WHISTLER !

It's not really about a horse.

Dearest Readers,

I hope you all had an amazing week.

Last weekend I attended the Australian Bookseller’s conference in Canberra. As always, it was so well organized and incredibly entertaining (for anyone who loves books as much as I / we do).

I left with 8 tote bags full of books and a brain full of ideas.

Operating as a bookshop owner in this economic climate is a daily battle. But last weekend was a reminder that we don’t need to work in silos and that, in fact, when we advocate for the value of bookshops in our communities we are far more powerful together than alone.

It’s exhausting being the owner of a small business, but especially a bookshop. People are still reading books (yes!) booktok is thriving ! But so much of those book sales go to the big guys (rhymes with Framazon) and (Rig Wubahu) Literacy levels in children are frighteningly low and school libraries are getting smaller. Some schools don’t even have a librarian. We are losing a bunch of readers to screens (old news) and watching as brain rot creeps into our algorithms and poisons the spongey minds of the young.

I have kids. I know how hard it is to steal their attention away from the iPad. I then think about it in the broader scheme of things - for us adults….

How can I get people excited about reading ? How do I get you to buy books from me and not Amazon?

Well, I can’t make you do anything. But the first step for me is just reading as much as I can. The second step? Directing a reader to a book I know they are going to love (this is hard as I’m not always available in person and in store).

I do a lot of my job online and a lot of it feels like swimming in a cesspool of cringe.

I posted the below photo with a bunch of text about new books coming out and it was the best social media engagement in a LONG time for the shop. Why? I dunno. Turns out pouting in front of the mirror with a shimmery shirt makes people go to the next slide on the carousel.

Lookkkk intooo my eyessss. My shinnnyyyy shirrtttt. My neeewwww ringggggg. Youuuuu areeee getttinggg verrrrryyyyy sleeepppyy. Now BUYY SOMEE BOOOKS !

So you heard it here first - last year I was scared of being cringe, this year I am leaning FULL into cringe. You will see me become a content MACHINE from now on. I will make sure you are buying your audio books from Libro FM and your physical books from independent bookstores (it doesn’t have to be mine). It feels like a matter of life and death - without being dramatic or anything. We need to get rid of the brainless idiots running our world and replace them with smart, kind, empathetic READERS.

Let’s not get too far into the post today without talking about an actual book though. I just read ‘Whistler’ by Ann Patchett and it has restored my faith in Patchett once more. If you know me you know I loved ‘The Dutch House’. It’s one of my favourite books of all time and so elegantly captures the life of a wealthy family over decades. Ann Patchett is a master of family drama and post COVID she wrote a quiet book called ‘Tom Lake’ . I didn’t connect with Tom Lake in the way that I connected with ‘The Dutch House’ and so I was nervous about ‘Whistler’.

First of all, the cover has a horse on it. When I see a horse on a book cover I immediately think of ‘Horse’ by Geraldine Brooks (which, by the way, is another brilliant novel)

But I did think on first impression that this book would be about the life of a horse and I wasn’t in the mood for it so Whistler has sat on my shelf for quite some time. Until I watched Ann Patchett on Stephen Colbert saying that the book wasn’t entirely about a horse.

‘Whistler’ opens with an excellent ‘inciting incident’ - brilliant in its’ simplicity (I don’t want to give anything away) but it drew me right in. The book is everything that Ann does best. It is life affirming, tear jerky. It is about the small moments e.g. when people are mid conversation and they take a sip of wine and pause. She has such a way of saying so much through the characters seemingly meaningless observations.

Cute relaxing horsey wants you to go buy relaxing book this weekend.

‘Whistler’ is an exploration of the tightrope that is stepping into the past and how sometimes when doing so we can forget who we are in the present. I loved it SO much and I need you to go buy it this weekend.

As always I require a full report back at how much you loved it.

All my love,

Jessie

xxxx