Let me start with a disclaimer – I’ve been living in Melbourne for the last year and haven’t been able to visit my local bookshop for a very long time. Our bookshops have all had to move to online sales and local deliveries. As a result, our book-buying practices and reading habits have had to … Continue reading Finding links to community in the bookstore
When I arrived from the UK and settled in Melbourne, I quickly learned to respect coffee and not to make jokes about AFL. I also noticed that Melbourne has an impressive network of local independent bookshops. But how have indie bookshops managed to survive in Australia when they have virtually vanished in the UK and … Continue reading Still Resilient? Can Indie Bookshops Survive Covid-19?
‘Do you want to come home?’ Mum asked me when the pandemic began spreading internationally. I assured her that I was fine in Australia. It has a better health infrastructure than home, a smaller population, and I had already paid my tuition for the year. New Delhi will always be my city but I was … Continue reading The Woes of Being Internationally Stranded
When I checked my phone this morning, I had a text from my sister. It was a video of her daughter – my niece – sounding out the words to her very first picture book: Mix, Mix, Mix, the engrossing tale of Bob the Bug baking a cake. Ordinarily, this is the kind of thing … Continue reading Book Club Zoom Rooms? Online Launches? Melbourne Reading Communities Adapt to a Post-Covid World
It was 4:45 p.m. New York time, 7:45 a.m. Melbourne time, when my parents called and said, with an unmistakable tone of disappointment, ‘We think you should come home.’
