Clunes is the Bookshop Capital of Australia?🔖📖📚🌏

I had not heard of the Clunes Book Town Festival until this year ... and just too late to attend this year's festival (not that I had the money to, anyway).

 Alex talking to Sue the CEO
of Clunes Booktown Festival

Maybe next year if my fortunes turn around?

Clunes Book Town Festival

I hadn't really heard of the town of Clunes as far as I can remember, either, so I had to do a search on the internet to find out where the town actually was, since I live in Queensland and only passed through the state of Victoria once in my life in 2016 on my way to Tasmania and back -

I Sat by the Ocean

The town of Clunes and its bookshops came to my attention yesterday while I was reading 'The Rosie Result'.

The town of Clunes and its bookstores are mentioned quite a bit in the book from chapter 22 onwards.

And while I did buy 'The Rosie Result' at the 'Avid Reader' bookstore, I stumbled across the second book in the trilogy in a front yard book exchange in West End, Brisbane ... where from reading the sales sticker on that book I found out the original owners also bought that book from the 'Avid Reader' bookstore:-)

Had I not found that book and read it, I wouldn't have been reading 'The Rosie Result' right now.

Funny thing is that I found a podcast and website called 'Paper Defiance' where Alex interviews bookshop owners from all over the world by the looks of the episodes available to listen to at the website.

Do I Thank the Book Angel or the Book Bunny?👼🐰

Paper Defiance

The Rosie Effect?📖🌹

From page 181 of 'The Rosie Result'

I looked up one book shop from Clunes that has ebay sales and I browsed through 26 pages of books on their website to see if there was something I was interested in buying ... and there was.

SOLD ... to me from Clunes:-)

A book about the Beenliegh Rum Distilery, where I had my wedding reception in back in '88 and is just a few kms down the road from where I live now.

Plus, I'm reading/listening to 'Treasure Island' now and of course rum is mentioned and sung about quite a bit in that book.

Treasure Island by
Robert Louis Stevenson

I was always under the impression that 'Treasure Island' was a children's book, but the first few chapters at least are about drinking rum.
And on the subject of treasure, according to the Clunes Wikipedia page, "Clunes is best known as the site of Victoria's first registered gold discovery in 1850 and its first gold strike in 1873, which lasted three months."

Is that why the cover of the third Rosie book is gold?-)

And there were some very synchromystic books for sale at Huc & Gabet, considering the plot of 'The Rosie Result', like how far Clunes is from Northcote, and that Don Tillman and Rosie work as cocktail makers in all three books.

Also, Don promises his son Hudson that he could buy one book that he really likes in Clunes no matter how expensive it was, and he buys a real expansive book on fashion. 
Don asks his son later if he was interested in fashion, and Hudson says no and that he just bought it because it was the most expensive book he could find, so he could ebay it.

I guess Don was lucky that this $2,750 book (below) wasn't in the shop at the time?-)

Oddly enough, there was even a book about rats for sale, as Don dissects a dead rat, in that third book.

The third book opens with Don shucking oysters and cutting himself in the process, and he spends most of this book setting up a cocktail bar in Melbourne, called The Library:-)

When Don takes his son to a Gay friend's clothing shop because of the fashion book Hudson had bought, Don's Gay friend remarks that Don's running shoes look like they have passed the expiry date.

This book was on the 13th page:-)

Don also buys his wife running shoes for their 13th wedding anniversary, because they have laces in them, and you are supposed to buy something with lace for the 13th one:-)

Birds Poems by Judith Wright BOOK

The best town for bookshops that I have personally visited I think was Armidale, home of Judith Wright (who was born in 1915, the Year of the Rabbit) -

Occult Armidale?

I thought it was funny seeing a PKD book in Italian for sale considering my last post was about PKD -

The Roman Circus Never Ended?🤡🌍🕳🎪🌎🏇🎠🌏

That $320 book above reminded me of one of my favourite Tasmanian bookshops I wrote about -
A Wonderland of Coincidence in the Book Cellar

Literary legends Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist

I've never been to Queenscliff, but I have now seen this town mentioned three times in the last few days and this news story below reminds me of an incident the night after I was on one of those ships -

Going With the Flow in Devonport on My Last Day in Tasmania

Death of a man who fell overboard while
 travelling on the Spirit of Tasmania

Frank Thring had his ashes thrown into the ocean off Queenscliff -

Frank Thring: Bigger Than Ben-Hur?🎬

The Bookshop at Queenscliff

Real life is s0 strange that y0u w0uldn't read ab0ut it w0uld y0u?-)

Beginning in Bookselling (1972)

The Dance of Chance for an Avid Reader?