Shanti Mathias visits and ranks the crème de la crème of Auckland’s secondhand bookshops.
From Ponsonby to Grafton to Devonport to Parnell, Auckland has some lovely secondhand bookshops, many of which are huge and deserve to be browsed for hours, embracing the way that all bookstores, but especially secondhand bookstores, can introduce you to books you’d never heard of. With much reluctance (due to a fondness for all safe harbours for books), The Spinoff has ranked Auckland’s secondhand bookshops, following rankings of secondhand bookshops in Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. It goes without saying but this ranking is a loose guide – all the bookstores are winners in our hearts and every single one of them is worth visiting.
7. Books on High
Books on High suffers from what I can only describe as too many vibes. It has some new books – lots of copies of The Alchemist, a plastic-wrapped full set of all 14 Wizard of Oz books – and spiritual texts, like translations of the Qur’ran and Vietnamese monk and teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh. These are juxtaposed with a few big, expensive art books, gift shop fare like crystals and postcards, shimmery music playing, big colourful artworks that look a bit like Hilma af Klimt, and lots of old leatherbound books. Apparently they bought most of their stock from Rare Books, located next door on High St but now only open a few hours a week as the owner isn’t able to come in much.
Some of the books are stunning, but they feel more like books that are meant to be looked at, not read. I flipped through a “ladies handbook of home treatment” with some fascinating ideas about pregnancy (lard is a good treatment for soreness) and felt reasonably sure that I was the first person who had opened it for years.
Winner in category: Most crystals
6. Jason Books
When I visited Jason Books, a university student was asking the team at the desk whether they had a copy of a book she’d just been assigned to read for a course. She seemed devastated to learn that more canny students had already bought out all the copies, and promptly trotted back up the stairs. The shop as a whole very much gives the impression of having been picked over by university students, and while there were some great inclusions, with nicely curated central tables – I especially liked the art books on display – something about the big room sunk below street level felt a bit cool, not as welcoming as others on this list. Tucked off of High St, on the other side of the Ellen Melville Centre, it was a little hard to find, and dead silent apart from the two employees idly discussing mutual friends and their social lives.
However, the non-fiction section is very well organised – broken down even into categories like “shipwrecks” and “fishing”, and the New Zealand selection is extensive. Pricewise, the books seemed cheaper than some of the other entries; it makes sense that uni students love it. I think it would be a great shop to take visitors to the country. Hopefully they could leave with a lovely vintage copy of Landfall or Sport to remember Aotearoa by.
Winner in category: Best New Zealand literary history
5. Blue Hills Second Hand Books
In the hill suburb of Parnell, across the road from the beautiful Holy Trinity Cathedral, this bookshop is named for (I think) one of AE Housman’s Shropshire Lad poems. It’s one of the smaller bookshops on this list, and kind of charming for it. I especially liked the boxes of picture books on the floor, the perfect height for small people to pull out and examine, and the couch underneath the window, an ideal place to plop and peruse.
There’s a decent selection of recent fiction here; I spotted heaps of excellent 2010s YA (The Bone Season! Illuminae!) as well as older faves (Noel Streatfield! T.H. White!); lots of literary fiction, like Zadie Smith, Hilary Mantel and Karen Maitland. Some of the curated boxes tucked underneath the central table reflect our national psyche: there were several boxes of rugby books which sort of astonished me at the volume of literary output generated by the sport with the prolate spheroid ball. Blue Hills was the only bookshop I visited that had vintage cookbooks separated out (as far as I could tell). It rewards interaction and browsing, as lots of books on the shelves face outwards, demanding to be picked up and examined, so you can spot what is behind them.
Winner in category: Best smell (an intriguing, savoury mix of bread and pastry from the bakery next door combined with old books)
4. Hard to Find Books
The Dunedin edition of this iconic secondhand bookshop has already been lauded by Hera Lindsay Bird, but no one made the obvious joke: is it the bookshop that is hard to find, or the books? I’m happy to report that it is neither: Hard to Find Books is located in a lovely house on St Benedict’s Street in Eden Terrace , and it is absolutely impossible to go in there and not see some books.
