Hunting For 007 In New York

It turns out maintaining a blog while travelling is not as simple as one would imagine.  Despite having free wi-fi access in every country we have visited so far I have still fallen behind in keeping up to date with my current country of visit.  So despite having more book store photos from Canada I am now going to move on to New York, a city we departed from over three days ago.

Due to limited time my wife and I visited three book stores in New York.  The first was the new book store Barnes & Noble on 5th Avenue.  We searched for both Higson's Young Bond and adult Bond novels and found only the Pegasus Gardner Bonds.  They did have a copy of every new Gardner reprint currently available which was good to see.

The following day we caught a taxi from our hotel in Times Square to Greenwich Village.  We had a fantastic (and cheap) breakfast in a cafe before walking to The Strand.  This second hand bookstore promotes itself as having 18 miles of books.  For those who don't know Greenwich Village is basically populated by uni students.  Perhaps that has something to do with the low numbers of Bonds The Strand has on its shelves.  I could only find a paperback/softback copy of "From Russia With Love" from Penguin.  There were six hardbacks though.  Last time I visited this store over 20 years ago I could find no Bonds at all so one paperback and six hardbacks was a definite improvement.

 

 

 

 

 

We then walked toward the Manhattan financial district using the "Freedom Tower" (One World Trade Center) as our navigation guide.

On our way we passed a chess shop (the Chess Forum on Thompson Street) that had a board on display featuring pieces that were Bond characters.  I managed to grab a photo through the shop window.

 

Finally we reached The Mysterious Bookshop, and our effort in the warm NY sun was rewarded.  This large store is jam packed with thrillers and mysteries.  Half of the back wall alone appeared to feature Sherlock Holmes.

 

 

 

My wife found the Higson Young Bond novels while I Ian Fleming.  I did have all the Fleming editions on display however there was a Higson cover I didn't have which was a great find.  One staff member kindly visited PizGloria.com on his computer for me to check a few other covers they had on their shelves in case I was missing them.  He also showed me a really nice first edition Cape of "The Spy Who Loved Me" from a back room somewhere.

For anyone visiting New York this store is definitely worth a visit.  They also have a website.

Having spent four nights in New York, here's some other photos for those interested:

Times Square

Central Park

Ed Sullivan Theatre

Jurassic Park display in a toy store, Times Square

Chrysler Building

Views atop the Empire State Building

Statue Of Liberty

"Spider-Man - Turn Off The Dark" on Broadway

Fifth Avenue

Times Square again

Greenwich Village

9-11 Memorial

Museum Of Natural History

 

From Victoria To Victoria - Part 2

Our second (and last) day in Victoria, BC started with an early walk to the Chronicles Of Crime book store that we found late the day before.  This time we visited during opening hours.  I introduced myself to the shop owner and she showed me all the Bonds she currently had in stock.

The Chronicles Of Crime store has a huge collection of good quality second hand books.  There is a section of older "pulp" books, but alas held no older Bonds on the day of my visit.  However the well organised fiction shelves did hold a collection of 17 newer Bond books.  There were no Bonds to add to my collection this time but I would expect to find others in the near future if I was able to visit again soon.

Here's some photos of the store, and there's also a website www.chroniclesofcrime.com which is definitely worth a visit.

After my wife and I had some breakfast we paid a visit to a familiar book store. It turns out Russell Books (mentioned in the previous blog entry) has another store on View Street titled Books On View (clever !) as they have so many books for sale.  This store had a few Bond hard backs on the shelves, and the staff were as friendly as ever.  Here's some photos:

Finally, after we visited this store we went to the Royal British Columbia Museum.  Very impressive.  Here's some photos.

Then we caught a bus to the Beauchamp Gardens which were better than I thought...

...before catching the ferry home to Cherry's place in Vancouver again.

We also managed to see some orca whales on our journey.

From Victoria To Victoria - Part 1

As many of you would know I live in Melbourne, Victoria in Australia.  Last Monday while still on our "world tour" my wife and I caught a ferry to Vancouver Island to visit Victoria in Canada.  So it was a case of two Victorians from the other side of the world visiting Victoria.

After landing in Sidney we caught public transport (a double-decker) for the one hour trip to Victoria.  While on the bus I did notice a bookshop, Beacon Books, but I knew we would never make it there so I'm hoping they had no Bonds!

Our journey ended just near the Parliament Building and we made our way to the hotel.

Once we'd checked in and freshened up we started hitting the streets to explore the city.  We soon found Fort Street otherwise known as Antique Row. The first bookshop we found was Shepherd Books but unfortunately there were no Bond books.  The owner explained he'd been cleaned out of Bond books a couple of months ago.

We then walked a little further along the street to another book store.  This one looked a little more promising as the revolving book stand outside the entrance had a Bond for sale on display.

So we entered Russell Books, and it turned out this store was to prove much more fruitful.  Russell Books is apparently the largest second hand book store in Canada.  And it's amazing.  

There are three levels.  The first is street level which has large books, reference books and some remainders.  As far as I'm aware there were no Bonds here, but there were heaps of books.

The next level was downstairs, below street level.  This level had rarer and more antique books.  The friendly staff on this level guided me to a Fleming "Thrilling Cities" published by Pan but I already had it.

The final level was upstairs and contained thousands of paperbacks/softbacks (or pocket books as they referred to them).

On finding the Thriller/Mystery section and then the Fleming titles I was amazed.  There were about 78 Bond books in total, and although many of them were duplicated covers there were still some variations.  This is definitely the most Bonds I have seen ever in one store. I even visited the store the next day just in case I missed anything.  

There are some double ups of book spines in the above photos but it shows all the books.

In the end I purchased five books from this store, four that were in better condition than what I currently had in my collection, and the other a copy of "Licence Renewed" from General Books that differed from the covers shown on the PizGloria.com website as the brown cover was a darker colour and the gold tint was missing.  I'll scan and add this cover to the PizGloria website when I return to Oz in a few weeks time.  I'd never seen this variation before.

The thing that impressed me so much about Russell Books was the way the store was run as if they sold new books, the number of books they had in stock, how organised the books were and how cheap they were.  And I also found the many staff both friendly and knowledgeable.

So overall, this store has to be a must for anyone intending to visit Victoria BC.  And if you can't make it in person there's also the Russell Books website www.russellbooks.com

Finally after about 40 minutes I found my wife in another part of the book store and we left to explore the city again.  We found a nice bakery, some shops for my wife and another bookshop, Chronicles Of Crime, which was closed.  But we would be sure to visit it during our travels the next day.  Part 2 will hopefully be added tomorrow night.

And here's some more photos of Victoria for those interested taken while we walked around the city:

The harbour.  We bought fish and chips from Fisherman's Wharf.

All the lamp posts in Victoria looked like this.  The flowers were real.

View from our hotel room.