Global Book Crawl II: Tea with Friends
Last year I heard about the Global Book Crawl kinda late, so I didn’t get to all the shops; this year I planned my attack meticulously and even managed to bring some friends along the way.
I know you don’t have to buy anything to get the stamp, but it’s nice to have a mission and support indie bookshops financially so I saved my book-buying for this period and started writing a list a couple of months ahead. I also had my nieces’ and nephews’ names written down because they can always do with a book gift.
Here’s how it went.
Monday 20 April: Inner West
At 8am I arrange for my Meetup group to have breakfast at Honey & Walnut, just two doors down from Gleebooks Dulwich Hill. Four of us make it there. After a quiche and a pot of honeydew green tea, I bring the group into the bookshop at 9am sharp. We pick up a passport and earn our first stamp. We must be among the first to start the crawl?
I didn’t make it to this one last year – in fact, it’s the first time I’ve been to this shop. The staff member there is very excited that we’re so keen and we take some snaps for the socials. It’s a small shop comfortingly stuffed with books and certainly stocks tomes in keeping with its Inner West locale.
We lose one crew member, who has to go to work.
Bought: Vanessa Berry’s Calendar (on the list)
We catch a bus to Enmore and, seeing as we’re a tea group, have a pit stop at Mamuki, a Japanese bakery with a fancy array of tea drinks. I have an expensive but delicious matcha cookie and hojicha cloud.
We walk to Better Read than Dead. It’s here that we start having deeper discussions about books and start making recommendations to each other as we browse. BRTD has a section for local local authors and so I allow myself to buy a poetry collection that I doubt I’ll find anywhere else.
Bought: Siang Lu’s The Whitewash (on the list); Paula Okaigun Becoming (spontaneous)
Another bus, this time to Gleebooks Glebe. This is a much bigger bookstore than the other two so we lose and find each other throughout our visit. As this shop has a secondhand section, I allow myself to buy two books.
Bought: Kae Tempest Divisible by Itself and One (spontaneous); Matt Thorne Prince (spontaneous, secondhand)
I have work in the afternoon so I leave one person there and walk another to a lunch spot on my way home.
Tuesday 21 April: North
My partners-in-crime are friends and colleagues of a sort. Mandy, who lives on the Northern Beaches, has agreed to be our driver and we head to Avalon, which is much further than you think it is.
We fuel up at Chillbar for brunch, then visit Bookoccino – so called because you can get coffee there. The shop has quite artistic lighting and the layout uses more negative space than you might imagine. The tables (for coffee-drinking) make browsing a little annoying, though. I don’t find anything on my list* but I do pick up a book that Mandy buys and Stephanie wants to read after.
(*Later, Stephanie tells me I missed a massive display of Nikita Gill Hekate, which goes to show you should also shelve books where they ought to be, in alphabetical order, even if they are on display.)
Bought: Belinda Murrell The Silver Sea (for a niece); Wanning Sun Maid in China (lucky dip touted as ‘media morality and the cultural politics of boundaries’)
To be honest the lucky dip is right up my alley and at the same time seems to be way off-piste in terms of the kind of book prevalent in the store.
Mandy takes the coastal road south and we stop at a lookout in Freshwater along the way. It’s a shame the weather is murky because that’s the time to be reading, not driving.
Three Sparrows in Mosman is once again too small to have anything niche on my list and I almost resign myself to reaching for one of the more popular titles I have up my sleeve, but then I find something adjacent, plus an Australian author I know my eldest niece likes.
Bought: Wild Guide: Sydney (spontaneous); Alicia Jasinska This Fatal Kiss (for a niece)
Pit stop at the pub for hot chips and a quick drink, and Mandy takes us to The Burns Bay Bookery in Lane Cove. Stephanie does her friendly American thing where she strikes up a conversation about spec fic with the shop assistant (who says it’s their favourite genre, at which point Stephanie asks if they write and then invites them to Sydney Speculative Scribes). At this point Stephanie introduces Mandy and I as part of the founding team and it turns out I already know Jessie, who is a SWF supervisor this year. Small world? It’s books and books, people.
