Time Booksellers

 

You know the expression "Never judge a book by its cover"? Well, the same applies about never judging a bookshop's stock by its premises.

I was a bit taken aback to pull up outside a soulless-looking warehouse in an industrial estate in Somerville. Could this really be a bookshop?

But when we stepped inside Time Booksellers, it was like entering the Tardis. Not only is this a bookshop, it's an enormous bookshop. More than that, though, it's not like being inside a warehouse. It has a real antiquarian bookshop feel, complete with old-fashioned ticking clocks and fine-quality books.

There are thousands of books here, so many that's it's almost overwhelming. Their specialist area is Australian history, including Aboriginal history, military history, and history books about Australia's various states.

There is also an emphasis on literature - mostly Australian literature, but also UK and US literature.  I don't think I've ever seen so many volumes of poetry in a bookshop before. There's also a collection of chess books that Beth Harmon would be proud to own!

Sports books are upstairs, along with even more history books. The owners are planning to extend their collection with a newly built mezzanine section that's just waiting for more bookcases to be installed.

Time Booksellers is open by appointment during the week. However, the owners recommend that if you know what you're looking for, their website is the best starting-point. That way you can see what they stock, and either order online or go in to check out the books.

This makes a lot of sense, as the bookshop is so enormous that you could probably have spent Melbourne's July-November lockdown in there and still not have seen everything. 

 

Books at Yarck

I'd never heard of the tiny Goulburn Valley township of Yarck until the other day when we stopped there on the way back from Euroa. But I'll definitely be going back because among its few facilities is a gorgeous bookshop.

Books at Yarck has a great collection of books, from cookery and gardening books near the front of the shop to crime fiction and sports titles in the smaller room at the back. The sports section was well stocked with Olympic histories (something I also noticed at the bookshop in Euroa), so if you want to mug up on previous Olympic Games in the run-up to Tokyo, you'll find some great books here.

A sofa near the children's section allows you to peruse the books in comfort and there's a fire for cold winter's days.

Books are reasonably priced and there are some great bargains to be found in the trolleys outside the shop.

There's a bakery just down the road from the bookshop, but there's not much to do in Yarck. However, book lovers won't need anything else when they visit - searching this gem of a bookshop for treasures will be more than enough. 

The Already Read Bookshop

What's even better than coming across a gorgeous, well-stocked second-hand bookshop in a small country town?

Discovering that every dollar you spend in that bookshop goes to supporting the town's library, that's what.

The Already Read Bookshop in Euroa's main street is entirely staffed by Friends of the Library volunteers. It sells jigsaw puzzles, DCDs, records and magazines as well as books.

And what a great selection of books it has. An entire room is devoted to Australiana, which includes history and reference books, sporting memoirs and histories, novels by old and modern day Australian authors, as well as stacks of once-popular magazines.

All the genres, including crime and romance, are represented in the main room, and there's a particularly impressive collection of Penguin classic paperbacks, most of them with the distinctive orange spines.

Prices are colour coded and very reasonably priced. There are some great bargains to be found here, including the three history books I snagged for $7. 

The Already Read Bookshop has a lovely, welcoming atmosphere, and is only a short walk away from the library it supports.

We found another delightful second-hand bookshop on our way home, and I'll blog about that in a couple of days.

Euroa is a quiet town with a community rather than touristy feel. It has some great cafes and bakeries for lunch or morning tea. 

Paradise Books

 

Back in the early 2000s, when I started re-collecting girlsown fiction, Daylesford in central Victoria was one of my favourite places to visit. It had two brilliant bookshops - Paradise Books (then called Avant Garden) in a former bank building in the main street, and the lakeside Book Barn.

Paradise Books/Avant Garden contained 14 rooms on two levels stocked with a mixture of second-hand and new books, comics, sheet music, and CDs and DVDs. It boasted a huge collection of vintage children's books - a beautiful copy of Dimsie Among The Prefects was among several purchases I made there.  

The Book Barn was gorgeous in a different way - one large, split-level room, with a woodfire in winter and an amazing view over the lake. The well-stocked children's section was near the fire, giving it a cosy feel.

But times change. I visited Daylesford yesterday for the first time in eight years, and sadly the Book Barn closed its doors two years ago. There's a cafe there at the moment, but it was closed.

Paradise Books is still there, however, offering the same eclectic mix. The main room (where the counter is) is now totally devoted to new books, with the second-hand books arranged by subject in the other rooms. There's a good range of second-hand detective fiction, but the stock of vintage children's books seemed very depleted. I'm assuming it's been hard to get hold of stock over the past year because of the various lockdowns and restrictions. I spotted some Lorna Hills and a copy of Ivy L Wallace's Strangers at Warrender's Halt, so it's still worth girlsowners dropping in to see if there's anything they want for their collections.

 

One room I always visit on the second floor is the one with all the comics. I always look to see if there are any copies of old girls' comics and there never are - but yesterday I spotted a pile of Bonnie comics. The title meant nothing to me, but it looks like it was a contemporary of Bunty and Tammy. There were also copies of some old comics aimed at very young children in the 1960s and 1970s - Playhour and Jack and Jill.

 

Daylesford has changed a lot since our last visit, and doesn't 'feel' as family-friendly as it was 20 years ago. It has lots of cafes and restaurants, and there's nearby Hepburn Springs for spa treatments, if that's your thing. Outdoor types can enjoy plenty of bushwalks around the area. Bibliophiles will want to explore other nearby(ish) towns with bookshops, including Castlemaine, Woodend, Ballarat and Kyneton.