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'.
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...