Julio, who I met for the Inner West portion, lives close by and pops in to say “hello”.
BBB was not on the crawl last year, so I’ll describe it a little: quite a deep shop with lots of aisles and sections for each genre amusingly described (spec fic is, for e.g., ‘Zombies & Robots’). The lighting is probably too cold for a bookstore – it feels like it used to be an office – but there’s quite a wide-ranging selection of books. Stephanie and Mandy both end up buying book-adjacent merch (mugs).
Bought: Shannon Best Indigenous Rules of Engagement (spontaneous); qntm There is no Antimemetics Division (on the list)
Mandy needs to get home so Stephanie and I hustle onto a bus, which means we fail to take a photo of the store and our passport. Stephanie also heads home and leaves me to get to her local, Constant Reader, on my own. Jay’s not in (I want to talk to him about author tours) but I find something else I was looking for.
Bought: Toby Walsh The Shortest History of AI (on the list); Daniel Lavery Dear Prudence (spontaneous, from the discount table) (I have already finished reading this book)
A quick trip on the metro to Chatswood and the new Kinokuniya. It’s much smaller than the CBD one but its wooded aesthetic makes it look warmer and calmer.
Bought: Soryo Matsumura An Illustrated Guide to the Zen Tea Ceremony
Wednesday 22 April: Rest day
(As if… I have two medical appointments, half a day of work and then a Scribes write-in.)
(On the upside, I reach my Opal weekly cap, which means travel for the rest of the week is free.)
Thursday 23 April: Balmain
I think it’s beautiful that Hill of Content and Roaring Stories not only co-exist in the same suburb but practically opposite each other. I start with HoC, because that’s where the bus drops me off. Last year I considered this the bookshop I was most compatible with, but this year I can’t seem to find any of the more niche books I want. It’s still a nicely set out store and immediately feels very friendly to me.
Bought: RF Kuang Katabasis (on the list)
I have breakfast at Berlin Bakr a few doors up the street, where the tea comes loose-leaf in a wide flat cast iron teapot, then go to RS.
Bought: Mariana Enriquez A Sunny Place for Shady People (spontaneous); Maiya Ibrahim Serpent Sea (on the list)
Unfortunately, two of the three books I bought are quite hefty and I have to carry them around White Bay Power Station, where I pay a brief visit to the Biennale of Sydney. Then I head back home for half a day of work.
I have book club in the evening – this one is for books in translation – and we decide Nelio Biedermann Lazar is our next meeting’s book.
Friday 24 April: East
In an echo of 2025, I start at Gertrude & Alice Bondi Beach and work my way west on this leg. We lost The Bookshop Darlinghurst (RIP) but we gained Woollahra Bookshop, so the journey is roughly the same.
I get to G&A just after 9am and find Lazar almost immediately. I do a more cursory browse than intended, partly because it’s a stunning day at the beach and the bookshop feels like the wrong place to be, and partly because the place is crowded with people having coffee in fitness gear and I feel wildly out of place.
Bought: Nelio Biedermann Lazar (bought before being added to the list)
I admire the sunny beach for several minutes, then board a bus to Woollahra. I have lived in Sydney all my life and have never been to this part of Woollahra – this I tell a pair of booksellers (Michael Eyes and Gordon Elliott) when I step into the shop.
In keeping with the village theme of the area, it’s a small shop with a tight edit of books. I feel a lot of simpatico as several are ones I already own and/or have enjoyed. I find a book by a UK writer I follow on Bluesky but whose books are incredibly hard to find in Australia (such that I didn’t even think to put it on my list) and I’m stoked.
Michael is also incredibly kind – he discovers I don’t care for the audiobook freebie on offer and instead gives me the bonus family book (Andy Griffiths The Land of Lost Things), which I’ll save for a niece.
