Dear Scorpio Books, Christchurch,

You were not my first. There have been many before you, loved and lost, beginning with an unlikely object of infatuation: the shambling, dusty clutter of 300,000 assorted books, outdated school texts, entire libraries bequeathed by some elderly academic, cheap mass market and leather-bound volumes of great beauty and rarity.

The whole glorious mess was presided over by a bookseller as rumpled as his stock and of uncertain temper, though dauntingly authoritative.







Fiona Farrell. Photo: Supplied.



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My father introduced me to Newbolds in the 1950s. We visited whenever we were in Dunedin, my father on the lookout for treasure: records of travel through South America, or Africa, or best of all, the South Pacific, complete with exquisitely worked engravings – and who cared if they were missing their covers, or were foxed or gnawed to fretwork by insect or rodent? This was what a bookshop and its owner should be: like something out of a book.



But, dear Scorpio, you too have your charms. Your shelves are crammed with the newest and best of world fiction, non-fiction, poetry. You have not succumbed to the blight of china fairies who infest so many. You employ smart staff who read and love books and will recommend or place an order. You show up to events at weekends and late into the evening to sell the books that make writers their living. Your owner has a dog who prowls the aisles lending that air of Newboldian eccentricity requisite for all good bookshops.



Necessity may have driven you from the centre to a popup container and a couple of sites out at Riccarton, but now you're back, in the heart, where you belong and it feels great!



Fiona Farrell



Novelist Fiona Farrell lives in Christchurch. Her latest novel is The Decline and Fall of Savage Street (Vintage NZ / Penguin Random House NZ) $38.

Supplied Author Fiona Farrell says Scorpio Books in Christchurch is crammed with the newest and best books, as well as smart staff.



Dear Paper Plus The Base, Hamilton,



My heart sank when I received a request to write a few lines about my favourite bookshop. I mean, how on Earth do I pick just one? I can waste hours in a shop that sells books.The brief suggested I might want to talk about the feel of my favourite shop, the community surrounding it, the cat that lives there, the range of books, or the wonderful book I found that changed my life.

Well, I've never met a cat in a bookshop, but I'd love to, and to be honest the bookshops with best "feel" are usually the secondhand shops totally stuffed with books and furnished with crappy old sofas you can blob on while you flick through enormous tomes about colonial New Zealand furniture and obscure volumes on 19th century logging in the Coromandel. Heaven.

Those are yesterday's books, though, and sometimes even writers of historical fiction need to buy today's books. I have a few favourite fiction writers, whose books I call "keepers", meaning I buy paper copies (as opposed to digital) and they go in the fiction section on my book shelves. Kate Atkinson, Laurie Graham, Mark Billingham, and so on. So off I go to my nearest Paper Plus to buy them.







Deborah Challinor. Photo: Supplied.



On my travels, particularly on book tours, I've been into some quite spectacular Paper Plus stores, with huge ranges of books and knowledgeable staff. They're generous, too. I've received some very beautiful books as gifts, including a copy of Real Modern: Everyday New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s by Bronwyn Labrum from the staff at Paper Plus Paraparaumu, which kick-started my current work in progress.



But as for naming a single favourite bookshop – what an impossible task. My job as a writer means I connect with booksellers when it's time to sell my latest book, and I see how hard they work to do that and I'm full of admiration. Times have changed, books are expensive, and competition with ebooks, and even libraries, is fierce.



I would love there to be a bookshop in my town with every book in it I could possibly want to buy, with an open fire in winter and armchairs everywhere, each one with a friendly cat on it, and when I go in people would wave and say "Hi" like they do in Cheers on TV. But that's not a bookshop – that's my house.



Deborah Challinor



Huntly-born Deborah Challinor is best known for her historical novels – most recently The Cloud Leopard's Daughter (HarperCollins), $24.99. She lives in Hamilton with her husband and Gus, her cat.

ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ Matt Crook browses Scorpio Books on Riccarton Road.



Dear Children's Bookshop, Kilbirnie,

Few places in a suburban street are made of magic, unless Harry Potter's living there – or Laura Chant. From the first step I take inside your doors, though, I can smell it in the dry inky scent of printed paper. I can hear it in the characters I'm about to meet, breathing heavily inside their bright and shiny covers, shivering the pages.

And not just breathing – they are loud, they are rude, they nudge and chuckle, threaten and call. In every direction there is a story crying for my attention, from John's favourite The Silver Sword to the latest Barbara Else extravaganza.







Mary McCallum. Photo: Supplied.



