Book Review: The Book Collector: Reading and Living With Literature by Tony Eyre

This beautifully produced book is adorned with a cover image featuring several New Zealand novels, complete with chipped and battered dustcovers, that make up part of Tony Eyre's enormous personal collection gathered ardently over many decades from new and secondhand booksellers and charity book sales here in Dunedin, throughout New Zealand, and also supplemented by "souvenir purchases" from his travels overseas. 

The cover also features Dunedin's UNESCO City of Literature logo which is particularly fitting, for Eyre's bibliomemoir not only covers his acquisition of books from the usual places familiar to booklovers in this city, but also novels and poetry produced by writers who have called Dunedin home. Dunedin and people who live here play a role in Eyre's development as a reader and book collector.

Auckland born Eyre explores why the work of New Zealand writers, past and present, particularly their novels and poetry, have given him the greatest pleasure. Eyre says they present "a recognisable New Zealand that I grew up in, and reflect who I am today." 

In the case of Invercargill born author Dan Davin, who Eyre claims has had the biggest influence on him as a book collector, he says it could be a lot to do with their shared Irish Catholic working-class roots. However, Eyre acknowledges that his affection for Davin's writing is based on him being introduced to Davin's short stories at secondary school.

Eyre, like a lot of booklovers, is driven to read and collect anything he can find published by, but also about, his favourite authors, including biographies and even literary criticism. He is motivated to be more informed about each writer's output, which then leads him back to rereading their work already on his shelves. Eyre also revels in how one writer will lead you to another writer's work - fascinated by how they influence each other and their real life interconnections. His serendipitous secondhand book acquisition is similarly fuelled by his curiosity to find these connections.

Reading The Book Collector: Reading and Living With Literature will give you a great introduction to, and an increased appreciation of, a range of often overlooked New Zealand writers' work and although sadly lacking an index, it serves as an informal guide to the best of Aotearoa's secondhand bookshops. It is also an affectionate tribute to the pleasure and power of books and reading.