My Favourite Book Shops

Melbourne is often described as the cultural centre of Australia and, as such, it has a huge number of bookshops, both new and old, as well as a huge network of publicly owned council libraries. My favourite bookshops are

Robert Cornwell Stamps and Coins (trading as RMC Stamps)
639 Mount Alexander Road, Moonee Ponds
http://www.robertcornwell.com.au/

My favourite second hand bookshop, found in the iconic Moonee Ponds shopping strip. The site boasts that they are Melbourne's leading seller of collectable stamps and collectable coins. The shop in Moonee Ponds also has thousands of secondhand books covering every conceivable subject, as well as stocking a huge range of secondhand CDs, DVD movies and documentaries, and video cassettes. If you go in, I challenge you to come out without at least buying one book.

The Book Grocer
414 Lonsdale St (near corner of Queen St) 
Melbourne CBD
http://bookgrocer.libro.com.au/

Whenever I am in the city, I make sure I have time to go to The Book Grocer in Lonsdale St and have a browse. Their range of books is superb and they are all $10, event the bigger hard cover books. Their history and politics and biographical sections always contain some superb bargains.
STOP PRESS (3 Nov 2015) - The Book Grocer has just opened a store in Moonee Ponds - even easier than going into the city. I went there today and bought two books - but more about them once I have read them. They get added to the unread pile which is now getting pretty high!

Dymocks Melbourne
Lower Ground Floor, 234 Collins Street, Melbourne CBD
http://www.dymocks.com.au

Dymocks Collins St is a huge bookshop with its own cafe. It includes stationary and an ordering department that can order just about anything. It is also possible to order online for either posting or pickup from the store. I love browsing the shelves for both new releases and older. Its sci-fi and fiction sections are very comprehensive but then so are all their other sections. It is hard for any smaller bookshops to compete with Dymocks.

Here is what the website blurb says - and I fully agree

With 65 stores in Australia and over 10 million books sold last year, Dymocks is the leading bookseller in Australia. As a family owned business and the oldest Australian-owned bookstore, Dymocks prides itself on meeting the leisure, learning and gift needs of all booklovers. As a franchised network Every Dymocks store is owned and operated by locals who are extremely well-read and passionate about books. They do more than just sell books but rather support their communities by expanding their reading knowledge.

Ode to the Palomino

I was listening to a music program on ABC National Radio in May 2015 - I'm not even sure at this stage if it was The Inside Sleeve or The Daily Planet - when the singer/songwriter being interviewed told the story of being in a restaurant in New Zealand and overhearing a conversation about the Palomino Black Wing 602 pencil, widely regarded as the world's best pencil. The long and short of it is that he was so impressed by the concept that he wrote a song called Palomino Pony or something like that.

This got me interested and I googled Palomino Black Wing 602 - and sure enough, there it was.

The Palomino Blackwing draws a dark, velvety line, which has been described as being akin to ‘writing with butter’. It’s world famous too, with a raft of pop-culture icons including John Steinbeck and Frank Lloyd Wright choosing the Blackwing as their writing implement. The Blackwing writing pencil and 602 sketching pencil were originally made by Eberhard Faber in the 1930s. Today California Cedar’s Palomino produces the pencil using cedarwood and quality graphite. The signature replaceable eraser is rectangular, giving the pencil an individual aesthetic.

Wow, I must have one of those, I thought. Alas, a search showed it was next to impossible to purchase in Melbourne, except online, with a big postal cost. So it went on the backburner.

Thanks to my training partner Michelle who sourced the Palomino from Sedonia for only $5 per pencil. A few days after hearing this, I was presented with my own two Palomino pencils - thanks heaps Michelle!

For the record, Sedonia is found at 41 Gamon St, Sedon. Sedon is a suburb in Melbourne's west. It deserves your trade!

I went straight home and sat down and wrote my first ever poem, inspired by the pencil.

ODE TO THE PALOMINO

White parchment on the table
Palomino in the hand
Anticipation building
Will it be something grand?

As Steinbeck wrote The Pearl
The palomino formed each letter
Effortlessly it crossed the page
The finished product all the better.

A simple thing of wood and graphite
Yet so wonderful to hold
Words tumbled from his mind
The writing strong and bold.

No, I'm not a Steinbeck
For me the words come slow
Yet the palomino guides me
And helps the stanzas grow.

While it won't be published
Or read by people far and wide
Eventually I'll stop and read it
Palomino at my side.

Tim
9 July 2015

Yes, I know it's pretty poor but hey, it's original.

Why I keep buying print books

I have just read the article Why I keep buying print books by Dominic Knight (see http://www.domknight.com/why-i-keep-buying-print-books/).

To quote:

Every book on my shelf has a memory attached to it. I remember where I bought them, who I was with, what kind of a day it was. Which is another thing that’s wonderful about p-books – the experience of buying them from bookshops, a pleasure that no website “recommendations engine” can hope to replicate. When I’m browsing in a bookshop, I’ll discover titles that the bookshop’s staff recommend not because they’re bestsellers, not because they’ve profiled me, but because they love them. That’s an irreplaceable service, and while the days of mega-chain bookshops have already gone forever, and I miss the scale and range of those massive Borders that were only with us for a decade or so, I’m sure that smaller, local, independent bookshops will survive. I certainly plan to keep supporting them.

I love a brand new book, with that unique freshly-printed smell, but I also love second-hand books. Browsing through an emporium of musty tomes is a pleasure that an e-reader cannot hope to replicate – and second-hand is cheaper than buying e-books, too. You can’t resell e-books – in fact, you may not even be able to pass them on to your children, unless they’re going to juggle multiple Amazon accounts, for instance. And what happens if Amazon goes broke?

Too true!

What am I reading at the moment

I always have books on the go and am rarely reading just one book. Here is my current list, each at different stages of completion and contemplation.


Hamilton Hume, Our Greatest Explorer by Robert Macklin

A present from my son Matt in 2016, this was a new book (published 2016) that I had not heard about before. We all learnt about the explorations of 'Hume and Hovell' so the name was familiar. What Australian journalist and author Robert Macklin has produced is a well researched biography of the great Australian who, most notably, led the expedition from Sydney to Port Philip bay – the future site of Melbourne. It is also a potted history of the early colony of NSW, with its many intrigues and characters.

Currently enjoying the read.

Tim's Wish List

There is always something on my wish list.


The World's Longest Taxi Fare by Larry O'Toole

I read about this newly released book in the Melbourne Age of Thursday 4 September. It's the story of how a Victorian taxi driver accepted a fare in 1930 to drive three elderly women 11,000 km from Lorne to Darwin and back. One of his grandsons has now captured the story in book form and recreated the journey. Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/steve-heard-hails-grandfathers-1930-transaustralia-cab-fare-20140903-10bz61.html#ixzz3CfgCvh9t.

It will probably be the next book I order.

HOME - Tim's Best Reads

My brothers and I grew up surrounded by books and were greatly influenced by our mother Betty's love of books and literature.

My library is huge and just keeps on growing. So I thought that I would track my reading starting from 2014 and share what I have found to be interesting or inspirational or just plain enjoyable reading.