Not too long ago, John would appear in amongst the jostle of books like a magnificent genie and make all kinds of magic – gesturing to books I could buy or those I intended to launch in his shop, or pulling out a seat at the child-sized table near the till for us to chew the fat. Sadly, this marvellous man has gone on to his own adventures elsewhere, with the last book he launched on this Earth being our picture book Grandad's Guitar by Janine McVeagh and Fifi Colston.



How to make magic without the genie? Well, there's Ruth smiling from the junior fiction shelves, pricing gun in hand – or is it a wand? – and over by the till I can see Sasha and Lucy and all the rest. It's time to go on over and benefit from the deep bookish knowledge these people hold in their heads and hearts, and decide which noisy slice of magic to wrestle into my bag and take home.



Few places in a suburban street are made of magic. You are one of them.



Thank you.



Arohanui,



Mary McCallum



As well as being publisher at Mākaro Press, Mary McCallum is the author of The Blue (Penguin) and Dappled Annie and the Tigrish (Gecko).



Dear Rona Gallery in Lower Hutt,



I first met you when you lived next door to the butcher. I would drop in to chat with you about books. And then I wrote a novel. And what did you do? You filled your front window with it, set up a writing desk and advised the locals that I would be signing. It was beyond my wildest dreams. I'd outdone even Margaret Atwood, who – legend has it – spent her first book signing in the sock department of the Hudson Bay Company Department store.



A friend, who saw me sitting alone surrounded by books, told the butcher. And now an enduring memory is Barry the butcher, in his butcher shorts and striped apron, buying my book about marching girls and book clubs, and requesting my authorly signature.







Maggie Rainey-Smith. Photo: Supplied.



Years later, if I ever want encouragement or acknowledgement that I am a writer, I only need to drop in. I know Richard will grumble humorously at me about the perils of running a bookshop. I know Joanna will be right up to date with the latest literary fiction, full of opinions and recommendations. I know, too, that she will be able to tell me what my granddaughter ought to be reading. I will lose track of time and a short visit will turn into a lovely literary encounter.



Recently Richard and Joanna moved to live over the shop, proof of their passion. I can still duck in and be sure that, despite all the books that come and go, local and international, there is a space, a place, where my books have a home.



Dear Rona Gallery… have I told you lately that I love you?



Maggie Rainey-Smith



A poet, short story writer and essayist, Maggie Rainey-Smith is also the author of three novels – most recently Daughters of Messene (Mākaro Press), $35. She lives in Days Bay.

ROBERT KITCHIN/STUFF Nielsen figures show that book sales are on the rise.

Dear Christchurch University Bookshop,

A big pash for you. In the 60s, an old pink building in the CBD with (among other things) a disused lav filed mysteriously between bookshelves and behind a curtain; my small son's ad hoc use of it on one occasion caused a wholesale evacuation of the building.

In the 70s, a brutalist cube on the new campus from which emanated the sounds of Dire Straits and the Dooby Brothers along with a pervasive whiff of "incense"; the irises of the always-helpful assistants tended to be larger than their eyeballs.







Patrick Evans. Photo: Supplied.



Since those days, bigger and less brutalist, with chairs to sit in, a table to read on, and an antique typewriter to give a little hint. You are a place where, when you go in to order a book they've usually got it, and they've found something you didn't know you wanted, too. Easy to go in; hard to go out.



Patrick Evans



Novelist Patrick Evans' most recent publication is Salt Picnic (VUP) $30. He lives in Christchurch.



Kia Ora Unity Books, Wellington,



I love you because…



When I email and ask for a book you always say: "OK we'll have a look and email you back."



You always email me when it's been couriered. You send wee notes with the books.



When I asked you to locate what is called a "fake book", you went right ahead and found what I wanted. You didn't ask why because you knew the story of my New Year resolution to learn to read music and all you said was: "When are you going to book Carnegie?"







Renée. Photo: Supplied.



I can buy non-fiction, fiction, young adult and children's books from you. Doug the Bug That Went Boing was a great hit with my great-grandson – not sure about his mothers – while Goneville by Nick Bollinger was perfect for his uncle. You are very supportive of New Zealand writers.



When I walk into Unity Books, it's like walking into Taradale Library when I was about 7. I know you will smile, I know you will leave me alone to browse, and I know you will answer any question I ask because you know everything about books. It's like I'm walking into a friend's place except I can wander around, pick up books off the shelf, and even sit down and read them because you provide chairs. I find books I didn't know existed. Many years ago, I was browsing your shelves and I saw a cookbook called The Book of Old Tarts. Well, of course I had to have it. Every time I see it on my cookbook shelf I smile and think how lucky I am to have you.



