When Jenny Ainge and Sally Battson began a friendship over the back fence, sharing garden produce, cups of sugar and book chat over coffee and wine, little did they imagine that it would result in a business venture. That foundation, however, led Jen to approach Sally when she conceived the idea of an independent bookshop for Wānaka and wanted someone to partner with.
Both women were on a hiatus from their previous occupations (as an independent documentary film producer and a business manager respectively), but not ready for the one “R” word that people expected of them. Retirement, certainly not! Renaissance, Reinvention, and more Reading – yes, please! And so The Next Chapter was born in October, 2020.
We were warmly welcomed by the community, as you might expect in a town that boasts more than 30 book clubs. The best compliment we received was that an independent bookstore was “the only thing Wānaka needed to make it perfect!” Last year an extension doubled the size of the shop and our customers and team love the extra space and the comfortable reading chairs. We also love our location, right in front of Wānaka’s iconic Cinema Paradiso and across the road from the best coffee and French crepes in town.
We couldn’t make it work without our team! We have two permanent part-time staff and one casual. Fortuitously, we all have different reading preferences so we can learn from each other, for the benefit of our customers. Sarah (recent recipient of the Booksellers NZ Scholarship to the Australian Bookpeople Conference in Melbourne) loves Fantasy, YA, Romantasy, and Classics. Her other special gift is an almost photographic memory for the location of books, so she almost always knows where to find elusive titles within the shop. Esther (who leads our non-fiction book club) tells us about the best of creative non-fiction and feminist texts; Caroline is always up with the latest writers from Aotearoa, in addition to being a wide and eclectic reader and a great organiser and interviewer for our author events.
Jenny’s reading tends to be a steady diet of sad stories of 1960’s older women (well, that is the shop joke!) a la Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Taylor, but she also loves contemporary American writers such as Paul Auster and Jonathan Franzen and a sprinkling of literary bios to keep things interesting.
Sally has a passion for the writing of Barbara Kingsolver, John Boyne and Abraham Verghese, and recommends their works widely. She also revels in the biting and deeply satirical penmanship of Percival Everett and admires the way he uses this so powerfully in his fiction, to explore and expose issues of racism and prejudice, which means that James is currently her most recommended title.
We are grateful daily for the joy of working with books and for being part of a wonderful, collegial group of booksellers. It delights us that our best-seller, since opening and for almost every month since publication, is Ruth Shaw’s The Bookseller at the End of the World. Ruth is a constant inspiration to us and we love the support she gives our beloved bookshop. Our latest thrill is to have been included as one of three New Zealand stores in Elizabeth Stamp’s 150 Bookstores You Need to Visit Before You Die.
The alternative to retirement doesn’t allow for much relaxing, but we’re relishing it!
