enter his store you can't miss the massive collection of early green Penguins for sale.  And on the day I visited there were six James Bond paperbacks prominent in the window display.  

A glass cabinet near the front counter contains rarer titles, which on my visit included three Jonathan Cape - Ian Fleming hardbacks, one a really nice first edition of "Goldfinger" at a very reasonable price (see photo below).

The store is really well laid out with a second room of shelving full of quality books at great prices.  They had several Bond novels on the day I visited and I purchased the "Casino Royale" movie-tie-in as it was in such great condition.

Here's the store website.

11) Blackwood Books, Blackwood

A short drive from East Avenue Books is the second-hand book store.  With over 20,000 books on their shelves there's plenty of reading material available.  The books are really well priced and when I visited I couldn't go past this Coronet edition of "Role Of Honour" to add to my collection of doubles.

12) Michael Treloar Antiquarian Booksellers, Adelaide

If you're after quality out-of-print books, first editions or antiquarian books this is the place to visit.  The people behind the desks are friendly, and extremely knowledgeable.  Sadly, on the day I visited they had no Fleming hardbacks in their inventory, but they explained they still turn up pretty regularly.

 

13) Dymocks Bookshop, Adelaide

This large Dymocks store is located in the old Regent Theatre on Rundle Mall.  It's a lovely building containing thousands of new books for all types of readers.  

14) O G Book Exchange, Klemzig

While visiting this store the owner, Krell, told me he's been operating this book exchange for 37 years.  He sells everything from DVD's, BluRays, vinyl, magazines, and of course second hand books.  On our last visit in 2022 this store had many Bond titles, and this trip was no different.  I was so tempted to pick up a couple of these Coronets but decided not at the last moment, which I'll probably regret in the future!

And here's some photos from our day in McClaren Vale including the best gluten free pizza I've ever had at Down The Rabbit Hole vineyard...

Port Willunga Beach.  Walking along this beach is a lovely experience

Made it back to Adelaide for dinner...

John Gardner Sniper Series Purchase

One of my favourite John Gardner - James Bond paperback series is the Sniper series, named because of the sniper sight that appears on each book cover.  When this set was published by Coronet Books in the UK around 1986, Mr Gardner had only completed the five titles which are included: "Licence Renewed" (white cover), "For Special Services" (red cover), "Icebreaker" (black cover), "Role Of Honour" (blue cover) and "Nobody Lives For Ever" (teal cover).  

Meanwhile in Canada, General Books (linked to Coronet in the UK) concurrently published this series.  The covers of each title by General were almost identical to the Coronet printings, except strangely for "Nobody Lives For Ever" which had a red colour cover instead of teal.  So while there are five titles in this series there are six different covers to collect.

I've previously written a post about this series when I purchased a second Coronet copy of "Nobody Lives For Ever".   Today's post is inspired by the purchase of a second copy of "For Special Services".  It's not in quite as good condition as my current copy, but it's unread with a lovely condition cover and at just $16 it was hard to refuse.

Now I have two titles of a second series of this lovely set.

Coronet Sniper Series Replacement

The first paperback printing of John Gardner's fifth James Bond adventure "Nobody Lives For Ever" was published by Coronet in 1986.  The cover features an image of a sniper sight aiming at a boat and a silhouette of Bond in front of "007" text.  

As the years have passed I've realised this printing is not very common.  It may have even had a limited release only in the UK as I never saw this edition for sale in new bookstores here in Australia back in the 1980's.  I only discovered this cover existed in the late 1990's.  

There were few websites displaying James Bond book covers back then, especially continuation novels.  And online websites selling books wasn't anywhere as big as it is today.  Finding this cover in a second-hand book store was a real surprise, especially as there were already four other titles with matching covers in my collection.  Those titles were reprints of the first four of Gardner's Bond adventures; "Licence Renewed" (white), ""For Special Services" (red), "Icebreaker" (black) and "Role Of Honour" (dark blue).   For want of a name I called these covers the Coronet Sniper Series.

Now I'm pretty picky.  The original copy I found wasn't in great condition compared to the other four I had in my series and it's always been a bugbear of mine.  It's taken a long time but recently I found and purchased a replacement copy.  Here's the two of them together.  The copy on the right is the new one.  It has a couple of texta marks on the back cover hiding the printed price but the spine is lovely and overall the copy appears unread.

And here's the new copy with the other four in the series.  The last copy, with the red cover, is the same title published by Coronet-General in Canada.  I still have no idea why they changed the colour from light blue/teal to red in Canada, especially as "For Special Services" was already printed in red, but it's an added bonus of this series.

Finally, this is the card that accompanied the book from the overseas seller.  I like these extra details from sellers.