Mā te wā,



Renée



It is a 75-minute drive from Renée's home in Ōtaki to Wellington's Unity Books. Her memoir These Two Hands (Mākaro Press), $38 is launching this week. She is the author of many novels and plays.

ROBERT KITCHIN/STUFF Unity Books in Wellington City is celebrating their 50th year in business.

Dear Hedleys Booksellers, Masterton,

Walking off the Masterton streets into Hedleys Books is like feasting on gourmet cheeses, fine wines, and deluxe deserts after a month-long diet of dry bread and water.

Or so it seemed to me in the 1970s when I was a lonely, bored first-time mother determined not to let the daily struggle with a wringer washing machine defeat my brain.

It was the gentle direction of Alec Hedley who saved me when I pushed my baby through the door of his establishment. "What are you looking for today?" he would ask.

I had no idea but he'd steer me towards the latest Kurt Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Richard Brautigan ("Hemmingway for hippies") and many other great writers which showed me that journalism and fiction weren't necessarily poles apart, and there is a life after motherhood. I would load up that old pushchair with mind candy and go home contented.

Happy mother, happy child.

Deborah Coddington. Photo: Supplied.

Then I moved away for several decades and the world changed. Alec died. We could order books online, read them on a Kindle, a phone – why leave home and drive to a building?

But I came back to Wairarapa 10 years ago, back to the wop-wops, and high up on my list of places to visit was my favourite bookshop. Would it live up to my fond memories?

These days, son David and his wife Jenny have taken over. It's not the same. It's better; brighter, bolder, and has more than stared down the digital challenge. Today I'm a grandparent and at Christmastime I send them a list of the grandchildren with age and gender, then drive the 20 kilometres to Masterton to collect their wise choice of books for Christmas presents. For myself, I just read the NZ Listener or New York Times Review of Books then send in my order to Hedleys.

And no doubt, as I write, Hedleys' erudite staff are guiding another culturally marooned Masterton youngster in the direction of Really Good Reads. You are the best bookshop for ever and ever Amen.

Deborah Coddington

Former MP Deborah Coddington lives in the Wairarapa. Her new book will launch in November 2018 (Massey University Press).

Dear Poppies in Havelock North,

It's not usual to write a love letter to more than one recipient, but let me beg my case for an exception. You see, I love you all; the three of you.

Most small towns in NZ struggle to support a bookshop; let alone two, but in my small town, Havelock North, there are three.

When I first came to live here 30 years ago, we had a family business account at Take Note. You were Paper Plus back then and I adored you – and the account. I bought important things, some of which are now relics from the past, like letter-writing stationery and stamps, phone directories to jot down phone numbers, an instruction book for my new microwave, picture books to bribe potty-training toddlers, magazines to believe there was glamour after maternity clothes and toddler magazines to hear about other drowning mothers.

You evolved as I did and I purchased comics, young adult fiction, then Lee Child's books for stalling young men readers and more. Thank you, Take Note.

And then along came Poppies. Even the name was pretty. There was a big chair in the shop for reading and you had "book club" evenings.

Mary-Anne Scott. Photo: Supplied.

I was in my 40s and hungry for change, introspection, poetry, coffee table books. You supplied all these and I still love those tomes on wine, travel and musicians. You, Poppies catered for my changing diet of reading and my changing diet of food. Of course, I went gluten free… who didn't?

I started to write my own stories and Pam and Brett, you asked me about my work as if you believed I would be published one day. I took my eventual letter of acceptance in to celebrate and we all had a coffee together. You supported me through the book launch, the awards, the good reviews and the shitty ones.

And then along came Wardini's. This time there was magic too. You are a treasure trove, a cave of words that lures me off the street. Gareth and Louise, fresh off the boat with your cockney accents, have charmed the locals. You too, had book clubs, but with the energy of the young, you also have bedtime stories for pyjama-clad children, a battle of the bookclubs, you host speakers in your lounge room meeting space. My daughter-in-law lost a precious book voucher and you honoured the amount without question – and gained yourselves a customer for life.

Gareth admitted he too was writing a book and we started having our hub meetings for the NZ Society of Authors in the shop. It was a place to talk about the business of writing, welcome new members, commiserate over the inevitable failures, and celebrate the successes.

For my next book launch, Wardinis sold the books and Poppies came as guests. It was a tough call and Brett and Pam were as gracious as they always are.

In this ruthless economy, it's refreshing to find such congeniality.

Mary-Anne Scott

YA author Mary-Anne Scott lives in Havelock North. Her latest book is Coming Home to Roost (Longacre) $19.99.

Find a full list of events for NZ Bookshop Day here: booksellers.co.nz/whats.