Book Score!

Yesterday, I was out and about in the rainy day here in Brisbane, and I found myself at Holland Park West at a friend's house.  He's been cleaning out his house - calling out to friends on Facebook to come and get things he doesn't want - and I called him to see if he was home.  Fortunately he was, and I so dropped around to give him something Mum asked me to drop off.

Well, what started out as a general conversation turned into us going into the downstairs basement area looking at his books he no longer needed or wanted.

A lot of them were from his naturopath days when he ran a business at Stones Corner; but being retired now, he finds he no longer needs them. But there were other books there too.  From anatomy to herbs, to gardening and meditation, he had books on pretty much everything!  I picked out a few books to bring home with me that I am extremely happy with!

'Albatross Book of Verse: School Edition'
'Gold: Black Gold The Story of Intrigue - the Story of Mount Morgan' by Cyril Grabs
'Please Explain' by Karl Kruszelnicki
'Crop Circles: Signs, Wonders and Mysteries' by Steve and Karen Alexander
'Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Home Improvement'

Now, there were many more books piled up there under his house, but I only chose those six... which I think is quite good of me; seeing how I really can't control myself around books normally. 

Well, that was my score for the day... what have you been getting your nose into lately? Until my next post, happy reading!

Where Do You Read?

Reading just isn't reading unless you're comfortable, and this is a truth I totally believe.  Now, I love to read in bed, just before I turn out the light.  It could be really late at night, or after midnight, but I love snuggling in under my duvet in the middle of Winter and reading a few good chapters to relax my mind and to stop it from racing too much.

Not only is it the old-fashioned way of winding down, but it's the best way to wind down too.

There's other places I love to read as well. 

I read in my backyard, where I have a cool little set-up of a table and chairs in my little courtyard garden - which I have worked my butt off to make it look just lovely - and to settle in and read a few pages of my favourite book, before I get lost in my own daydreams of looking at my garden (yeah, that happens a lot when I'm there).

Then, there's the curb outside my house.  It's a nice little curb right in the sun.  This is a nice spot in Winter when it's a cold day, but the sun is warm... mmmm, nothin' like catching up with a few pages of my favourite book there - especially if I have a bit of a cold and I want to warm up and get some fresh air into me.

But now, I have a new thing to be comfy with; well, okay, it's not quite ready to be used as yet, but it will be in about a month or so.  

It's a chair I found at the back of my unit complex.

A neighbour and I were chatting and we saw it all wrapped up on its back.  I pulled its wrappings off and saw potential in this sweet piece!  

Sure, it needs work, but I love working on old, used pieces of furniture - especially if I want to use it for something in particular in my home.

This is going to be my reading chair.

Isn't is something?

What is your ideal place to read?  Is it a chair in your bedroom or living room? Is it in bed before turning out the light? Is it out on your verandah or patio overlooking your garden or suburb? Leave a comment (or a photo of your favourite chair) and let us know how often you enjoy your time with it... and if you don't get enough time to read there; don't you think it's time you set aside the time to just that soon? Yeah, me too... I haven't read anything fun lately either.  Until my next post, happy reading.

Tiny Reads of Big Authors

A Scottish library has put on display tiny books of some of the best-known authors and classic poets around.  Just check it out!  It's amazing how small these books are of the greatest authors of our times!

Tiny Books On Display 

Until my next post, happy reading!

Piers Anthony Book Finds!

Don't you love it when you find a pile of books in a place you just didn't expect to find books?  Yep me too!  Well, I was out doing my fortnightly shopping when I thought to check out my local Life Line charity store and found out the front a collection of Piers Anthony books sitting in a basket for $3.00 each!  They were in good condition and I have been wanting to read some of his work but didn't want to spend a fortune on ordering in new books from QBD.

So, I looked through the collection of books there and found some old, but great, titles.  It wasn't until I got them home that I found out they were all First Editions; two of the titles being printed in the USA.  What great finds!  I can't wait to get in and read them!  They look wonderful, have lovely dust jackets and are all hard cover editions!  I love them.

Have you ever found books this way?  It's a great feeling to have them so close and yet are at a wonderful price, isn't it?  Which books were the ones you found for your collection?  Until my next post, happy reading!

'Nelson Mandela: The Authorised Book of Quotations' by Himself

I've had a lot of time to kick back and read here at my brother's house; and one of the books I brought with me to read is this one.  Now with books like this, I don't read them from front to back; as there's no real storyline or plot.  These books are just quotes of a famed person at different times in their lives.  However, normally, these books are done up by a second party - a biographer or family member - who's been there right from the beginning.  With this wonderful little book, Nelson Mandela has pulled together his quotes over his whole lifetime himself.  And what a book it is!

