Readings, which operates eight shops in Melbourne, Australia, has opened a new bookstore in Emporium Melbourne. On Facebook, Readings posted: "We are thrilled to announce that our new shop in Emporium Melbourne is now open. Designed by the talented team at Kirsten Thompson Architects, Readings Emporium is a beautiful light filled space overlooking Little Bourke St., complete with beautiful heritage windows and plenty of seating to contemplate and read. Finish the last of your Christmas shopping, stockpile some holiday reading, or simply pay us a visit to say hello!"
Announcing the expansion earlier this fall, Readings noted: "It has been a tumultuous 18 months for bricks-and-mortar retail, and Readings sees this as reaffirming its commitment to books, the city of Melbourne and the publishing industry."
Managing director Mark Rubbo had said: "There is some risk of course as we are banking on the city coming back to life, but we see this as a really positive statement for Readings, for the city, for authors, for publishers and for bricks-and-mortar booksellers. We are proud to be a Melbourne company and believe in our city and its resilience. We hope by investing in the city, and in turn local authors and publishers, we will strengthen our literary community, our business and provide more opportunities for employment."
Operations manager Joe Rubbo added: "We are thrilled to work with Kerstin and her team. We know it will be a beautiful space for readers to connect, discover new authors and share ideas. We look forward to holding events in the space, which we know people are really looking forward to in 2022."
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In a Trinidad and Tobago Newsday piece headlined "Strange new twists as pandemic reading booms," Joan Dayal, owner of the Paper Based Bookshop in St. Ann's, Port of Spain, said that since the Covid-19 pandemic began, more young people have begun following the bookstore on Instagram and readers have requested more fiction to read.
"We did a lot of posting by Track Pack to all corners of Trinidad through TT Post," said Dayal, adding that the bookshop had many requests for African women writers and Caribbean literature, while men asked for award-winning foreign books. "A few men who buy books did a mix, not so much Caribbean, but they requested Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh. Book clubs continued to function during the pandemic.... I found younger people were doing more reading. They would follow foreign book reviews on social media and make requests, often for love stories."
The NGO Let's Read cleaned and packaged books, which they put in Living Water Community food hampers. "People started to ask for books with their hampers," said co-founder and director Suzette Cadiz. "Through donations, we gave out 1,600 brand-new books. Students went to school and collected packages with their names on them."
Let's Read started the Little Free Library in Matura. T&T Newsday wrote that "six such libraries are about to be launched along the north coast, but their names were quickly changed to the Little Community Library, because people thought the books were free to keep.... Let's Read also threw its support behind Shivana Sankar-Balliram's pandemic book drive in Basta Hall, Couva."
"Shivana was inspired by us on Facebook to read to her little girl when she was born," said Cadiz. Let's Read bought Sankar-Balliram a red wagon and walked with her to deliver books on that initial run.
Sankar-Balliram said she had collected many books from reading to her two-year-old daughter since she was born. When the pandemic hit, "she started the idea of a book club in a sanitized environment so children would have access to books that would help them learn," T&T Newsday noted.
"We load up the wagon to deliver books ordered from my e-mail address for children who didn't come to the temple," she said. Together with some of the 50 children she serves, they deliver books. "I see the benefits of reading. My daughter has a photographic memory because of the repetitive reading since birth. I believe education is definitely the way out of poverty, and it starts with reading."
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In a Twitter thread, Irish children's author Sarah Webb shared a glimpse inside her other job, as a bookseller at Halfway Up the Stairs children's bookshop in Greystones, Co. Wicklow. "Lots of people have expressed surprise that I'm working as a part-time children's bookseller. I don't think they have any idea how skilled a job bookselling is," she tweeted, followed by a list of seven "things children's booksellers do every day."
Webb noted that "it's a wide ranging, varied role and every day is so different. So there you go--some of the roles of a children's bookseller. I'm off to read more children's books now. My 2022 pile awaits!" --Robert Gray