06 Feb13:22pm
Turning over a new leaf: A bookshop owner wants to turn
Thank you to the Monthly Chronicle for helping us by featuring this appeal. 👍🏽❤️
Thank you to the Monthly Chronicle for helping us by featuring this appeal. 👍🏽❤️
I’ve never been one to have an all-time favourite book – especially considering I own an entire bookshop; there’s just too many to choose from – but The Art of Happiness comes really close. It’s one of those books where you can flip through to any page and find some beautiful pearls of wisdom to guide you on this journey through life. The book takes the form of a series of questions and answers, posed by renowned psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler to the Dalai Lama. Through this combined wisdom of psychology and spirituality, we learn about the true purpose of our life – to seek happiness – and that this happiness is determined more by our state of mind than by anything external. The messages conveyed are powerful and uplifting, and I could read this book over and over again. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite quotes from the book – and a life lesson to live by.
“If you want others to be happy, practise compassion. If you want to be happy, practise compassion.”
Article featured in the Monthly Chronicle
Somehow, Tanya Natalie and her father have crammed 35,000 books into their store, The Bookplate, to sell.
It’s a number competing with the amount of books in Dymocks in Sydney, which was reviewed as the largest bookstore in Australia.
While managing a weekly newsletter, the other 15,000 books that are “in storage”, and a catalogue of all the books in the shop, Tanya astonishingly also runs a freelance editing business and has been mentoring authors since 2004.
“There are many myths about self-publishing that I disagree with,” she said.
“I want local authors to embrace that even if they’re not published with a big brand, they have still produced a work of art, which is something to be incredibly proud of.’’
“I’m in awe of the works I’ve been lucky enough to edit by local and global writers, there is serious talent out there.”
Tanya is currently in the middle of editing a local writer’s romance novel and said the emotional vulnerability a writer exposes when they share their work with her is admirable.
“Writing is very personal, and when self-publishing, a writer has an element of control over their work, which they may not be afforded as much by traditional publishing houses.”
Iconic self-published novels include The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Eragon, The Martian, and Ulysses.
The Bookplate opens every day from 11am, closing at 6pm (5pm on weekends) and several reading chairs are available for bookworms to take their time when choosing a book to buy.
For more information visit http://www.tanyanatalie.com.
Tanya has a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Sydney and a Diploma of Book Editing & Publishing from Macleay College.
Everyone loves a good book club! Well, maybe not everyone, but I certainly enjoy them and have been in a few over the years. There’s no real set formula for how to start a book club but if you’re just not sure on where to begin, here are a few pointers;
1] You’ll need some friends! If you have Facebook, making a ‘group’ is a pretty easy way of getting everyone together in the one place to plan your book club. That way, you can add some people you think would enjoy being in the club and get them to add some of their friends too. You don’t necessarily have to know everyone in your book club, either – diversity within a book club is a great as it fosters intelligent, creative and varied discussion. Spend the first week or two collecting your people so they also have a chance to take themselves out of the group if they choose to, and by the end of the two weeks you should have a clear idea of who is in your first book club.
2] Choose a fun name! You can get as creative as you like with this, for example; the Breakfast Book Club, the Bookworms, the No. 1 Ladies’ Book Club, the Nerd Herds, Between The Covers, Literary Ladies, Chapter Chat, Rabid Readers, the Wine Club with a Drinking Problem or the Drinking Club with a Reading Problem!
3] Organise some of the logistics – the when, the where and the how often. You’ll need to know when and how often your book club meetings will take place (once a month is usually standard and you could suggest something like the first Sunday of every month to keep it regular). As to where, first decide whether your club will be meeting at an outside location – perhaps a café or a quiet wine bar – or at someone’s home. In one of the book clubs I was in, we took turns hosting the book club based on whoever had chosen that month’s book. Something else to consider if you decide on meetings in each other’s homes – will the host provide snacks and drinks or will each person bring a plate of snacks to share?