I have admired Nelson Mandela since I was in high school and the whole world was fighting Apartheid in South Africa; and this great man was in prison for something he said and did.  Once he was let out, and I found out exactly who he was I followed his life.  I have tracked down a couple of his books down at bookstores (and have yet to read them; but at least I have them on hand when I want to get into them).  But when I found this one, I knew I just had to have it as it was purely about him, by him; and that's something wonderful as it speaks volumes about how much he has influenced people and the globe and history as we know it when we see what a single, important person has said over their whole lifetime that has changed the way the world works.  Until my next post, happy reading. 

Betty's Reading Room

I just read on Bookcrossing about a little bothy which has been renovated in Orkney, Scotland in memory of a dear friend of a couple who passed away suddenly.  Betty's Reading Room is a little hideaway for the book-loving people of the world, which has cosy lounges, a warm fire and oil lamps hanging from the ceiling along with shelves and shelves of bookcases filled with books of all kinds.  These are for people to settle in and read, put back, take home, exchange or keep; but by all means, enjoy them as Betty would have too.  For the complete story, here's the report on it.

Betty's Reading Room 

Series Reading

I've been reading other blogs lately that everyone either loves reading books in a series or they don't.  There's no middle of the road, it's a love or hate relationship.  Actually, I don't think it's that at all.  There's some series that click with people and some that don't.  

I've been loaned a trilogy of books by Peter F Hamilton.  He's a great sci-fi writer.  He's not complicated and gets right into the story.  However, his books are the size and weight of doorstops!  I found one of The Dream Trilogy series and not the other two; and one of my friends has the other two.  So, we put our heads together and thought to share.  Well!  My friend zipped through all three books and then handed them onto me.  I jumped in and only read to chapter two of book one and found it was such a mammoth read I couldn't get any further (sorry Geoff!).  But really, do books have to be so physically huge to carry the story along?

I have easily followed Raymond E Fiest's 'Magician' series along; and I stumbled upon that one by mistake while holidaying in Cairns one time.  I bought it at a second-hand store where the money went to build shelters for beaten women.  This one book led to another, and then another - then the next thing I knew I was buying the whole five of the series.  And you know?  I've still got those books in my collection to read.  I just can't part with them.

I've read 'Lord of the Ring's and 'The Hobbit' before it; however couldn't get into any other works by Tolkien, which is a pity as I do love his works.

Peter Straub and Stephen King both worked on a two-parter book together called 'The Talisman' and 'Black House'.  I bought the first one in Cairns (in the same place as I bought 'Magician') and found a copy of the next one at a garage sale to buy and keep as the libraries didn't like how slow I read at the time.  I still have these two books; and really I must read them again as the storyline is brilliant!

Even Stephen King has done a great, well-known series called 'The Dark Tower Series'.  Now, I was late in getting in on this one; but I'm there.  To start with I was given 'The Drawing of the Three' but it fell apart on me and I had to throw it out.  So, I ended up buying the first one - 'The Gunslinger' and tried reading it.  But my head wasn't really in it.  So, I kept it (as it was brand new I don't give away those books; especially when I want to read them) and was given 'Wizard and Glass' by my brother; which I also kept (and is the fourth book).  Eventually, Mum bought me 'Song of Susannah' and I found 'The Wind Through the Keyhole' (the latter was bought on Thursday this week).  So, I'm slowly getting the whole series together.  I only need three more books and I'm set to read them at my leisure.  The one mistake I've made with reading a series is reading them back to back; as they get a little too much.  So, I'll read one, then read something in between, then read the next one.

So, what is your favourite series to read?  Be it from childhood or from now?  Please do leave a comment and let us know.  Until my next post, happy reading!

Born on a Rotten Day by Hazel Dixon-Cooper

Every now and then, I come across a book which really tickles my funny bone.  And this is one of them.  I love reading books that look at the hilarious side of things that we normally take for granted; like our zodiacs.  This book takes our typical, normal and what author Hazel Dixon-Cooper calls our 'own inner brat'.  Forget that Librans are indecisive and that Virgos are Perfectionists... this book will tell you exactly how horrible those star signs really are underneath all that sugar-coating we've been hypnotised with all these years.

