I had an email from Peter Miller asking if I would mind giving ‘The Book Guide’ a mention which I am more than happy to do. Peter wrote “There used to be an online secondhand bookshop guide run by Mike Goodenough at Inprint. I used to post frequent reviews. This site closed down a few years ago, to great lamentations from anyone like me who used it to inform our travels. It was resurrected last year in a new and improved version which retains all the data and reviews from the old site plus new updated information. The news hasn’t got around fast though, so the site creators have asked regular reviewers like me to try to spread the word” I use it a lot when I am travelling around as it lists secondhand bookshops in the UK and Ireland that are checked by ‘real people’ and with ‘real comments’ as to what they have found. It is very easy easy to navigate by county and welcomes suggestions for any shops not included or will remove one that might have gone out of business, something all too common these days. Please take a look and let them know if there is anything to change even if it is only for your local area.
Looking through a PAN catalogue from the 2nd December 1966 I saw a page promoting Perry Mason titles featuring the circles on the cover as above. It says there are 22 titles but I can only 17 in this format so as usual I am left wondering if they are also including earlier printings. Some are labelled as part of PAN’s ‘Best of American Crime Fiction’ series. I also have a couple of Gardner’s in the same style but featuring Terry Clane and Rob Trenton and not Perry Mason. Gardner wrote 86 Perry Mason cases out of his 127 titles in total although, as usual, there appears to be discrepancies in numbers either way.
I do like the eclectic mix of titles published by PAN over the years such as ‘The Potato Cookbook’ In the book you will find ‘everything there is to know about potatoes from how they help with slimming, as an aphrodisiac, the breakfast pototo, potato picnics, flans and pies‘ and fully illustrated!. While perusing this rivetting read I was reminded of a cartoon I quite liked in the latest copy of ‘Private Eye’
