Peter Goers: The end hasn’t arrived for our glorious book stores
Books are the enduring love of Peter Goers’ life. They answer back profoundly and quietly, they’re very good in bed and you still respect them in the morning.
Books are great friends, old and new.
I was at the grand, splendid newly expanded Dillon’s Bookshop in Norwood at 5pm on a Friday arvo and it was busy.
The majority of customers were kids clamouring for books. My stony old heart sang with joy for kids not looking at screens but beautiful books full of sustaining adventure in new worlds of imagination and all of life. Wow!
I’d had a happy, relaxed afternoon of bookshops. I’d attended a lovely lunchtime concert by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra at the Grainger Studio in Hindley St and then explored three bookshops – the best way to relax.
Imprints Booksellers is, as ever, the classy, beckoningly beautiful haven among the happy hookahs of Hindley St.
Imprints’ Jason Lake knows and loves books and his clientele. He guides us well and recommends a novel by and about a grandson of the Vietnam War, Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous which is a great book.
Thanks. I also secured a signed copy of an Orhan Pamuk novel and a book for a friend’s toddler. And we talked of cabbages and kings ... and books.
O’Connell’s Bookshop is Adelaide’s oldest. Reg O’Connell kept the tidiest and best-ordered secondhand bookshop in Leigh St and his grandson Ben’s shop off Bank St is a fabulously fusty, vast emporium, catholic in range and entirely accessibly well-ordered.
Vast. Heaven.
I coveted a hundred books and bought a book of the former postie Charles Bukowski’s poems. I may have bought this book before but after all, the postman always rings twice and I bought a beautifully bound copy of the “Local Government Act of 1934” for Councillor Houssam Abiad and his troublesome Team Adelaide but like them, I changed my mind and I’ll keep it myself for a bit of light reading.
Thence to the new, improved, glorious Dillons Bookshop at Norwood. Since 1985 it has expanded from 65sq m to a breathtaking 700sq m.
It is a glory. It is our best bookshop.
Bigger and better with a huge children’s wing accessed by a rope bridge under a wooden tree. And full of kids poring over beautiful books which may change their lives and help them realise they have a faithful BFF between two covers.
Bravo to Ross Dillon and his excellent staff. Ross Dillon is a Norwood footballer, careful, benign businessman and bookman who is improving the world.
There are many fine bookshops in Adelaide and SA and I need to go to Michael Treloar’s to deal with a languishing layby. Bookshops contain staff and customers who love books. Talk to them. Happily the e-book has peaked although it’s handy when travelling or if you desire the desire of soft porn.
The Bible tells us “of the making of books there is no end”. How wonderful. There are billions of books and only two plots (a person leaves home and a person leaves home and comes back) and only one theme - time. The great beat poet, publisher and bookseller Lawrence Ferlinghetti has written a book for his 100th birthday. He has time. But time for reading runs out and sadly I’m forgetting what I’ve read. Perhaps I’ll end up just reading the same book over and over but I’ll be with a loving friend.
■ Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sunday mornings on ABC Radio Adelaide