Goulds is easy to navigate if you're looking for literary fiction. I was dismayed to find on the weekend that they didn't have a copy of Doctor Faustus though. What are the fucken odds!

Go to Katoomba with a couple of hundred bucks. Well worth it.

Other than that, the one in the alley next to T2 is pretty good.

T's Bookshop in Randwick is pretty good. There's good coffee there too.

On Oxford St (closer towards Darlinghurst) there are also some good ones: Ampersand and Berkelouw (top level) has some good stuff.

Totally.

Although Ampersand always thinks it's so cool.

Ampersands always do.

Fags.

Yes, Katoomba is a winner. The Mountains is better for 2nd-hand books than Sydney these days.

Also Berkeleow in Oxford Street with Gertrude & Alice across the road is probably worth a trip. There's also a Berkeleow in Leichardt that's alright - and Gleebooks 2nd hand and Sappho books in Glebe another good little enclave.

I was reading about some bookshops in Ashfield and Croydon this morning, might make a trip out there soon.

Oh, am I thinking that Ampersand is called Gertrude & Alice? Maybe Gertrude and Alice is the one in Bondi then. Which is also alright, tending a bit towards overpriced and full of fuckwit cafe people.

I'm not a fan of the bookshop/cafe confluence, having shitted off latte drinkers glaring at you because you're actually looking at the books.

It's more Canberra than Sydney, but if you're up for a roadtrip, there's a bookstore in Bungendore that's worth the visit. We dropped a couple of hundred there last time we visited. HUGE selection.

And very few, it seemed, with pen or pencil annotations, which is important.

The Berkeleow Book Barn in Berrima, Fez? The most alliterative second-hand bookshop in the southern hemisphere, probably.

Yeah, Katoomba's second hand bookshops were awesome. Though I realised that, the second time I went there, I bought not one but two books that I already had. In fact, two books that I had bought the last time I was in Katoomba.

Elizabeth's in Newtown is pretty good.

and Books on King also has its moments

i miss the old Cornstalk Bookshop in Newtown though, that was a winner (as was the auxillary Gould's up Petersham way, and ''Peter White, Book Dealer'' under George Street in just the right spot that it looked like you were descending into a porn shop).

Oh, am I thinking that Ampersand is called Gertrude & Alice? Maybe Gertrude and Alice is the one in Bondi then.

The Paddington one used to be called G&A but is Ampersand now. It's still in Bondi but I haven't been to that one.

BADALEX said 28 minutes ago:

Go to Katoomba with a couple of hundred bucks. Well worth it.

great call

also awesome record shops there

there's that velvet fog one in the back alley - are there others i haven't found, mo?

that's the one i mean i think

downstairs round the corner?

i spent a couple of hundred in that joint without blinking

yep, that sounds right

Yeah, Velvet Fog is awesome. They have a good range of music books there. We were very happy to find some late 50s editions of Downbeat there.

Gleebooks.

Sappho's. Great food and coffee at Sappho's.

__v- The old cornstalk was an institution. Especially when it was the original utterly huge version. When it moved up the road it was still fucking awesome and had most things I want in a secondhand bookshop, including five dollar sci-fi.

Mo- Brian's Books. It's the best. That guy is also fairly amazing. Used to lecture the Gospel of David in Aramaic at Sydney University or some such. Speaks, Farsi, Urdu, Aramaic, Hebrew and all sorts of languages.

There's usually a couple of decent bookstalls at Surry Hills markets.

shhh, don't tell people, i want to get there first!

Shitballs! I'd forgotten! Must go there!

Pleased!

Great first edition hardcover of The Bang-Bang Birds by Adam Diment.

Collected stories of Katherine Mansfield hardback.

The Narrow Place - poetry by Edwin Muir.

The Winter of Enchantment - groovy young adult weirdness by Victoria Walker.

Copy of Flexible Head (Perth zine/streetpress) from 1996 with Severed Heads interview.

Colonel Rutherford's Colt by Lucius Shepard - signed!

The Hospital Ship - SF (?) by Ambit founder Martin Bax.

Book of criticism about Iain Sinclair.

Some other stuff that I can't remember.

All for about $40. Passed up on some books about British New Town planning, because I probably don't actually need any more pictures of modernist municipal architecture.

we came, we saw, we boughted.

Might head back tomorrow when we don't need to carry our finds to the powerhouse and back.

if yer going before monday, check out the pre 1900's books at the slow auction, there's a amazing one with a cloth prith lithograph of 1600's london that's awesome (and about $1k)

Oh fuck. Forgot about this completely!

on til weds.

Picked up a bunch of noice books, cheap. Some Rushdie, some witch-hunting, a couple of Picadors... good haul, I thought.

there's another book fair this weekend at observatory hill, run by the national trust.

have you checked it out, redlips? i'm not sure i can make it over there but if someone told me it was unmissably awesome i'd probably find a way.

some details here

We're planning on getting brunch and then heading over, don't think it'll be as good as the uni one, but the chance of some of the trust's stock cheap is what's the driver. May still head back to the uni afterwards for a second run (want to recheck the aus lit section) see how it goes.

lifeline sydney bookfair at randwick today, tomorrow and sunday

some pretty reasonable wares today, might swing back later when it is no longer battle of the odour people

bump

tomorrow! UNSW book fair at the roundhouse - ends sat

also 2mbs book and record bazaar in leichhardt this friday - ends following thursday

Copy of Flexible Head (Perth zine/streetpress) from 1996 with Severed Heads interview.

Gulp...I did the first couple of issues of that (when it was an A3 photocopied zine, rather than the glossy commercial streetpress wannabe it later became).

sydney uni bookfair is on this weekend

dangerous.

yes, especially for dudes on the very cusp of moving interstate!

i will probably get along at some point but this will be the first year in a while that i haven't been present for the nerd stampede at 10am.

weighs luggage again

possible.

The Lifeline Book Fair is on in Bathurst on Oct 30th & 31st if anyone fancies a day trip from Sydney. It's going to be at the PCYC: http://www.pcycnsw.org.au/bathurst

I'm currently sorting books for the fair. Heavy, sweaty, dirty job! I wanted to pinch a box of old Peanuts books this afternoon.

unsw bookfair starts today, 10am in the scientia building - i am undecided whether to queue up with bob gould and the smelly earlybirds or make a dignified lunchtime appearance