Part of an ideal night out is wandering out of a restaurant in search of gelato only to stumble upon a late-night, open bookshop. There is something heart-warming about browsing through shelves of books in the evening. Some suggest that this would be an increasingly rare find, but once again Melbourne manages to come through. The mantle once carried by Borders has been passed on to more local enterprises like Dymocks and Robinsons. My favourite late night bookshop though is Readings on Lygon St which is open until 11pm almost every night. On many occasions, having watched a movie at Cinema Nova and indulged in Brunetti’s for supper, we’ve found ourselves wondering around Readings and, more often than not, impulsively purchasing a book.
Sometimes I am too lazy to go and buy a book and end up purchasing and reading it on my iPad instead. Even so, I had to get an extra bookshelf for my bed room in order to house all the titles I have accumulated over the years. Most of those are series that I’ve collected because I loved them so much, I wanted to pass them onto my kids one day. Some of them are things I’ve been given or inherited from my Grandma. I might need to buy some more shelving though, as my parents have half a wall in their living room dedicated to books and I told my mum that’s what I want for my inheritance.
Second-hand bookshops are also a treasure trove. We found one that was also a cafe in Daylesford, overlooking the lake. It was called Book Barn and was so cozy with so many books squished in on the ground floor and the mezzanine. Before we left, we all vowed to quit our jobs and start a bookshop/cafe in the countryside. Since cozy and vintage seems to be Daylesford’s vibe, there a few good second-hand bookshops to browse through.
My favourite second-hand bookshop of all time was probably in Paris. Walking down a little laneway somewhere near Notre Dame Cathedral, I spied a shop that simply had “LIVRE” written down the side of it. Inside, the walls were lined with bookshelves and the floors were covered with the overflow of books in stacks. In the middle of it all, was a little old French man, who told us en français to close the door since it was so cold outside. We browsed until I found a series of books titled ‘Lettres à Emilie‘ (I was looking for a gift for my friend Emily). The old man insisted on continuing to speak in French so we awkwardly asked him, ‘Combien?‘ He ended up giving us a discount and explained it was a really great read. The whole episode was so sweet and lovely, I really wish I’d taken a photo to preserve the memory.
Dongdaemun, Seoul provided the other travelling bookshop memory that will stick with me forever. As amusing as we found it at the time, it’s actually a testament to one of the most enduring characteristics we found in South Korea – efficiency. Any time we found a specific type of shop (film developers, skin care, etc.), we would invariably find multiples of the same kind of store on the same street. Which kinds of makes sense, since you can go that area and find all the shops for that product in one place. The extreme case of that was the Dongdaemun market we arrived at too late to actually buy anything from. We just walked along the street, slowly realising that the only shops there sold either hats, badges or books. Just shop after shop of books, books, badges, hats, more books, two badge shops in a row and then some more hats, for the entire block. Apparently if you wanted to sell t-shirts, you had to go to Level 2. I was too busy filming to take a photo but the screen grab will show you the stacks of books overflowing from these little stalls onto the street.
As I mentioned, I do occasionally purchase an e-book out of convenience, but I will always support bookshops. Otherwise, I won’t be able to keep doing one of my favourite things – whiling away the time, surrounded by shelves of books.
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A few of my favourite things... 