Skip to main content

Libby

We continue to adopt a hand-luggage only policy when travelling (for work), and so that doesn't really leave much space for packing reading material. Therefore I tend to really on e-reading on these occasions, and this is where Libby is my friend. Whilst some (mean) authors don't make their books available, lots do, and so I am able (with patience and wait-listing in some cases) to download library books - mostly copies of ones from my physical library - to take away with me. The last three mentions of books read all fit that description - enjoyed on ipad whilst travelling in the safe knowledge that the hard copy is tucked away on the shelves at home.

Popular posts from this blog

Five

Saturday trip to an Oxfam bookstore and could have come away with more, but thankfully I managed to get online (via N hotspotting me) and so avoiding buying a bunch of duplicates. Pleased to spot the two Rivers of London novellas. I thought that I was doing well with getting these, as this brings me up to nine, but it turns out that I am a tad out of date as we are up to 16 now. Oh well, I will keep plugging away. As for the Jane Gardam, loved Old Filth and have started to pick up her books when I spot them. This is one of her earlier novels, and was nominated for the Booker, so much hope. Lee Child - 20 short stories - they will get devoured! A Sebastian Faulks paperback. I have the first edition, but now I have a reading copy too which was missing from my paperback shelf, as evident from the photograph. I've just finished his 'Fires Which Burned Brightly' which, as a series of essays, I picked up and put down over a quite a while. More of that another time.   
Read more

Thrilling

During our visit to Boston last week, I picked up a copy of Ian Fleming's Thrilling Cities at the Harvard Bookstore in the recently published William Morrow imprint. Given that it was written more than a lifetime (in Fleming's case) ago, it is remarkable that it is still in print, particularly given some of the views espoused within it, combined with the 'incidental intelligence' telling readers where to find five-star hotel rooms around the world for around £15 per night. Still, when there is a new run of the 14 Bond books, it seems like publishers know that if they tag on copies of this and the Diamond Smugglers, there will be enough nutjob Fleming completists (like me) to make it worth their while. The only challenge for the bookstores is to know where to shelve it to attract sales. Should they deliberately misfile it at put it with the Bond books, or do they take a chance of it languishing in what can be fairly haphazard travel sections. Thankfully the Harvard store...
Read more

Multitudes

Waiting for my next plane at Changi last month, in accordance with SOP, I had a look around the airside WH Smith. Whilst it is tempting to divert here to comment on what a waste-of-space, sell-out, enterprise they are having destroyed their High Street stores and retreated to train stations and airports to sell the captured customer overpriced drinks, snacks, and blow-up neck pillows, now is not the time (although I seem to have started already). Anyway, avoiding the general rubbish around me, I was pleased to pick up a first edition of 'The Life of Chuck'. This had appeared briefly in UK bookstores but seemed to have disappeared fairly quickly. Not sure if that was an indication of the film not doing so well, or maybe the tie-in book was too close to 'If It Bleeds', in which the story also appears, having only been published in paperback four years before and which, happily, also included a Holly story. As the picture shows, there might be some debate as to whether I n...
Read more