Hard to Find is a little on the cluttered side, but that’s par for the course, and the selection is great: there are the expected juicy piles of Jo Nesbo crime novels, as well as a good selection of literary fiction and classics. It wins particular awards for presentation: unlike new bookshops, secondhand bookshops try much harder to be weird and the effort is appreciated. Paranormal romance is behind a gauzy red curtain, a selection of children’s books are in a room under the stairs, and art and kitschy items like dolls and Weetbix tins hang out on the shelves and the walls. There’s a separate room for New Zealand books. Overall, the fantasy of having a house filled with books is fulfilled by a visit (as well as the fantasy of a good fantasy section – I spotted some Trudi Canavan!), it all smells delicious (except for the children’s room where there is a faint note of mice that died in the walls and a sign apologising for it) and a very high chance that you could quite literally trip over something you’d like to read.
Winner in category: Best use of interior space
3. The Open Book
The Open Book is a charming old house set off from Ponsonby Road, a lovely change from people lining up to get into Prego or sample sales. Inside it’s possible to forget how annoying Ponsonby Road is to traverse as a pedestrian or cyclist – you want me to cross four lanes of traffic so I can get ice cream?? – and instead be absorbed in the world of books.
It feels like a bookshop that really knows people want to linger: they’ve set up a mini coffee stand in one of the rooms at the back, and you can take your drink (and a book) to a picnic table in the back garden. Rooms are themed and categorised, and everything feels very thoughtfully presented. There’s a tidy but lovely foreign language selection and, when I visited, piano music piping through the speakers. I love the brick steps running up into the building, the blackboard signs, and the way lots of books are displayed with their covers out – it feels like a space that is very well cared for, and very invested in making it easy for you to spot something you want to read. Yes there’s lots to dislike about Ponsonby but The Open Book is not one of them.
One cool thing about The Open Book is that when the owners bought the shop in 2016 they published a blog for several years about the process of running a bookshop and how the revenue worked. Fascinating stuff!
Winner in category: Best place to sit and read (outside in the garden)
2. The Green Dolphin
The Green Dolphin, right between Flying Out and perennially cool streetwear brand Checks Downtown on Pitt Street feels much bigger than its single main room would suggest. I hadn’t spend much time in there before – ducking in once to avoid a rainstorm – but the vibe is definitely cosy. As well as books, there are some postcards and DVDs for sale, and a stereo on a shelf plays CDs (not for sale). Like some of the other great bookshops on this list, it has stairs, going to a somewhat less tidy room filled with art books upstairs, and you can pause to peruse self-help as you descend.
While smaller than Hard to Find or The Open Book, a bunch of nice touches make The Green Dolphin stand out. There’s an open chest filled with kids’ books, for instance, and space to sit on the floor and read together. It’s well-lit, which makes a difference in vibes, especially if one is keen to read blurbs or the first few pages to get a sense of the book. There’s a table filled with crime novels, with a two-for-$15: a great idea for these books which are so often inhaled by their fans. I loved the selection, I loved that there were heaps of British novelists and women writers and I spent more money here than at any of the other shops I visited for this list.
Winner in category: Tidiest tables
1. Bookmark
Bookmark is named for its owner, who is called Mark, and was a Royal Marine in a past life. Accordingly, Bookmark has an extensive collection of military books, as well as lots of military memorabilia in the wall which customers are always asking if they can buy. Bookmark was the second-to-last bookshop I visited for this ranking and is a mix of some of the best things in all the other secondhand bookshops. It has some stunning leatherbound tomes kept in a cabinet like at Books on High, the pleasant untidiness of Hard to Find Books, the interlinked rooms of The Open Book, and the excellent contemporary fiction of The Green Dolphin. I spotted a full set of Olga Tokarczuk’s Text Publishing editions – and managed to take one home with me – and the employee manning the shop in the quiet afternoon not only complimented my jumper and showed me her knitting project, she also found me her favourite leatherbound book to admire – a century old book about Dutch history, written in French.
One very much gets the sense that Bookmark has benefitted from the collections of downsizing Devonport retirees. There’s absolutely heaps of Enid Blyton and Boys Own annuals among the more contemporary books. I have complained extensively that Devonport is just too far away to ever go to, but a visit here reminded me that actually it’s just a 10 minute ferry (a budget “Pacific cruise” as the bookstore employee told me) from the city, and browsing Bookmark for an hour is probably worth the trip alone.
Maybe it was the summery winter day, maybe it was the books outside on footpath tables, maybe it was the expansive feelings of all the spines stretching out beyond me, but Bookmark was such a delightful surprise that I’ll be getting on the ferry more often.
Winner in category: Redeeming the North Shore