For Love Your Bookshop day we invited people to visit us for all day discounts, and from 3pm, cake and champagne. We also encouraged people to write what our bookshop means to them. We received poems, cards, letters, a drawing, bread and even a handmade snow globe! The marketing behind Love Your Bookshop day has really made it a day where people are thinking of their favourite bookshops - social media was alive with people getting out and supporting their favourite book havens. As a bookseller it was a joy to see. Engaging with and supporting your local bookshop means actually being able to keep that local bookshop in your neighbourhood. How about these poems and letters? Do you have a favourite? Want to add one of your own?
My favourite bookshop is Blarney
It's cosy and comfy and yarny
Come in for a browse
You'll find something that wows
And you'll be back -
just the same as Big Arnie.
- KH
You say 'happy returns' to a library,
but you can't say that to a shop.
You just wish them well,
and hope that they sell
an amount that is over the top.
If the shop is called Blarney Books
you'll love it with all of your heart.
It's a place you can go
if you feel a bit low,
or your brain needs a gentle kick start.
There are talks, there are paintings to see,
There's music and books old and new.
Wander round, take a look
for you could buy a book,
from this wonderful cultural zoo.
- CA
A Love Letter to Blarney Books from JM:
When I'm with you I feel safe and secure
You provide sanctuary when life is storming
and shelter when it gets too hot.
I miss you when you're not there and yearn for your return... counting the days.
I turn to you when I need love, adventure from a seemingly mundane existence and
to satiate a seemingly insatiable thirst for company and experiences.
You provide me with company in the books, characters, hope in times of despair,
endless possibilities and knowledge that I never knew I needed at times,
and places to inhabit.
I access emotions more fully than I allow myself in my interactions
with reality.
I feel deeper and go further than I ever imagined I could.
Without you is not within my realm of experience and I don't care to become
familiar with the concept. As breathing is to life - reading is to my existence and being.
I could not live without you, and simply don't care to.
Sincerely, Your Avid & Passionate Reader.
I love Blarney Books. I don't want to advertise it because I love it as it is and if many more people come it will spoil the lovely relaxed atmosphere. Blarney and the U3A make the whole social life of Port Fairy.
- C