Ahead of this year’s Bookshop Day, books editor Claire Mabey reflects on the great bookshops of her life.
This Saturday, October 12, is Bookshop Day in Aotearoa. I’ve been following the campaign run by Booksellers NZ, the organisers of the festivities, for the last few weeks and getting emotional about the place of bookshops in the publishing economy, and in our lives.
The first bookshop I remember was called Magnolia. It was in Tauranga where I grew up and all I really recall is that it was long, had wooden floors, and the woman who owned it spoke in a very soft and rounded voice. It was like the whole shop was under her spell. When my mum took my brother, sister and me there we would all go very quiet, which was unusual because we were never quiet.
I remember there were children’s books piled on the floor for easy reach and that I found a book about a teenager who runs away and discovers a community of people living underground. I wish I could remember the title and author because the story has haunted me for decades. I think it was my first dystopian novel and one that has stuck in my head for its ideas about inequality and visibility. And I’ll always associate it with Magnolia: how I discovered the book among a pile of possibilities, or the book discovered me.
Magnolia closed down abruptly for reasons I never quite understood (my mum was vague about it but I think it was something to do with an unorthodox approach to running a business). Tauranga never quite recovered its population of indie bookshops but does still have Books A Plenty, which has been a pillar of the community for decades, and the shop that gave me one of my first jobs: dura-sealing library books for the library order. There were a bunch of us with the gig: teenagers all standing around an enormous craft table in the back room with our stanley knives and nifty scraper things that we used to massage out any bubbles. We became a little gang of dura-seal masters, a motley crew of various ages and stages talking about our lives as we covered books.
In Dunedin, as a student, the University Bookshop was Scrooge’s silo of gold. I was studying English and Art History so legit had to go to USB and spend hundreds of dollars on my required reading: novels, poetry, art history books, course readers. And once that money ran out it was the secondhand bookshops I’d scour, shilling any spare coins on books, most of which I still have. That idiosyncratic collection survived frigid student flats and many moves and now remind me of the bookish havens of that heady, often reckless but expansive time.
One summer, the summer before I turned 21, I scored the best job back home in Tauranga: at Browsers Bookshop. It was a vast yet cosy secondhand bookshop and my job was four days a week, including the late night Saturday hours. It was bliss. I read as many books as I wanted and only had to talk to people if they asked me specifically for help. I played CDs (Brel, Sigur Ros, John Prine, Eartha Kitt were in the shop’s stack and those artists still take me directly back there), and made endless instant coffee-milos with milk in Arcoroc mugs.
I learned that Tauranga had an avid group of UFO spotters (the UFO section was the most popular), and that secondhand bookshops were safe places for people who weren’t regular readers and needed a low stakes option to restart the habit. I was a distracted employee and regularly forgot to bring our sign in from the street: a large wooden book that would be merrily carried away and deposited in the garden up the road by drunken revellers early on a Sunday morning. But it was my favourite job: a space of immersion, and calm, and endless interest in the wide world. It was the barrier between me and adult life; the great breath in, the inbetween.
Overseas, bookshops were signposts of the familiar: everywhere I went, no matter how far from home, it was bookshops that anchored the traveller. Even more, it was the bookish people: the common ground of being drawn to spending time in such places, to want to live around, and make a living from, the trade of books. I’d never been in much doubt that it was books I wanted to be around for work and pleasure, but it was travelling that made me see how the bookshop was a universal third space: where anyone could go and be among the stories, attend events, browse the possibilities and be reminded that time and life isn’t linear, it’s made up of stories that spiral and circle.
Bookshop Day is about celebrating independent bookshops across Aotearoa and the role they play in our communities. It’s been a tough year for retail, but bookshops are riding the downturn with the skill of a pro surfer: according to Nielsen BookData, book sales volumes across indie bookshops went up by 3% in August compared to 0.2% across New Zealand retail at large over the same period. Four new bookshops joined Booksellers NZ in the last three months.
What does this mean? One reading is that it shows how bookshops are valued and needed because of what they do for us as creatures in need of connection. Most nights of the week you’ll find a book launch on the bill at Unity Books Wellington (my local these days); and most lunchtimes you’ll be able to attend a free talk with an author. This is the same for bookshops all over the country: 80% of Booksellers NZ’s members who responded to a survey hold at least one public event a month, with one third of those holding more than 20 events a year.
Bookshops are places where conversation happens and where everybody knows your name. Booksellers get to know their customers: they learn your preferences, your tastes, what your kids might like to read next. They help curate the reading experiences of your life and as such bookshops are an antidote to loneliness as well as being purveyors of ongoing learning.
This is without even mentioning how indie bookshops keep publishing alive. Booksellers NZ reports that physical bookstores account for an average of 64% of all print sales annually in New Zealand.
This Saturday bookshops across Aotearoa will be hosting events, competitions, giveaways, treasure hunts, and conversations. There’s even a run of cute new tote bags with artwork by the Māori Mermaid that you can purchase on the day, with your books. See you there.
Aotearoa Bookshop Day is Saturday October 12. Check your local bookshop for specific activities and for information at large, see the Bookshop Day page on Booksellers NZ.