Bought: Tom Cox Everything Will Swallow You (spontaneous)
I ask for a teatime rec and am directed to Zey, where I have a too-milky chai. Should’ve gone for the Turkish tea.
I head to Ariel on foot. It’s about a kilometre and takes me from the quiet village to the main Oxford Street drag. (By the by, I have never seen so much dog poop on the pavement as I did in Woollahra. What’s that about?)
Ariel still has its designer edge and I’m out of my element as I can’t find any of my niche titles, nor the mainstream ones. Instead I find a compromise.
Bought: Belinda Castles Walking Sydney (spontaneous)
I’ve planned to meet my tea group at Potts Point Bookshop at noon, to be followed by tea at Ms.Cattea. I calculate I have 45 minutes to travel the 3km from Ariel so I do it, even though I realise I haven’t eaten anything since brekky at 7am. (Spoiler: I survive.)
Six of us make it to the bookshop. There’s a table at the back of seemingly random books and I immediately find Diving Into Glass, the memoir of Caro Llewellyn. Real ones will know she was the reason I started volunteering for the Sydney Writers’ Festival in 2005 and am now the longest-serving member of its volunteer force. It turns out this table is discounted so I decide to buy the book.
I become increasingly desperate to stick to the remaining few books on my list so, for the first time, I ask the booksellers if they have any of the titles. I get about four requests in before one of them (maybe flustered or annoyed they don’t stock these) asks “where are you getting these books?!” Mate, many were word-of-mouth recommendations from writer friends. Instead I take a bookseller rec for the first time based on his understanding that I like SFF.
Bought: Caro Llewellyn Diving Into Glass (spontaneous); John Morrissey Bird Deity (recommended)
We head to the tea shop where Stephanie meets us, having had a disastrous morning – she has misplaced her passport but she is proudly toting her tote bag.
Saturday 25 April: Anzac Day
No book shopping today, but I did have a Taiwanese tea-tasting session at Stephanie’s friend’s place and then a couple of drinks at the Ho-Ji pop-up.
Sunday 26 April: Sydney CBD
Today I combine two of my Meetups – tea and speculative fiction – so there are more people to lose in bigger bookshops. We start at Abbey’s, which is just a front for Galaxy. I find Kathleen Jennings Honeyeater for the first time and am ecstatic.
Amelia is on the opening shift – she’s not volunteering at SWF this year but we have a chat until it gets busy.
Bought: Kathleen Jennings Honeyeater (on the list)
We head to The Palace Tearoom in the QVB across the road. I have a booking, but I made it before I knew how many people were actually coming. “Hi, I booked for four people but I sort of have 12 who followed me from a bookshop.” The server is cheerful about it and sends us to a set of booths several metres away from the venue where we can happily chat loudly as a large group. Untangling the bill is a bit of a nightmare but we get there in the end.
Onward to Kinokuniya in The Galeries. It is heaving so I tell everyone to go browse and be merry and if they want to say a final goodbye to meet me outside in an hour. I head to the Food & Beverage section where I buy most of my tea reference books but it is woefully understocked today so I head to Sci-Fi & Fantasy and Young Adult to see if I can acquire the last books on my list. I end up with three impulse buys instead.
Bought: Bora Chung Cursed Bunny and The Midnight Timetable (spontaneous); Amal El-Mohtar The River has Roots (spontaneous)
And that’s it! Sixteen bookshops**, 26 books, 12 Penguin Personas and one freebie Andy Griffiths book later, I earn the final stamp (well, sticker) on my passport. There’s a special comp you can enter at this stage, though the thought of more books makes me feel slightly bamboozled. Like, where the hell am I going to a) find the time to read them; and b) find the room to house them?
Apparently I’ve also been Instagramming wrongly and have forgotten to tag @global.bookcrawl.australia in yet another comp to win a completely different set of books. I’m less sad about this then you might guess, but I add them retrospectively anyway.
See you next year?
(**I was incredibly pleased with this achievement until I learnt that Melbourne has 39 bookshops on its passport and that people there had done them all.)
