Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Of bookshops

By Malcolm King - posted Friday, 9 August 2013


If you open a copy of Montaigne's Essays you won't find a well-structured treatise. Instead you will find speculative pieces with titles such as ''Of Friendship'', ''Of Liars'' or ''Of Smells''. In the same spirit I write of bookshops.

This Saturday, 10 August is National Bookshop Day. I have much to thank bookshops for.

When I was 12, I walked in to Mary Martins in Adelaide and bought a copy of The Green Years by AJ Cronin. I was hooked. It led me to writing. I became a journalist, then I taught writing and communication at university and now I work in the area of generational change, demographics and creativity. All because of The Green Years.

Advertisement

The 2012 Nielsen BookScan's snapshot of the Australian retail book trade showed 56.6 million books were sold at a net value of $978 million. It's down nine per cent on the previous year but it's still respectable.

While the Internet has cut counter sales of books, the biggest slug to profitability is rent. Last month I walked down Charing Cross Road in London looking for bargain, and I noticed there were half the number of bookshops trading compared with ten years ago.

Book shopping is a tactile and sensual experience. Smell the pages of a new book. Run your fingers up and down its spine. Admire its colour, design and heft. It feels good in the hand.

How many happy hours have I spent in bookshops? Eons. One day, many years ago, I walked in to a now defunct second hand bookshop in St Kilda, Melbourne. On top of a dusty cupboard I pulled down an original copy of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.

A young woman was minding the shop. "That's an old one," she said. "It is, how much?" "How about $10.00?" I paid and literally ran out of the door. It's not the monetary worth. It's the fact I found it and knew it was a classic.

One online comment about bookshops from TheWheeler Centre blog, sums up the magnetic appeal of bookshops.

Advertisement

"I have some invisible person who walks five steps ahead of me, scopes out potential book stores and then grabs me with an invisible rope and forces me in there. Next they select too many books, hand over my money, and I'm out without any say in the matter... when it comes to supporting Australian publishing I am prepared to pay more."

Bookshops old and new are havens of tranquility. To step inside and browse is to leave the hurley burley behind and enter – not an environment – but a world, which is part lucky dip (boys and girls), for who knows what you will find? For us older readers, it is also part nostalgia, for stories read in our teens (our green years): Great Expectations, Siddhartha, The Alexandria Quartet, Under the Volcano, Catch 22 and more. We carry those stories in us.

The media theorist Neil Postman wrote in Amusing Ourselves to Death, "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one."This is not true. E-reader and tablet sales are booming with e-books taking about 10 per cent of total book sales in Australia and rising fast. The biggest market for e-books is women over 45.

In the US, e-books account for about 20 per cent of total book sales, while in Britain the proportion of e-book sales is about 16 per cent. I am also mindful that old books, which have been out of print for years, such as David Ireland's extraordinary The Glass Canoe, may now be reissued in digital form. So instead of burying books, e-books will raise up old works to the light again.

Books form a part of the great web of meaning we spin for ourselves. They can bind us to a chair for hours as we launch ourselves on a voyage that may consume us for the rest of our lives. Such is the power of the Word. A book is not a sound bite. It can't be hurried. Books are a tangible resisting force against the perpetually vanishing present. It doesn't require much technology except light.

To make sense of our emotional lives, we need to dip inwards to work through the content of our feelings. There is no greater guide and companion on this journey than a favourite book, whose well thumbed pages helps to make sense of the story of our lives.

Most of the characteristics we associate with mature discourse are expressed through the Word and books. Exposition requires the ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially. It says 'stop – and think'. In a world of KPIs, downsizing, offshoring, TV cooking shows, a book requires only one thing – your full attention.

In the country township of Myponga, south of Adelaide there is a weekend market in an old cheese factory. For many years a husband and wife team in their late 60s, have sat amongst their piles of used books drinking tea from a thermos.

I always buy a book, not out of charity, but to get that special affirmation from the old man who simply nods and says "Good book". I tested him once on the plotline of Gravity's Rainbow and he ran circles around me. Now whenever he sees me now he calls out, "Here comes the Pynchon expert!" Bless him.

National Bookshop Day is every day. Do yourself or a loved one a favour – buy a book.

My favourite bookshops:

  • Readings (Carlton), Hill of Content, The Paperback Bookshop, Melbourne
  • Avant Garden, Daylesford, Victoria
  • Glebe Books, Better Read than Dead and Berkelouw's (Paddington), Sydney
  • Riverbend and Avid Reader, Brisbane
  • Imprints, Adelaide and the Whistling Fish, Robe, South Australia
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. All


Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

3 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Malcolm King is a journalist and professional writer. He was an associate director at DEEWR Labour Market Strategy in Canberra and the senior communications strategist at Carnegie Mellon University in Adelaide. He runs a writing business called Republic.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Malcolm King

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Article Tools
Comment 3 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy