Village bookshop worth the wait

The latest enterprise to join Greytown’s busy Main Street retail scene goes to prove that good things just take time. By Walt Dickson.

Mrs Blackwell’s Village Bookshop ends a 30-year hiatus for Greytown book-lovers. It’s a fact that seems remarkable given how well the region is served with independent bookshops, not to mention neighbouring Featherston is a bonafide Booktown with seven bookstores and counting.

For shop owner Millie Blackwell, owning a bookshop has been on her to-do list all of her adult life.

“When Covid put other plans on hold, I thought well, there is no time like the present,” she says. 

Then, serendipitously “a great space” became available, next-door to the town library. “It has a lovely fire-place, if ever there was a space that was meant to be a bookshop, it’s here.”
There is an irony that Millie, who is also a Director of Blackwell & Sons with husband Adam, should open a bookshop there. The Borough Council Building opposite - now home to Blackwell & Sons bike shop - once housed a Ladies Reading Room in the top floor.

Back then, when libraries opened up to women, it was seen as inappropriate for them to be frequenting quiet spaces with members of the opposite sex so a women’s reading room was provided.

All readers are welcome at Mrs Blackwell’s. Instead of being faced with rows of spines on shelves, books are presented full-frontal.

“The brief to the architectural designers was to give books the same space and respect that we give to fashion and luxury items.”

 “Publishers put so much time and energy into the cover, yet most books in a bookshop just sit with the spine facing…if you are not specifically looking for something you can get overwhelmed by that quite quickly.”

Mrs Blackwell’s will stock more non-fiction than fiction with a definite focus on the thoughtful reader, people who are curious, and perhaps want to learn new things.

A third of the shop is dedicated to stationery and wooden pencils, in fact, wooden pencils are the only writing implement for sale – Millie says she’s a huge fan

Her adoration harks back to early years at school. A left-hander, the transition from pencil to pen was a smudging disaster resulting in her classroom teacher insisting that she stuck to the pencil.

“I remember it being so embarrassing for me. But I also came to the realisation that there is nothing wrong with a pencil.”

She is in good company; Walt Disney was considered one of the gods of the pencil, while US literary giant John Steinbeck was also crazy about them.

“He would famously start the day sharpening a box of 24 pencils, then as each one became blunt he would put it into another box, moving through until his box was empty. I do the same, but with about a dozen pencils.

Time will tell if the preference for pencils is shared by customers, but what is already clear is that there is demand for the shop. Millie displayed about 50 titles in Blackwell & Sons earlier this year… books have subsequently become a massive category in the shop. And just like the bike shop, customers of Mrs Blackwell’s can expect a memorable shopping experience.

“We are going to be true to what a village bookshop is; we will be sending mail to customers delivering flyers on-foot, developing book groups . . . really leaning into what we want the shop to be.”