From the Library

I branched out my search on eBay the other day, definitely a dangerous idea, and I ended up buying a batch of 19 Stephen King books. Basically, it seemed to me to be too good an offer to pass up. There were 19 books in decent condition and my winning bid was £25 with free postage. Now, I knew that not all of the books were new to me, but for such I bargain price I figured that was fine and I could take the duplicates in to a charity shop for a win-win situation all round. So, a quick bit of sorting and 19 became 12. Oh yes, and one other thing. When I say 'new', what I really mean is 'editions I don't already own'. It's just the four on their sides that are completely new to me. But as far as I'm concerned, they all count, and will make fine additions to the library.

I wrote a little while ago in this post about having just read OHMSS, and I included a photo of many of the different editions of the book that I owned (noting that most of them went with the snow/skier theme for the cover apart from the original Cape first). Well, I have another copy, recently arrived, this time the original book club edition. Sadly, there isn't a full set of book club editions to collect as, in some cases (ably demonstrated by the three pictures) the covers are pretty good. There are eleven in total, with Casino Royale, Moonraker and Octopussy missing. Not all of the covers are as good as these three (see Live and Let Die soon to arrive) and some are versions of the Cape originals (e.g Diamonds), but hey, it's something else to collect!

Lovely weekend away - great friends, great hotel, great time all round, and we can all claim to be experts on gin distilling now! Unwilling to let the weekend end too soon, N and I stopped off on our way home at Polesden Lacey and enjoyed a wander around the house and garden there. No joy in their second-hand bookstore, but there was an exhibition in the house of Luke Adam Hawker's recent work (see his website here ). We'd met Luke before at a Craft show (I think at Hever) and bought his first book 'Together', along with one of his artworks (of doors ), so very pleased to take the opportunity to get his new book 'The Last Tree'.

As mentioned in this post , I have particularly happy memories of reading Expecting Someone Taller on a summer holiday (to Jersey) in the late 80s. Sadly, many years later, I made the terrible mistake of lending my copy out, and never getting it back. Tragedy. Ebay has come riding to the rescue and a (signed) replacement has arrived to sit proudly alongside some of the many others of his on the shelves. Will be looking forward to a first reread in 35+ years sometime soon.

A little bit slow on the uptake, and I thought I might be at risk of not securing a signed copy of the new Matt Haig. However, I found a rather promising new source called The Cleeve Bookshop which seems to do a rather good line in signed first editions. Thought for a short time that I might get lucky and secure a signed (independent bookshop version) of Death at the Sign of the Rook whilst I was about it, but email exchange with the owner confirmed that it wasn't signed after all. It does rather seem that Ms Atkinson has been in the wars. The Waterstones signed version (as finally found in Hatchards at St Pancras) wasn't signed at all, but had a stamp in it, and there don't seem to be any independent bookshop signed versions to be had anywhere. It will be interesting to see whether signing is possible in Canterbury next week. As for The Life Impossible , very pleased to have my signed (edge-sprayed) copy safely installed in the library.

A trip to Waterstones turned out to be rewarding. Wasn't expecting to find Gabriel's Moon . I thought that publication wasn't due for another couple of days, so pleasantly surprised to grab my signed copy. According to Wikipedia (not updated for Gabriel yet), Boyd has written 18 novels plus 5 collections of short stories. I think I am only missing two each of the novels and short stories. Sadly not all in first edition (about half).

Finished You Only Live Twice, and so I find myself with only two to go, one novel and one collection of short stories, before I move on to the continuation authors. And what to make of it. We find Bond going all to pieces, making a hash of it all, wondering what it's all for, expecting M to put him out to seed (maybe go and buy himself a chicken farm somewhere). Kind of understandable for a guy who got married and had his wife murdered on the same day, but it's just not 007. So, as an act of kindness, M sends Bond on an impossible mission - obviously! And it seems to do the trick. Well, his new friend Tiger plus a rotating cast of pretty Japanese girls seem to do the trick anyway. And to top everything off, in the most outrageous of all coincidences (as if stumbling across Blofeld again in OHMSS wasn't enough), the lunatic Shatterhand that Tiger wants Bond to bump off turns out to be our man from SPECTRE once again, so Bond gets to kill two birds (Blofeld and Bunt?!) with o...