I found this book at a Community Thrift Sale two weeks ago, and sat down with my Mum to have a good look at it before going out again that day.  We giggled and laughed at everything that was wrong with us as well as everyone else in the family - and this book came up trumps with everyone.  It told the hard, cold facts and we weren't about to say it was lying either - well because how can you escape who you really are?

I've tried looking for this book online for you all, however, just trying to find the author was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.  Besides Hazel's home site - which I found through Google easily enough - I couldn't find anything of her works through the publisher she went through in New York.  However, I did find a great site for rare and out of print books!  What a way to find one thing when looking for another!  Well, until my next post, happy reading!

In Miniature

Everyone loves a library; however when a community is too small to have one, and there's a phone company downsizing their old phone booths, there's always a great idea to combine the two!  And in the UK, some of the smaller towns and villages have done just that!

Library In A Phone Box 

A Few Days of Silence

I've been cut off from my phone over the last week; and this wasn't my fault.  However, I did get in and look at things around my place which needed doing while I waited five days to have the phone line fixed.  

One of those things was to read a little more.  Isn't it strange how when one thing is removed from your life, you start looking around to replace it with something else very quickly to relieve the boredom that you know will sneak up on you?  I bought a book last month titled 'Active Dreaming' by Robert Moss.  I purchased it on Boundary Street in West End here in Brisbane and have found it the most wonderful reference book about just that; our dreams.  I had gone out and bought an Index Book and began index symbols in my dreams and came up with a lot of them; so many I didn't realise that I had actually dreamt of a camel until I wrote it down twice! 

The next book I was reading was '11-22-63' by Stephen King.  Now, this one has taken me a while to get through.  It's slowly getting around to what the story is about and I'm glad as it's something I don't wish to put down and push to one side just yet.  No, Stephen has pulled me in this far, I'm not giving up on this gem... not when he's given me all of this history and brilliance from his mind.  

And just yesterday, I picked up a book from QBD at Garden City titled 'Oryx and Crake' by Margaret Atwood.  I haven't read any of her work before; however I'm finding it very much like 'The Bee-Loud Glade' by Steve Himmer.  I do like this book very much, so far; and yet I'm only up to page 40.  So, what happens when the phone lines vanish on you?  Or the power goes out and you have a few days to yourself?  Do you get into reading more?  Do you sew or knit?  Is there a painting your pick at?  Let us know.  Until my next post, happy reading!

Book Haul!

Usually, while I'm on holidays down the coast, I buy up big at the markets and enjoy the massive bargains.  Then, I arrive home and have to reorganise my bookshelves to make room for the new arrivals; and believe me, it's not easy!  This year, I stayed home again (and this time not because of the floods) and Mum took the opportunity and went to the markets for me.  I thought this was a sweet gesture; even though I didn't ask her to and wasn't expecting her to.  She had the best fun finding the most unexpected bargains in the most unusual places.

The first books we'll look at are 'The Chronicles of Naria' by C. S Lewis.  This is an unabridged edition of all the books which was published in 2001; well before the edition that was put out with the movies in 2010 - which came with a poster in the back.  Both editions I have are unabridged and both are worthwhile.  The next book was one that Mum didn't buy, but found at the laundry.  Now, at the holiday park laundry, people leave books in the laundry and they're picked up and replaced by others - a little like Bookcrossing but not - and yet it's a great way of everyone sharing their reading material around the place; so long you have a book to replace the one you've taken.  Mum picked up 'Court & Country: Studies in Tudor Social History' by A.L Rowse.  This is a non-fiction book studying the history of the Cornwall area of England.  Very interesting time of English Society.

Then, Mum found me some wonderful Stephen King books.  She was so excited about one that she called me on her mobile and told me about it at the market, then called me again once she got it back to the caravan; and little wonder it was a First Edition from the UK!  This particular book is 'Song of Susannah' from The Dark Tower Series.  What a find!  It's got a brilliant set of coloured plates inside, a beautiful dust jacket and it's never been read; as the attached bookmark is still folded up inside the book!  What a find!  Mum is so proud of it - and I am too.  You just don't find a book of this caliber anywhere anymore; especially from this series.

One of the plates that depict Sai King's character in The Dark Tower Series.

On the opposite page from the Sai King plate.

The next book of Stephen King's Mum found was 'Lisey's Story'.  I've been wanting to read this book for some time; however the price of it hasn't really gone down all that much.  So, each time I've seen it, it's been a little out of my reach.  When she told me she had seen it for a great price, I jumped at the chance of owning.  Mum told me that there were many titles of his where she was standing at the market.  And so, we went through a lot of them and she found I had most of them - to her amazement - and she decided to keep just the two she had picked up.

