kidattypewriter

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Impressions Of a Bookstore

Some Impressions Recently Noted Down Upon Exploring A Bookstore In The Suburbs:

SMELL: It smelled like hospital breakfast. (I stayed briefly in hospital as a kid after, I think, a particularly nasty attack of eczema, and some hospital smells have stuck with me ever since).

SIGHT: Almost walked past it, it blended in with the scenery too well! Always a good sign. Also, extremely disshevelled inside - books falling EVERYWHERE. Posters of philosophers and what not glared at me as I walked up the stairs. The books weren't really ordered particularly well. He'd even left a customer sitting on the floor amongst the scattered romance novels!

SOUND: They had some of that annoying melancholy jazz music playing that you get so often in bookstores - that sort of thing depresses me SO MUCH. To be fair, it was Jim McLeod's Jazz Track, so he may have had ABC Classic FM on all day, and I just happened to walk in at the wrong time.

FEEL: I'm not the sort of person that goes feeling up books, thankyouverymuch.

Except when in the privacy of my own home.

TASTE: I recommend you take a little mustard along with you, otherwise the paper's a little dry.
Not all of the books were to my taste, though I did like the copy of Galaxy sf magazine they were selling (had a sci-fi story in it with the inviting title of 'Femworld!')
I came away with a book of parliamentary anecdotes by Fred Daly, and some James Thurber short stories.

7 comments:

Tim said...

Abot 18 months ago the toilet backed up, stinking the place out. So what you smell is very much a hospital smell - that is, disinfectant desperately trying to mask shit. Lovely.

(I'm really doing a great job promoting this place. He ought to offer me a commision.)

TimT said...

I mentioned before the stinky bookstore in a basement in Sydney - it's on George St somewhere - which I think is due to leaky pipes, which run all the way along the ceiling.

I had been there before - early last year - and suspected as much when I read your post. Good place, though. I try and visit a bookshop every week; I don't buy books by the boxload, more by a steady trickle of one every seven days or so.

ras said...

so, i wonder, did dylan moran visit this bookstore before writing the series blackbooks

were either of these bookstores owned by wine swilling irish men in black suits???

TimT said...

Dunno, what's the equivalent of a drunk Irishman running a London bookstore - someone from the Northern Territory running a Melbourne bookstore?

ras said...

so one from darwin possibly running a melbourne bookstore or one in sydney?

then again, maybe someone from perth....or someone from wellington or christchurch running a melbourne bookstore... because irelands not really the country. Everyone says its in the general vicinity but smaller and divided.

Well, New Zealand is in our general vicinity, it always gets bunched with us. Theres a difference between the northern and southern irelands.

TimT said...

Ireland is two countries in one. New Zealand, on the other hand, is just half a country in one.

Aussies can't talk, though - we're pretty much the same, half a country in one. (America has a similar land size, and 10 times the population size).

Tim said...

I have just been informed that McCleod's is moving to Nunawading in September. It'll be the end of an era - a dusty, smelly, disorganised era.

Email: timhtrain - at - yahoo.com.au

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