Saturday 12 October is Aotearoa NZ Bookshop Day. This annual event has been going since 2015, and is a chance to celebrate your local booksellers. What's happening in 2024? Some bookshops will have the Booksellers Aotearoa NZ limited-edition tote bag. Last year's covetable tote featured amazing artwork from Xoë Hall and the slogan "Books are my bag". I love mine so much! This year has an equally desirable book tote bag by artist and poet Māori Mermaid Jessica Hinerangi Thompson-Carr and the slogan is "Love your Bookshop".
Here's what is happening in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
Win a copy of Bold Types: Indie Bookshops of Aotearoa New Zealand
A new book coming out on Aotearoa NZ Bookshop Day might well be the perfect Bookshop Day book. It features Canterbury booksellers include Scorpio, UBS Canterbury, Piccadilly Books and The Twizel Bookshop.
Bold Types: Indie Bookshops of Aotearoa New Zealand is edited by Jemma Moreira, with photographs by Jane Ussher, published by Ugly Hill Press
Read our review and enter the competition to win a copy of this beautiful book
Scorpio Books
There will be lots of excitement in-store, including bookish merch, book deals and giveaways!
Details to be announced in the next week - keep an eye on their socials for more info.
Blind date with a book on Bookshop Day
The Scorpio Team have wrapped a selection of well-reviewed titles from the Fiction shelves – all usually priced between $25 and $40 – but now as mystery books they’re all $20! For those who love surprises.
(No refunds, exchanges or returns on sale items.)
Have you got a wallet full of old Scorpio loyalty cards? Cash them in on Bookshop Day!
Scorpio Books are granting a Loyalty Card Amnesty, exclusively on Bookshop Day, this coming Saturday 12th October.
Bring in your out-of-date cards and combine them into a voucher, or we can transfer your stamps onto a new card for future use.
Ts & Cs: Stamped cards that have exceeded the one-year time limit can be transferred onto a new card, or can be combined into a valid voucher, which never expires.
This offer is available only on Saturday 12th October 2024.
Aotearoa NZ Bookshop Day social media
Keep in touch with what's happening:
- Follow Booksellers Aotearoa NZ on Facebook
- Follow Scorpio Books on Facebook
- Follow Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand on Instagram
- Follow Scorpio Books on Instagram
Head along to your local bookshop, have a look, and maybe go home with a book or five.
Bookshop photos and Photo Hunt
Here are images of local bookshops in Canterbury Stories and it is Photo Hunt month, so why not add your bookshop photos and be in to win Riverside Market vouchers!
Bookshops I love, and have loved
Second-hand bookshop fans will love Simon Palenski's article in The Spinoff: Christchurch's secondhand bookshops, ranked and reviewed.
Fave places to go in 2024
- I am still a Scorpio girl. It's in the BNZ Centre, and has companion stores nearby - Telling tales and a travel book shop. Did you know they also sell Scorpio Books pins and mugs for fans?
- Kings Books and Stamps on Warrington Street. A great selection of New Zealand books and sci fi (comics and LPs too).
- The gorgeous caravan Custard Square bookshop, often parked up at the Christchurch Arts Centre.
- Opshops are a happy hunting ground for books. My most recent find was a romance by Essie Summers, and her autobiography.
- I am a fan of Reverie Booksellers in Edgeware - FKA The Edgeware Paperback Centre.
- On the corner of Ferry Road where you can find two unique shops. Steadfast Books has a beautiful and interesting selection of books. Last thing I bought there was a copy of Where the wind blows by Raymond Briggs. Next door is the slightly more chaotic Book Barn on Ferry, the local outpost of the legendary Chertsey Book Barn.
Back in the inaugural NZ Bookshop Day in 2015, I wrote about my favourite haunts from the olden days
- East's Bookshop - perfectly centrally located for a browse. I saw Jasper Fforde talk there.
- Smith's Bookshop on Manchester Street - a cornucopia of books, you could lose yourself for hours in its rambling bookwilderness.
- Scorpio Books - always a platter of temptation. The last thing I bought there in its Hereford Street location was in February 2011 - a book about typography called Just my Type.
- Book city - by the IRD. I used to go there a lot with my Dad on work lunchtime rambles. The books are still in there if you peer in (last time I looked). I remember buying a book about Bronzino.
- That shop by South City that had loads of Taschen books. I bought a book of Pierre et Gilles photographs.
- The Children's Bookshop - when I was a new Mum, me and my wee girl were always hanging out on Victoria Street. I bought a big colourful picture book called Mouk.
- Comics Compulsion on Manchester Street. As immortalised in Sam Zabel and the magic pen by Dylan Horrocks.
- Borders. Was it in Riccarton? Someone bought me a great present from here - the big purple slip cased edition Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie.
Kia ora Ōtautahi Christchurch bookshops and the wonderful booky people who work there. Love your mahi!
Visit our page on Bookshops and Aotearoa NZ Bookshop Day for more
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