Millie Blackwell, owner of Mrs Blackwell's Village Bookshop

2:29 PM, 13 December 2023

This week we have Millie Blackwell, owner of Mrs Blackwell's Village Bookshop:

We opened the doors to Mrs Blackwell's Village Bookshop in December 2020 in a building that was once the Greytown Library. The shop interior was built in Christchurch and shipped to Greytown in pieces - it arrived looking like a giant game of tetris and was assembled on site into what you see now. We're the first dedicated bookshop in Greytown in over 30 years, although the Wairarapa is very well served for bookshops with 13 in total. Annually we all join together to put on the Wairarapa Bookshop Hop in celebration of New Zealand Bookshop Day.

This year I had a crack at getting through all the shortlisted titles for the Booker Prize. The book that really captured my heart is The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. At 400+ pages it's not for everyone, but it's the perfect suggestion for customers who like character-driven literary fiction with a nail-biting ending. On the nonfiction side of the shop - which makes up the majority of our shop - The Wager by Paul Grann has been a recent favourite of both myself and Mr Matthews (our Store Manager).

One of the wonderful things about Greytown is that people move here for the lifestyle, and bring with them a wealth of work experience from other parts of the country and the world. So I've been lucky to score team mates with deep knowledge of retail – I've learned a lot from them and the shop is brighter and lovelier for their presence. Our most recent addition to the team is Mrs Floss who is a committed homesteader, and she's been contributing to our Instagram with a weekly Test Kitchen, where she trials a recipe from our extensive range of cookbooks.

—Millie Blackwell, owner of Mrs Blackwell's Village Bookshop