By Chris Hook
Ava Maguire was always a reader – but towards the end of her school years, that love bloomed into an obsession.
“Mum loves to read so much so she was always pining for me to be a reader and she read to me a lot and then I began to read but it was sort of off and on,” the 21-year-old northern beaches local said.
Ava Maguire at the Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore during her Global Book Crawl. Credit: Louie Douvis
“I was about 17 in year 11 I would say when I really got into it. I met a friend at school who is a huge reader and she got me into a lot of genres I hadn’t really read before like fantasy.”
Maguire, who works in the live events sector, loves fantasy and historical fiction these days and last year set up a TikTok account called My Little Lost Library to share her passion. In less than 12 months, she has collected almost 3000 followers from across the world using the hashtag #BookTok, which content creators use to make videos about the books they’re reading.
The hashtag exploded in popularity during the COVID years and by October last year had racked up more than 309 billion views across 38 million posts. For Maguire, the account allows her to talk about books with other readers.
“There’s a bunch of girls from all over the world who talk because we all love this,” she said. “I’ll post something like ‘I just read this and I loved it’ and other people will go, ‘oh that’s amazing, I just read this other book by the same author’ … people will recommend books in the comments.”
Maguire set up her My Little Lost Library account to talk about books.Credit: Louie Douvis
Maguire is happy to talk about books online but prefers to go analogue when she buys them, joining avid readers across the world on Monday as the Global Book Crawl kicked off. Followers visit a series of independent bookstores with a passport and get stamps from each, with a free book and entry into a draw to win book prizes.
She was having a crack at visiting nine stores on the Sydney list between Avalon and Balmain, and the SMH met her at Bondi’s Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore.
“[The Global Book Crawl] supports independent bookstores and promotes buying at locally owned stores. I also like that it’s getting people to buy less from big companies, from Amazon,” she said.
“Whenever I travel, I make a point of going to a bunch of bookstores in each city, and now I’m discovering bookstores in my city I’ve never been to before.”
To find out more about the Global Book Crawl, head to the website.
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