Books, Books, Books

Categories: reading

Date: 05 May 2007 02:54:22

The local bookstore knows my type well: after various spending, I receive a "20% off your next purchase" voucher. So I go in today...and come out with three books: The Wine of Angels by Phil Rickman (the Merrily Watkins books were the subject of much discussion on the Australian Ship thread and I thought I'd take a look); Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult; and The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change by Tim Flannery. And, I also walked out with a 15% discount voucher this time. Someone help me!: as you can see by the list on the left, I have no shortage of books.

Add to this the two books delivered yesterday from gwales.com, in an attempt to correct my lack of knowledge of Welsh history and literature, Marion Eames' A Private Language? A Dip into Welsh Literature and Penguin's A History of Wales, and I should have enough reading for the short-term.

As well I picked up another sort of book: my new passport. After ten years I needed to renew it [at the rather exorbitant, in my view, price of A$193]: my first trip was in 1998 on a 21-day Contiki Tour of Western Europe with 6 days in London afterwards. And it has travelled with me to Ireland, throughout Canada, to San Francisco, Sweden and numerous times to Germany and Austria.

The new-style passport is termed the ePassport, and has an embedded microchip in the centre page and a gold international ePassport symbol on the front. Very swish. And I even wasn't too appalled with the photo, which I tend to think was an improvement on my old on. Below are some comparison shots.
<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/187/484502403_e3debc0bb3_m.jpg" alt="Old and New Pages" align="left"