When Mum and Dad arrived at my place for coffee yesterday, I knew that 'Songs of Susannah' was going to be a big book, however I didn't know that 'Lisey's Story' was going to be an oversized paperback - nice and big to read.  I'm so pleased about what my Mum bought me (even though she didn't have to buy these books).  Now, just to find a spot in my overcrowded library for them!

So, over these holidays, have you scored a great book haul?  Did you personally oversee it or did somebody do it on your behalf; like my Mum did for me?  Until my next post, happy reading! 

Finding Firsts

There's nothing like settling back in my lounge with a cup of tea or a glass of Root Beer and getting my nose into a good book.  What I really love to do is get into a first - or second - edition of a book; and I don't mean a brand new book, I mean the old ones, the ones that have been around the world a few times and made it into my hands - and my collection - in one piece.  This is something I love to possess.

Scattered around this small office, I have a good lot of First and Second Edition books.  There's  some I've read and some I haven't.  However, with these books, they aren't new ones, they are old books; books that I have spent many years tracking down, so I have no intention of letting them go.

However, my first time at finding a rare or first edition book was in a place and time of my life where I wasn't even thinking of beginning a collection of them.  I  was in the UK on a 7-week holiday with Trafalgar Tours and we were at a toilet stop in a small Welsh village; and I had 45 minutes to kill.  Of course I asked for a bookstore and was pointed in the direction of the only one in town.  I found this place was massive.  It not only had a cafe, but a basement room and a huge area out the back where there was isle upon isle of books.  I seriously needed to come back and look at this place (unfortunately, I didn't have time during that trip; but next time I will take the time to get out there for a few days).  Well, I found 'The Letters of JRR Tolkien' edited by Humphrey Carpenter in hard cover in a small attic room where the wiring was stuffed and I had to use a torch to look at the books.  It cost me twelve pounds and fifty pence; and I did offer more but the lady refused telling me that '... it's just a book!'.  Well, I took my book in its brown paper bag back to the bus and asked my co-ordinator about the book; and told him I had the feeling I've done something terrible.  He took one look at the book and ordered the driver to pull out my suitcase and put it in it until we reached our next hotel.  At the time, I didn't understand what the hell he was fussing about; not until I returned home to Australia and took it in to get it looked at in a reputed book evaluators in the city.  The old man tottered over to me as he pulled out the large black ledger and opened it, wrote down my name and gestured for me to show him the books I had for his perusal.  I had found a few books since I had returned home and wanted to get them all looked at in the one sitting; so waited about a year before I took them in.  He saw I had brought in 'The Stephen King Story' by George Beahm in hard cover and wrote it down.  Then, there was 'The Stephen King Companion' by the same author and gave me a quick quote on them both.  Then, I pulled out the JRR Tolkien book and he dropped his pen on the ledger as his Einstein eyebrows nearly popped off his forehead.  He gingerly handled this book, placing it on the counter and flipped through it, looking at the condition and smiling through his scruffy, gray mustache before asking me exactly where I had gotten it.  I produced the receipt of the bookstore I bought it from and he wrote down the name of the town (seeing I can only pronounce it and not spell it - too many double L's).  He handed the book back carefully and told me to care for it as though it was cash as it was the one of four copies in Australia!  My eyes nearly fell out of my head as my ears didn't believe what they were hearing!  I had to get him to repeat what he said - twice - and he had written the book down in the ledger; so it's now registered as a very rare book and its worth goes up every year I have it in the condition it's in.  

Since that find in 1997, I have been one of those people who will track down market stalls, old book stores, antiques shops and charity stores just to find a first edition.  There are bookstores I haunt when I go on holidays and bookstores I haunt when I go into the city just to look around.  And you know, each time I go on holidays, I always find something brilliant and interesting to bring home.

So far, I've found 'Mozart' by Alfred Einstein (yep, Albert Einstein's cousin!) a great man who looked into how musicians and their music made them the way they are!  It was published in 1946 and the copy I have is a first edition.  Brilliant, I tell ya!  Then, in the same store, I found as second edition of 'Old Man and the Sea' by Ernest Hemmingway which has great illustrations by two artists because the publishers couldn't make up their minds about who they wanted and ended up hiring them both!  It's written in the notes in the front of the book.

