Hello to all our book-reading friends:
Winter visitors are starting to arrive and have added colour and vibrancy to our little town. These last few days we have been helping lovely visitors from Taiwan, Singapore, the United States and of course our cousins from Australia. It is a real pleasure to help people find interesting NZ titles and fun picture books for their children. We also had visits from other booksellers. It was especially nice to meet Emily from Berkelouws in Paddington, Sydney. She told us of interesting initiatives in their 19 stores scattered across NSW - including turning their Book Barn in the Southern Highlands into a wedding venue. Perhaps a new trend?
The death of Cormac McCarthy on June 13 saw the passing of one of America's greatest writers. He was the visionary author of such classics as Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men and The Road, for which he became known as the "writer of a Darker America". Last year, after a ten-year hiatus, The Passenger and Stella Maris were published. Both these books are currently offered in the shop at a special price, to honour one of the most extraordinary careers in twentieth-century contemporary fiction.
Barbara Kingsolver, added to her Pulitzer Prize triumph by being awarded the Women's Prize for Fiction with Demon Copperhead. This makes her the only author to have won the award twice, and confirms her place as one of the world's leading women writers.
|