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New Names, Old Books.

New Names, Old Books.

Author: Jo Rushby
Date: 2022-10-28

"...Remember First to Possess His Books" (the Tempest)

How many times has the obiruary of bookshops being written in the last two decades? New technologies, it is preached, will make buying an actual book with real pages redundant. But somehow, across the globe, bookshops have refused to go quietly. Sometimes fighting a Stalingrad-type defence, other times emerging out of the trenches, bookshops have recently engaged in a spectacular counter­insurgency.

Books you see are antidotes to the sameness which can envelop us. They are the gifts that bookend our lives. Often I come across inscriptions in books and am moved when I read, 'Mum, on your 60th'. Twenty years later, when everything else has gone, "mum" still holds on to that gift, for it is a link to a son, a spring to the past and a page whose conclusion returns you to the beginning.

Writers often spend years locked away working through their manuscripts. And when they emerge Rip van Winklesque, they want their books to be on display, to get a reaction, to be asked for an autograph. Many will die unheralded. Others will be recognised after their death.

At Ike's, those who launch their books, or make a turn to visit, sign the wall. Twenty-two years later, the wall wells with emotion and memory, when a daughter sees her father's name or a fan of J M. Coetz.ee realises that the man was at the opening of the bookshop in Florida Road. Lewis Nkosi came back from exile and found a home here. Famous cricketer, Rahul Dravid, known as The Wall as he occupied the crease for days, made a whistlestop appearance.

Many people sigh and gasp as they come up the stairs. Some because they are unfit but most because they enter a bygone world that is marvellously present. The Iliad stands next to Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom, leaning on the Kama Sutra, hugging Gandhi's exhortation on celibacy. It is the launches though that attract the crowds. The setting is spectacular, as the sun drops and the spirits lift as a writer takes the stage. As spring edges winter, the balcony is covered in ochre, and from the Glenwood Bakery, the last whiff of coffee filters.

The man who started the bookshop, Ike Mayet, is dead. But despite the odds, Ike's lives. Social media pundits confess that tik-tok has made them realise it is time to read a book.

This Christmas, give someone a book. Perhaps one of those classics that make sense of these new times.