Last month I had the chance to visit Sydney. The trip was short and focused: for five days I was immersed in the projects we’d been scheming up back in the States. The Harbor City’s bats and laid-back-ness reminded me of Austin, and its glam interiors and water views of Miami. My coworkers boasted a cornucopia of accents: Aussie-Scots, Aussie-American, Aussie-London, Swiss-American, American, Aussie-Swiss-Canadian. I stayed with an old friend from New York. And to top it off, the exchange rate with the US dollar was just a hair shy of 1:1. So it seemed less like I was visiting Australia, and more like I was visiting a bizarre singularity of the grand dominion.
Broad similarities highlighted the more quotidian (and, in my book, more delightful) differences. Two of my favorite browsing spots were bookshops in Susannah’s neighborhood. Books are more expensive in Australia (by 27% compared to US), which the Sydney Morning Herald attributes to a variety of reasons including higher printing and shipping costs, the inefficiencies of a smaller market, and Australian publishing being owned by high-overhead, debt-laden multinational conglomerates.
At the same time, perhaps some of the cost is returned to the reader. Both shops held an air of being well and truly curated. And the Potts Point Bookshop — the size of a Manhattan studio apartment — publishes this short but rich guide every season. Here are just a few of its dozen or so pages:
Summer reading guide. November is summer! “…Thank our loyal customers… entice new friends… and of course, we would love to help you in person at the bookshop!”
Short summaries are great for picking gifts or piquing your interest. And yes, that’s $33.00 for a paperback.