I do enjoy finding these books by pure chance; and when I do, it's as though they have been waiting for me the whole time on that very bookshelf in that very store for me to show up and buy them.  It's as though it's fate... and I love it.  So, what books have you stumbled upon by pure chance and found out they were not only First Editions but rare as hens' teeth?  And which book set you off as a person who hunted down these types of books?  Or have you been like this the whole time?  For me, it's what the book looks like, as well as how it's been published, the style of the writing, illustrations and how it's bound that attracts me to first editions.  They are so much better than the new books around today.  Until my next post, happy reading!

Book Score!

Last weekend, I was invited at the last minute to attend my niece's school fete.  I turned it down as I had a lot to do here at home and needed to catch up on a fair few things around here before my very busy week started out.  This was something I regretted when my folks called back that afternoon asking me about books.  Mum had found a hall there chock full of near-new books for next to nothing.  The organisers were handing out boxes people could fill for $10!  What was I missing out on! An absolute bargain, that's what!  Well, that was my fault, nobody else's.  However, Mum bought me some great books I haven't read.

The first I do have (somewhere around here) but this one is a first edition; and I love digging up these things.  It's 'Misery' by Stephen King.  Finding a first edition of his isn't easy these days - especially his old works; but Mum found this one; and isn't it great!  She bought it for about $1.00 or so.  

Then, there was 'Dream Thief' by Stephen Lawhead.  Now, this author is famous for his sci-fi fantasy works of the King Arthur series; not science fiction. However, he has written this genre before and so Mum bought me this works; something I haven't read of his.  Brilliant!  This edition is the UK edition; what a find!

Then, Mum mentioned 'Under My Skin' by Doris Lessing.  Now, I have wanted to read something about this wonderful writer for a long time; and now I have the first volume of her autobiography!  What a wonderful book!  I can't wait to get in and read it next year (as I have so many now I really do need to get my nose into a few of them).  

And last - but not least - is 'The Wayward Bus' by John Steinbeck.  I haven't heard of this work by this author, but when Mum read the blurb on the back, it sounded very interesting and made me want to read it.  So, she bought it for me.  What a great selection of books!  I'd like to thank my Mum for tracking down these books - however few they are - for me as they really do look like great reads and fantastic classics in their own rights.  I can't wait to read them.  What books have you found at markets or fetes that you've bought for a steal and made you wonder what they were doing there in the first place?  Have you bought up big, or did you just pick out a select few like my Mum did for me on Sunday? Until my next post, happy reading!

Late-Comers!

Have you ever gone and done something; and realised later you should have waited?  Well, this is what I've done here.  I knew I was going out today to a place where there was a good bookstore and there was a bargain bin; however did I leave my 'July Book Buys' until Sunday?  Nope, I was too darn eager. Silly me.

The first book I bought was 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Slow Cooker Cooking' by Ellen Brown.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a good cook, but get a slow cooker near me, and I'm a complete disaster.  The results from these things often either taste like cardboard or worse; and I have to throw the contents out!  So, this book was a must!  I'm just as bad with a microwave; yes I grew up with them, but I'm not good anywhere near them. 

The next book looked good as it's 'The Islands' by Di Morrissey.  I haven't read any of her work and have heard a lot about this book through Good Reading Magazine and so when I saw this at a quarter of the price, I thought it would be a good time to buy it.  Well, these are the late-comers of the July Book Buys.  Next month, I won't be so excited in getting up here... I'll try and wait out the whole month if I can. Until my next post, happy reading! 

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

A young Shepard is sent on a journey for his Personal Legend by a gypsy when he visits a town on his usual route through his lands.  So, he takes a chance, sells his sheep and begins his journey that takes him away from the comforts of his homelands and across the Great Desert.  The young man learns many things from many people he meets during this journey; from a king to a man who owns a crystal shop to an Englishman who owns many books who is searching for the alchemist.  While the young man takes his journey, he finds his Personal Legend takes him in many different directions, but it never changes.  And he's taught one main lesson:  never to ignore his Personal Legend, or to stop listening to it, or it will stop leading him in his life.

At first, I found this book hard to get into, but then, it became something I couldn't put down.  It doesn't have any chapter headings, so you can easily keep reading and reading and lose track of time; which made it easy for me to read up to 50 pages in one sitting.  So, I read this book in about four long sittings; and found it was brilliantly written and didn't bog me down with too much detail, pulling me along, letting me colour in the background with my own brush.

Paulo Coelho, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 1947.  He was the son of Pedro Queima Coehlo de Souza, an engineer and his wife, Lygia, a homemaker.

