Having visited quite a few second-hand bookshops of late, as well as a whole bunch of interstate ones due to work travel, I began to wonder what exactly it is about a given bookshop that makes it feel right (or so very wrong) to me.  I seem to spend quite a bit of time in Reader’s Feast, a bookshop in the Melbourne CBD.  Time, and money also, a fact that made itself apparent upon my receipt of a voucher equivalent to ten per cent of my purchases.  In fact, the rather generous amount on this voucher was the thing that made me decide to focus my book purchasing along more, er, second-hand lines.

This shop, along with Readings (also Melbourne), and Avid Reader (Brisbane), speaks to me due, I think, largely to the thought that has gone into selecting its range.  The fact that it’s an independent bookshop smack in the middle of the CBD helps, too.

I enjoy visiting a shop where there is an abundance of unusual, wonderful, odd little gems lining the shelves, peeping out coquettishly from between the brazen bestsellers and the mass market paperbacks all alike, the latter short and squat, as though they are milk skimmed of cream.  It feels as though someone has taken their time over their selection, umming and ahhing and maybeing, allowing for those of us with weird and painful tastes, not deciding to stock a title solely for the reason that it has a pair of shinyshiny stilettos on its front cover.

So I began wondering what exactly it is about a particular bookshop makes it resonate with people.  And because I’m incredibly nosy, I asked a few writers which bookshops have made an impression on them, and why.  I ended up with both a variety of bookshops, and a variety of reasons.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be posting the answers of a few pf the writers I chatted to, including Nancy Kress, Michael Pryor, Mary Robinette Kowal, Margo Lanagan, Marianne de Pierres, and numerous others.  If you’re a writerly person and would like to write an ode to your favourite bookshop, feel free to get in touch.

Anyway, to kick off the proceedings, we have Lucy Sussex, a fellow Melburnian who is probably familiar to quite a few of you as the author of a number of novels and collections, as well as for her weekly book reviews in for The Age and The West Australian.  About bookshops in general, and about her favourite bookshop, she has the following to say:

These days, going into a bookshop is less about pleasure than about work. As a writer and reviewer, they are the point of sale of my merchandise—and for a lot of other people, some of whom I review. So, as the Friday deadline approaches, I have been known to bail up a bookseller: ‘Quick, a lifestyle title’, or ‘I need a comedy novel!’  My particular pleasure in reading is immaterial, as quite often I end up with books I would not read in a fit. My job is simply to evaluate them, and I get paid for it. Author Arturo Perez-Reverte has said that: ‘In Literature, time is like a shipwreck in which God looks after his own.” The reviewer is not God, but sometimes I do feel as if I row a boat around floating jetsam, picking books out of the water or letting them drown.

So, my favourite bookshop is not about work, and the plethora of current titles, many of them bad. It is a collectables and antiquarian shop, with a fine ambience, including statuettes of owls and original prints. It is immaterial that many of the titles are beyond my budget, such as Queen Victoria’s Highland Journals, with inscription to John Brown (price $40,000). Kay Craddock’s Bookshop is normally housed in the Assembly Hall Building, but renovations mean it will temporarily move to the Mezzanine, 271 Collins Street. The atmosphere will not be the same, but the books will be. And if you like to browse among calf bindings and rare ephemera, art editions and authors that have stood the test of time, then this is a shop worth visiting. Old Curiosities? Yes, and much more.

I’m intrigued by Lucy’s association of bookshops with the business of writing and so on, as I am finding that marketing categories and the prevalence of particular authors, titles, and genres are things to which I’m increasingly paying attention in light of my almost-finished-editing-the-novel mania.  I wonder how this will continue to change, whether my evaluative thoughts will continue to kick in with less and less subtlety–perhaps others of you have found such a thing?

Anyway, a thing of huge importance to me when it comes to book shopping is ‘the browse’.  I could happily spend hours going through each and every section, reading a few pages here, admiring a cover there, scanning acknowledgements pages and staff recommended lists–this is to me a large part of the purchasing (or, if I’m behaving myself, non-purchasing) experience.  So the idea of having to walk into a shop, lie my credit card on the table, and say, ‘hit me’ is both a touch scary and saddening.

Of Lucy’s piece, though, I found most curious and fascinating the idea of an un-bookshop, a place less a mercantile enterprise than a gallery, a secret hiding place for bibliophiles.  Definitely a place I’ll check out (although I’ll be sure to leave my credit card at home).

Other Favourite Bookshop posts:  Margo Lanagan