The Boookselllers

I went to the movies! (How dare I! Actually, it is fine for New Zealand, and indeed the Welling Film Society is back up and running. Although that is at the Embassy and this movie was at the Lighthouse Cuba, and I was a bit more worried about space, but I was able to get a good enough seat that was away from other people.)

Anyways, this movie is about, as it says on the tin, booksellers, in particular the booksellers around New York. We talk with various people who are booksellers, mainly of rarer items, about how they got into it and the issues they are now facing. Which is a few. Some see the internet as a good thing... many don't. A lot of them will be "aging" out soon and think the age of the bookseller is coming to an end, but there are some younger ones who are quite excited (and by younger, they look to be around my age). In all, they all have large collections crammed in small spaces and they basically view a book as an object and not something to actually sit down and read.

This is mainly talking heads about their lives. I would have liked to have seen some more about how they deal with books and such, but that wasn't this movie. Most of the heads are elderly, so you definitely get a large dose of their world view, especially with the more pessimistic edge of things coming to an end. (I can't say I've been buying tons of physical books myself.) While there are the younger ones, the film doesn't spend much time with them nor their ideas, beyond saying "hey, we're not out yet."

While being a bookseller has an interest for me (and my bookishness), ultimately I don't think that lifestyle is for me.

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