Interview With A Bookseller

A quick chat with David Gaunt as he recollects some memorable events from his 45 years of bookselling with gleebooks.

What is your favourite section in the shop?

That’s like asking me to choose between my children! I can’t pick just one favourite. (But it probably will always be literature.)

What is the craziest situation you’ve ever had to deal with at gleebooks?

We were hosting a huge event at the Old Teacher’s Federation Theatre with Peter Carey, when out of nowhere a loud noise from behind the walls, startled all of us bringing the event to a halt. I rushed to the back of the stage behind the curtains, mortified by this sudden distruption and placed my hands on the wall in desperate hopes that it would somehow stop. And it did. Everybody thought it (or rather, should I say, I) was divine intervention.

If you weren’t running gleebooks, what would you be doing?

I’d be sitting on a verandah reading a book. Prefrebly somewhere in the Kanimbla Valley. ( I do wish I had learnt the piano though.)

Think you know gleebooks inside out? Answer the questions below (make sure you read the gleaner carefully) to enter the competition and win yourself a $100 gift voucher! Email your submissions to competitions@gleebooks.com.au or mail it to us at PO Box 486, Glebe, NSW 2037. Entries are accepted until the 5th of April 2023 and the winner will be notified by the 10th of April 2023.

How Well Do You Know Your Bookstore?

Don't miss your chance to win a $100 gift voucher!

1.

How many times has gleebooks won the Bookseller of The Year Award?

2. When did gleebooks first become the official booksellers of the Sydney Writer's Festival?

What’s your vision for books and bookshops in the age of technology?

Well, books will last forever, but I do hope that bookshops stay bookshops, and not just showrooms. No further explanations necessary.

3. How many books do we have in store?

5. How many boxes did it take to pack and move our store to the new location?

Return to Valetto

Valetto was once a thriving village and a refuge during World War II. Centuries of earthquakes, landslides and the lure of a better life have left it neglected. Only ten residents remain, including the widows Serafino - three eccentric sisters and their steely centenarian mother - who live quietly in their medieval villa. Then their nephew and grandson, Hugh, a historian, returns. But someone else has arrived before him, laying claim to the cottage where Hugh spent his childhood summers. Like so many threads of history, this revelation unravels a secret - a betrayal, a disappearance and an unspeakable act of violence.

Shirley

It’s been twenty years since her mother was photographed, blood-soaked, outside the family home. Since that time, the girl has grown up, and she’s finally found happiness. But strange things are in the air. Among conspiracies, dubious loyalties, and mercenary impulses, how do we work out who is worthy of our devotion and who is just a fan? Shirley charts a search for meaning in a world where the fracturing of ambitionswork and purpose, real estate and home, family and love - has left us uncertain how to recognise ourselves.

BOOKS THAT MAKE YOU THINK.

‘For years there has been no shrewder or sharper commentator on Canberra politics than Chris Wallace.’

DON WATSON

The Death of John Lacey

John Lacey’s lust for power and gold brings him riches and influence beyond his wildest dreams. Only he knows the terrible crime he committed to attain that wealth. Years later, as Lacey ruthlessly presides over the town he has built and named after himself, no one has the courage to question his power or how he wields it. Brothers Ernst and Joe Montague are on the run from the law and they land in Lacey’s town committing desperate crimes to avoid capture. Lacey vows to hunt them down, but not everyone is blind to his evil, and a reckoning is approaching.

Dark Mode

For years, Reagan Carsen has kept her life offline. No socials. No internet presence. No photos. Safe. Until the day she stumbles on a shocking murder in a Sydney laneway. The victim looks just like her. As more murders shake the city and she’s increasingly drawn out from hiding, Reagan is forced to confront her greatest fear, being found.

Funny Ethnics

Welcome to Sylvia Nguyen’s world. Only child of Vietnamese refugee parents, unexceptional student, exceptional selfdoubter. It’s a place where migrants from across the world converge, and identity is a slippery, ever-shifting beast. Jumping through snapshots of Sylvia’s life - from childhood to something resembling adulthood - this novel is about square pegs and round holes, those who belong and those on the fringes.

The Bell of the World

‘The world of fungi is our world even if we don’t know it and can’t see most of it — strange, dazzling, spooky, unpredictable, friendly, deadly, sly. And Alison is the perfect guide.’

PAUL KELLY

Gregory Day’s new novel embodies a cultural reckoning in a breathtakingly beautiful and lyrical way. The Bell of the World is both a song to the natural wonders that are not yet gone and a luminous prehistory of contemporary climate change and its connection to colonialism. It is a book immersed in the early to midtwentieth century but written very much for the hearts of the future.