Bookbuying: 2MBS FM Book & CD Fair, Australia Day weekend

I saw the email from the radio station on 9 January and marked the date in my calendar. On Saturday with a printed map made with Google Maps I drove off, heading to Crows Nest. I turned off the Pacific Highway into Albany Street then headed south on Alexander Street and found a parking spot, paid for it (about $11) and wandered off with my rucksack looking for the site.

I found it eventually with the help of the same app. It was tucked around in the local community centre off a pedestrian mall. The books were mostly classified in categories so it was easy to find things to buy. For $62 I snagged 13 gems:

• L.P. Hartley, ‘The Go-Between’ (1953)
• Graham Greene, ‘The Quiet American’ (1955)
• Peter Hopkirk, ‘Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin’s Dream of an Empire in Asia’ (1984)
• Bruce Porter, ‘Blow’ (1993)
• Ahmet Altan, ‘Like a Sword Wound’ (1997)
• Peter Robb, ‘M’ (1998)
• Edmund White, ‘My Lives’ (2005)
• Orhan Pamuk, ‘Istanbul: Memories and the City’ (2005)
• Ali Abunimah, ‘One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse’ (2006)
• Kazuo Ishiguro, ‘The Buried Giant’ (2015)
• Mark Brandi, ‘Wimmera’ (2017)
• Cyril Wong, editor, ‘Best New Singaporean Short Stories, Volume Three’ (2017)
• David Bowman, ‘Big Bang’ (2019)