Love Your Bookshop Day: The Better Reading Team on Their Love of Bookshops

Saturday, August 10 is Love your Bookshop Day and across the country bookshops will be holding events for all ages to celebrate. At Better Reading, we love bookshops. We feature as many as we can on our site in our popular bookshop feature articles. We love hearing about bookshops and meeting booksellers. To acknowledge today, the BR Team would like to share with you what we love most about these very special places.

Cheryl Akle, Director

Bookshops have always been a big part of my life, so they hold a special place in my heart and I love to see people still embracing them wholeheartedly. They are what I consider to be the front line of connecting people with stories and I spend as much time as I can wandering around bookshops, taking in the atmosphere. I’m always looking to make new discoveries, but I also regularly return to old favourites…

Melissa Wilson, Head of Marketing and Children’s Content

There is nothing I would rather do than visit an atmospheric bookshop – it can be big, small, new or have been around for years, but it has to give you that special feeling like time has stopped and discovering new books to read is all that matters. Of course, I have a real appreciation for bookshops that create wonderlands for children, book clubs, kids’ recommendations on the shelves and lots of love for favourite reads from the booksellers.

Jane Tara, Marketing Co-ordinator and Lifestyle Content

Growing up, books were all consuming. Some of my favourite childhood memories are around visiting bookstores. There were none in the town I grew up in, but Mum would sometimes take me to nearby Bangalow, and the old book barn there, where she’d hand me some cash, despite having very little spare, and tell me that I had two hours. I’d get lost in the packed, dusty aisles of the old shed. Bliss!

I’ve lived all over the world, and one of the first things I do when I move somewhere is find my local bookshop. I got to know booksellers in Tokyo, London, Vienna, and New York. Back here in Sydney, I can’t pass a bookshop without entering. My local store, Gertrude & Alice in Bondi was a haven for me when my sons were young and I wanted to spend one-on-one time with them, treating them to a hot chocolate and a carefully chosen book. Bookstores, especially the independents, are places of peace, magic and inspiration for me. I love them. Gawd… someone get me a tissue!

Bec Howard, Marketing Coordinator

The quiet peace. The smell of crisp pages. The feel of running your fingers along the spines of what could be your new favourite book. Knowing the people quietly browsing the shelves are your colleagues in book reading, your silent best friends. The magic of a bookstore is real. It transforms a busy and hectic day into a calm perusal of shelves. It pulls at our senses, at our very beings. We’re now immersed in a safe place where strangers are friends and you’re free to be your true self. This is why I love bookstores.

Visit the Love Your Bookshop Day website for events near you.

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Photo Credit: Readings Bookshop