WHEN internationally acclaimed journalist, author and one of Ipswich’s favourite sons Trent Dalton walks into a bookshop and sees his novels sitting on the shelves, he sees more than his name printed on a spine – he sees his dad.
As book lovers across Australia celebrate National Love Your Bookshop Day this Saturday, Dalton reflected on why the humble bookshop remains so important, not just as somewhere to buy a book, but as a place where stories, memories and communities come together.
For Dalton, that connection begins with his father, Noel, the man who introduced him to John Steinbeck and J.R.R. Tolkien and took him through the doors of second-hand bookshops.
Noel passed away before he could stand beside his son and see one of the books of our generation in Boy Swallows Universe, written by his son Trent, sitting on the shelves among the books that had helped shape them both.
“He was the one who took me into those places and went, ‘Isn’t this a wonderland? Isn’t this a portal to all of your dreams?’ ” Dalton said.
“It makes me so sad that my dad never got to walk into a bookshop with me and see my books along those books.”
For Dalton, a bookshop is far more than a retail space.
“These places are the brains of our city,” he said. “We lose those bookshops, we lose community, and we lose ourselves and lose who we are.”
Speaking from a cafe in West Ashgrove, where he was doing what he loves most – writing – Dalton said the thrill of putting words on a page had only grown since starting his first journalism job on January 10, 2000.
“It hasn’t stopped to be honest, and it just gets deeper and richer,” he said.
Beneath the bestselling novels and new creative ventures remains the same fascination that drove Dalton’s earliest journalism: ordinary people and the extraordinary stories they carry.
At Brisbane News, Dalton began writing about everyday lives, filling the spaces between advertisements in a free local publication, while better understanding the people he loved and the world he had grown up in.
“I could use this extraordinary thing called journalism and then later books to sort myself out,” he said. “It’s just been the most incredibly healing way to do it.”
For children in particular, books can provide something even more important – proof that there is a bigger world beyond their own circumstances and that hope, imagination and possibility exist within it.
The Book Bouquet Top 10 Books — Past Year
- Gruffalo Granny — Julia Donaldson
- The World Beneath Her Feet – Holly Ringland
- Big Little Truths: Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty
- The Things We Never Say – Elizabeth Strout
- Fruit Fly – Josh Silver
- The Correspondent – Virginia Evans
- Yesteryear – Caro Claire Burke
- London Falling – Patrick Radden Keefe
- Exit Party – Emily St. John Mandel
- John of John – Douglas Stuart
Our Locals
- Edwina Shaw – Dear Madman
- Willow Meadows– Opera Tales Trilogy
- Jill Colwell – Tiki & Jill and the Great Camel Race
- Trevor Fourmile – Gurrill Storm Bird
- Lawrey Goodrick – HalfLife
