During my time at The Book Keeper, my little second hand bookshop in Strathalbyn, South Australia, I began to see readers and reading in new ways. I also began writing about them; not book reviews, or reader reviews – it was rather what people did in bookshops, what they did around books, how they spoke of books, and how they bend their bodies and curved their hands around books, and how their faces changed. Reading is a human activity that is too complex to define, and too beautiful to ignore.
However, I no longer own or run this shop. The Book Keeper bookshop is still there in the same place (Shop 4/1 Dawson St, Strathalbyn, SA) with new owners, Megan and Adam Coyles, local book and reading enthusiasts. They are lovely people – and I will be eternally grateful to them for keeping my little shop from disappearing.
Now I am doing new work. The urge to record what we humans do is still with me. I like to record the small things we do while we are living. The smallest things, the precise lights we keep polished and on while we step and step along the road of our days that are never quite smooth, but which always yield constant small clumsily wrapped presents, such as those offered by children to whom your life is everything.
KerryHoodWrites 