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

Saturday, October 7 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.

Anyone who has a favourite local bookstore knows it is not just the books that keep you coming back. It’s the atmosphere, the palpable sense of love for reading, and most importantly, the people who work there – always knowledgeable, better read than English professors, and happy to give you tailored recommendations to suit your reading tastes.

Why do we love bookstores and which ones are our favourites? The Better Reading team tried to answer this difficult question!

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…

Jane Tara, General Manager

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!

Natalie Mourad, Campaign Manager

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.

Sophie Bellotti, Marketing Coordinator

I get weirdly emotional whenever I’m in bookshops. I think it’s because I’m someone who writes myself, and I have the privilege of working with other writers, so I can’t look at a book without seeing all the hard work and hard thinking that’s gone into it. And not just from the author either, but from everyone involved in the book’s creation. If you were to add up the hours of labour that have gone into every single book in a bookshop… that’s a lot of hours. I’ve always gravitated towards libraries as an accessible way to satiate my voracious reading needs, which has made bookshops a bit of a special occasion. But if I’m buying a gift for someone, it’s almost always going to be a book, and I’m definitely using it as an excuse to browse in-store. I love the thought and care that goes into selecting a read you know a loved one will enjoy, but my secret motive is channeling my gifting budget to writers, and to the book industry that supports their creativity. Win-win.

Dexx Halme, Marketing Coordinator

Ever since I was a kid, I’d head to the bookstore any chance I could. It’s a place full of endless worlds and characters to meet. I think with the way the world has such an online presence, reading books is a nice way to slow down and not be overloaded with social media. Whether it’s buying new editions of old favourites, or finding something completely fresh, there’s always something to find in a bookstore.

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

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Photo Credit: Readings Bookshop