4] In choosing books for your club, there are a few ways you can do this. Some book clubs choose all their books for the year upfront, after a discussion with group members on what type of books to include. Your first meeting could be held in order to come up with the booklist for the year, with everyone having a say – if you ask everyone to come to the meeting with a few books in mind, you will likely get a good list going quite easily. Another option is to have a new theme for each month and to choose a book based on that theme. You can either choose these all yourself, if you decide you want to ‘lead’ your book club, but bear in mind that everyone may not be happy with all your selections, so I believe it is better to have some sort of democratic vote involved in book choices! My favourite book club allowed each member to take turns in choosing the book for the month, as this gave everyone a fair go and also allowed for a diversity in reading material.
5] Finally, after you’ve read the first book and you’re at your first meeting, have some questions at hand to put to the group in case the conversation stalls. For example; what were your initial impressions of the book? Did you have a favourite or least favourite character? Did they seem believable? Why & why not? Did you have a favourite line & why? Did you enjoy the book’s plot and ending? Would you have done anything differently? Was anything left unresolved for you? What did you like best about the book? What did you like least? Did you learn anything new? Did this book remind you of any other books you have read & why?
And that’s it! It’s pretty easy to start up a book club, once you get the right mixture of friends and books, and you’re sure to have lots of lively discussions, perhaps with a cup of tea or glass of wine at hand. Have fun!
1] The Art of Happiness – Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler
2] Of Love & Other Demons – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3] Jitterbug Perfume – Tom Robbins
4] Tales of The Night – Peter Hoeg
5] Losing My Virginity – Richard Branson
6] Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
7] i, Lucifer – Glen Duncan
8] Q & A – Vikas Swarup
9] A Scanner Darkly – Philip K Dick
10] Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
11] The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time – Mark Haddon
12] The Secret History – Donna Tartt
13] Princess – Jean Sasson
14] Calvin & Hobbes – Bill Watterson
15] Fairy Tales – Hans Christian Anderson
16] The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy – Stieg Larrson
17] A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers
18] Running With Scissors – Augusten Burroughs
19] Lorna Doone – R. D. Blackmore
20] An Unquiet Mind – Kay Redfield Jamison
21] The Little Prince – Antoine St Exupery
22] 1984 – George Orwell
23] You Shall Know Our Velocity – Dave Eggers
24] Girl With A Pearl Earring – Tracy Chevalier
25] The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
26] The Perks Of Being A Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
27] The Surgeon of Crowthorne – Simon Winchester
28] Bedlam – Dominic Bosco
29] Go Ask Alice – Anonymous
30] Lord of The Flies – William Golding
31] The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
32] Interview with The Vampire – Anne Rice
33] The Tao of Pooh & The Te of Piglet – Benjamin Hoff
34] Misery – Stephen King
35] Othello – Shakespeare
36] The Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy series – Douglas Adams
37] The Hunger Games trilogy – Suzanne Collins
38] Daughters Of The Vicar – D.H. Lawrence
39] The Peter Principle – Peter & Hull
40] Harry Potter series – J. K. Rowling
41] The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
42] Alice in Wonderland – C. S. Lewis
43] The Magic Faraway Tree – Enid Blyton
44] Watchmen – Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
45] Rabbit-proof Fence – Doris Pilkington
46] The Other Hand – Chris Cleave
47] The Witches – Roald Dahl
48] Geek Love – Katherine Dunn
49] The Blue Bedspread – Raj Khamal Jha
50] Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
51] The Point of Rescue – Sophie Hannah
52] Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow – Peter Hoeg
53] The Woman & The Ape – Peter Hoeg
54] The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
55] The Dice Man – Luke Rhinehart
56] The First Stone – Helen Garner
57] Joe Cinque’s Consolation – Helen Garner
58] A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
59] Hurry Down Sunshine – Michael Greenberg
60] Tell Me I’m Here – Anne Deveson
61] My Lobotomy – Howard Dully
62] King Lear – Shakespeare
63] Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
64] Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls – Danielle Wood
65] Prozac Nation – Elizabeth Wurtzel
66] The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
67] We Need To Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver
68] Magical Thinking – Augusten Burroughs
69] The Trial of True Love – William Nicholson
70] Leila’s Secret – Kooshyar Karimi
