Skip to main content

Renewed

Some time ago, I found a rather nice set of Orion paperbacks of the John Gardner Bonds, all in uniform covers, with subtly differing designs and colourways (see here on the rather excellent Piz Gloria reference site). Well, that's to say I found someone selling 14 out of the 16 in the set. Obviously, I snapped them up (ignoring the fact that I'd previously purchased the box set containing five of them), thinking I'd add the other two at a later date. Actually, the Orion books that I was buying were still available new from Amazon, but I was very happy to do so given that I was paying £3 per book (and they were 'as new') and the Amazon price as £9 per book.

However, the missing two were the first two of the Gardner books (Licence Renewed and For Special Services). Since the uniform set were published in 2012, the good people at Orion had decided to reissue these two with new artwork - just these two (see again here on Piz Gloria). This makes it substantially harder to find the first two books in the 2012 cover versions.

I have finally, hooray, found Licence Renewed.

The search goes on for For Special Services ...



Popular posts from this blog

Hooked

Ian Fleming publications released the first chapter of the forthcoming Felix Leiter book on Tuesday this week. They could have waited for a day and released it on Fleming's (117th) birthday, but never mind. Their post includes both the first chapter and the author, Raymond Benson, reading it. I am reminded of this post from 2023 when I was pleased to report on a successful eBay purchase from Mr Benson. Last year, I was able to repeat the trick by purchasing, directly from the author, another set, this time of the US first edition signed paperbacks of his Bond works. As for The Hook and the Eye, I don't think I'm going to sign up for the digital serialisation, but will look forward to the hard copy later this year.

Wisley

On my previous return from far away, N took me to the Hyde Hall RHS gardens in Essex and, because it was such a warm and sunny day and we enjoyed ourselves so much (and the jetlag cure seemed to be so successful), we signed up for membership on the spot. Determined to extend the benefit, we toddled off to Wisley today, narrowly avoiding a satnav disaster along the way, but making it into an adventure instead. And, once again, it was glorious. I can see why Mum loved it so much, and I only wish I'd had the chance to enjoy it with her. We had a great visit, mostly contemplating what we will be doing with the couple of Norfolk acres we don't have yet. They are going to be superb. They already are in our imaginations! Saturday in the sunshine was topped off with barbecue organised by J whilst we were out. So, no time for book shopping, so I can but reflect on the charity finds from the week just finished, in amongst which we have a first of V2 to help the Harris firsts collection a...

Heritage

After some fun and games with setting up an account (which J managed to figure out whilst I was otherwise occupied with a somewhat important prior engagement), we enjoyed participating in a Bond auction that was taking place in the US. We bid on about a dozen lots and were ultimately successful with four. We are now waiting to see how much is going to be added to our purchase prices for handling and international shipping costs ...! For the time being, here's a little clue as to what was purchased.