Early on, Paulo dreamed of an artistic career, which was frowned upon in his middle-class household.  In the austere surroundings of a strict Jesuit school, Paulo discovered his true vocation: to be a writer.  Paulo's parents had different plans for him, however.  When their attempts to suppress his devotion to literature failed they took it as a sign of mental illness; and at seventeen, his father had him committed to a mental institution, twice, where he entured session of electroconvulsive "therapy".  His parents brought his back there once more after be became more involved with a theatre group and began to work as a journalist.

Paulo was always a nonconformist and a seeker of the new.  In 1968, in the excitement of the guerrilla and hippie movement too hold in Brazil, Paulo embraced progressive politics and joined the peace-and-love generation.  He sought spiritual experience, traveling all over Latin America in the footsteps of Carlos Cataneda.  He worked in theatre and dabbled in journalism, launching an alternative magazine called 2001.  He began to collaborate with music producer Raul Seixas as lyricist, transforming the Brazilian rock scene.  In 1973, Paulo and Raul joined the Alternative Society, an organisation that defended the individual's right to free expression, and began publishing a series of comic strips calling for more freedom.  Members of the organisation were detained and imprisoned.  Two days later, Paulo was kidnapped and tortured by a group of paramilitaries.

Due to this profound experience, he decided that at the age of twenty-six, he had had enough of living life on the edge and wanted to be "normal".  He worked as an executive in the music industry then tried his hand at writing; but didn't get into it seriously until after had an encounter with a stranger.  First, saw the man in a vision, then met him in a cafe in Amsterdam.  The stranger suggested that Paulo should return to Catholicsm and study the benign side of magic.  He also encouraged Paulo to walk the Road of Santiago de Compostela, the medieval pilgrim's route.

In 1987, a year after completing that pilgrimage, Paulo wrote The Pilgrimage:  Diary of Magus.  The book describes his experiences and his discovery that the extraordinary occurs in the lives of ordinary people.  A year later, Paulo wrote a very different book, The Alchemist.  The first edition sold only nine hundred copies and publishing house decided not to reprint.  Paulo would not surrender his dream; and found another - bigger - publishing house.

He wrote Brida (a work still unpublished in English) that received a lot of attention in the press and both The Alchemist and The Pilgrimage appear on the best seller lists.  The Alchemist went on to sell more copies than any other book in Brazilian literary history.

I'm currently looking for an official website for Paulo Coelho; however it only comes up with a Wiki page; something I'm not happy with.  So, I'll keep on searching for you all.

Angus & Robertson Closing Down Sale

As you all know, Borders Bookstores have had financial difficulties in the last few years.  However, here in Australia, Angus & Robertson Bookstores and Borders were working together; and so when Borders finally had to close its doors, so did one of our longest running and most important book publishers and bookstores in Australia has to close its doors.  And why not go out with bang at Garden City than with a 75% off all books sale.  And today, Mum and I took off to that.  

At first, she was there just to pick up a book; and I was there to be good and watch the people politely fight over the books that were left (as half the bookstore had already been emptied since this morning; and the store is closing on Sunday).  Instead, Mum bought two books and I bought five.  Yeah, I broke my promise to back off on my purchasing spree each month... so much for promises!  But just look at what I got myself!  All of these books are brand new and they were 75% off the full price!  What bargains!  And Mum bought me the really thick one... how good is that?

We had a great day out and I'm glad that I got one book off my wish list... and that's a great thing.  The one problem I have now is trying to find a place to put these books - as I do each time I go book shopping.

Illustrated Thrillers for Kids.

Now, I love to find new books for any age group of any genre.  However, when I received a phone call from my Mum on Saturday, she told me there were a collection at the Springwood Community Centre not far from her home called the 'Illustrated Classic Editions Thrillers'.   I asked what they looked liked.  Well, she said she'd get them and bring them to me.

That night, she brought them over to my house and showed them to me and I found they were large print and for kids.  I had the impression they were graphic novels.  However, they weren't.  There are six in all and all of them are written by the most classic writers around from the twentieth century and adapted for children between the ages of 9 and 12.  There are 'Tales of Mystery and Terror' by Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr Hyde' by Robert Louis Stevenson, 'The Invisible Man' by H.G. Wells, 'The Time Machine' by H.G. Wells and 'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley.  All these books are in my shelves however these particular ones are adapted from the adult versions and put in to larger print for young minds to grasp quickly and have great illustrations.  Well worth looking for.