A life-long love affair is how many people describe their passion for books. If you have missed trains, trams, buses or ferries because you were captivated by a story; if visitors to your home say ‘wow, you could open a bookshop’; or if you can easily recite passages (if not pages) verbatim from your favourite titles and can’t remember a time when you didn’t read, then welcome comrade, you’re in my tribe.
In an age of computers, text messaging and digital TV, books still possess an incredible hold over many people. What is it about the old-fashioned printed word that compels us? What is it that lures people to leave more lucrative careers to work with their enduring passion? Is it the bindings or the content?
The aroma of old paper and leather or is it the story inside? Again and again, booksellers state that it’s not just their love of books but the people—colleagues, customers, authors and publishers—who make their choice a true vocation.
For second-hand bookshop proprietor Kreisha Ballantyne-Dickes, it’s easy to spot a book addict. ‘You can see it in their eyes’, she laughs. ‘I call it the “book look” and people either have it or they don’t’. Kreisha and her husband Adam own Desire Books, a friendly and funky treasure trove of ‘60s ‘ beat and rebel’ and 20th-century literature near Manly Beach in Sydney.
‘For a lot of people, books take them back to their childhood, to a very special place’, says Kreisha. ‘They recall how wonderful it was reading with their parents’. Adam nods in agreement. ‘Every couple of hundred volumes you get that one beautiful book—inside and out—that makes it all worthwhile’, he says. ‘Over the last two years we have tended to attract the kind of person who simply can’t walk past a bookshop’, says Kreisha. Before opening their shop, these bibliophiles lived Kreisha and Adam from Desire booksin the UK book mecca, Hay-On-Wye, and knew exactly the kinds of books they wanted to sell.
The common myth that booksellers get to loll around and read for a living, is firmly refuted by Tim Gott, the proprietor of Tasmania’s Davenport Books.
‘Never ever been able to do that’, he says. ‘Some days we are so rushed that reading the back cover before you shelve a new title is a bonus’, he says with a laugh. While Tim may have been attracted to the profession by his