Something serious this time. Are we living through the last days of book shops? That the University Book Shop is to downsize and leave its present Great King St premises would seem to confirm that even the best of bookshops are beyond surviving and that’s a bitter blow for bibliophiles. They will all have memories of time spent in the UBS. When I first arrived in Dunedin 60 years ago the book shop was my first port of call after signing up at the university to start my student days. Armed with impossibly long reading lists I joined the throng in the packed displays of set texts and bought far too many books. No doubt textbooks provided a solid income for the UBS but these days I’m sure there are students who find all they need on the internet and have graduated without ever buying a book. Richard Seddon loomed large in my first history paper so I blew 17 shillings (maybe $40 today) buying Randal Burdon’s biography of the great prime minister. Years later, I eagerly devoured Tom Brooking’s pretty well definitive biography of Seddon and, while no website can match those books for interpretation and detail, a cunning student can probably pick up enough from googling and lecture notes to get a pass mark. If this bookless approach to study is actually happening then today’s student, like the booksellers, is much the poorer. As a student I could rarely lash out 17 bob on a book but a regular visit to the UBS was a chance to browse, meet up with fellow students, some of whom worked part time behind the counter, and when manager Bill Noble started importing piles of books destined for the upstairs sale room $5 would get you a top class volume which, while maybe a year or two old, had started life at $35.95. Most of the books were non-fiction from America but there were many others and the browser was tempted by titles about esoteric subjects which had found their way into no other book shop. Not a week would go by without a visit to that first-floor treasure trove and most visits would produce a couple of bargains. When I failed to find something, I thought of George Orwell who wrote “there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.” My downstairs visits saw fewer purchases as for many years I was involved with a radio programme to which publishers supplied review copies of books we were interested in. Nevertheless, the sheer bookishness of the UBS attracted me even if I wasn’t spending. The UBS employed top staff including some hard cases with literary notables, poets, musos and writers among them, and like all good bookshops the UBS has supported writers. The UBS organised a very moving launch for a book I’d written on woman’s’ work in wartime. They saw that many of “my girls” were invited and the whole affair was pretty emotional. The UBS itself has an rough draft chapter is a history of Dunedin booksellers I started 10 years ago but never got around to finishing. From its beginnings as the Presbyterian Bookroom in a now-demolished building opposite the Captain Cook and purchase in the 1950s by John Griffin who gave the store its present name to the move along the road to what had been the Regina Confectionary building the UBS has been for almost 80 years a Dunedin icon. Equally iconic was UBS manager for 34 years, Canadian-born Bill Noble. When he arrived the joint owners, Whitcoulls and the Otago University Students’ Association were keen to stock only textbooks, but Bill persuaded them to run the store as a general book shop and thus began a love affair with the wider book buying public. More than once I came across delighted non-student buyers in the Captain Cook, discussing their new literary treasure over a pint or two. With a flash makeover just four years ago the UBS remained a drawcard even without the upstairs bargains. Happily, it was free of the shelves of recent, forgettable novels which assault the sensitive traveller at airport bookstalls but instead found room for superior new books which might sell only half a dozen copies and in an age when Charles Dickens was given no room in other bookstores a full range of classics had their place in the UBS. Pretty well the perfect book shop. If you are one of those who buy books from a website you might consider that in saving a dollar or two you have contributed to the loss of a great bookstore. Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
