Lazy Sunday including lunch at the Cheese Room for N and me and a general wander along Rochester High Street. Oxfam bookshop came up trumps with ten at £2.49 each, seven of which were old Asimov paperbacks to add to the collection. I have a few box sets in the same format (Foundation trilogy, Early Asimovs) purchased in the early 90s from a second-hand bookshop not far along the road from the station in Oxford. I think I might have paid £10-15 per box set for them, certainly an astronomical amount of money at the time, but I am very glad that I did.
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...
