Gould’s Book Arcade

After a day at Newtown for the Annual Festival and a stroll around town looking shops and enjoying a coffee at Campos, we were heading back to Newtown train station when we came across this Gould’s Book Arcade which is like walking into one Hermione Granger’s magical bags that could fit the planet’s population of elephants and hippos with room for more.
Step in this store and you see books books books books books books books and more books galore. Such a large range for books and comics. If you’re looking for books on the politics of the Left, this place is the for you. Just Trotski on over to that long line of relevant books and eat your heart out.
If you like comics, they have them too. That includes manga.
Go nuts.

Gould’s… It’s a bit like stumbling upon a pile of free books in the street left by lazy mover-​outers. Anything good is gone and all you find is 1980’s romance novels, cook books from past fad diets, Windows 95 for dummies and an encyclopaedia of Irish wolfhounds.
Except you’re paying…
Every time I’ve been to Gould’s, they haven’t had what I’ve been looking for. Well, almost. One time I got lucky.
I love the idea of an archive or a time capsule, which is what makes Gould’s interesting. Go and check the place out, it is a sight to see the mounds of books in there. As a book store though, it’s average.

You could easily get lost in this second hand book store. It was a little too hipster for my taste but still a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Gould’s.
It’s a Newtown icon. It’s been around for so long that really, it is a multi-​dimensional bookshop. The outside doesn’t do it any justice at all! Just think of the Tardis. This is the tardis bookshop.
I’ve lost hours and hours in there. I go in to find a particular book and I walk out with a whole heap of other books that are totally unrelated.
The books are in a jumbled yet grouped order. I think it best works with chaotic brains as I had no issue locating the right section. Just you know. I’m vertically challenged. Those huge shelves that go all the way up and the stacks and stacks of books made me feel like book gnome from a discworld.
If you have one of those brains that likes order, you might need a valium before going in. And possibly a gas mask if you don’t like dusty old books.
However it’s well worth going in anyway! Because really, there are soooooooo many books in here. Books, records, comics, books, videos, books, text books… books!

Gould’s Book Arcade is a mainstay of King St. Has there ever been a time when this imperious, dusty, crusty old gent has not propped up Newtown’s poor, her tired, her huddled masses??? Not since the 80’s and quite possibly long before that. If you are after anything I mean ANYTHING that has gone out of print, is hard to find, or just so random that you have no idea where to start looking for it, head straight to Gould’s. Do not pass go. Granted, you will have no idea where to start looking for it once you’re inside either but I can guarantee you it’s there… somewhere…
Here you will find the best collection of Australian political and history books on the planet, as well as old vinyls, a priceless magazine collection, and videos. Yes, videos! I struggled not to put «old» in front of each of those items. Gould’s bookstore is old, yes, and extremely beloved.

Gould’s may look unassuming from the outside, but as soon as you turn and look into the room you will be stunned at just how gigantic this place is. And it must be, for the sheer volumes and volumes of books that it holds. Expect random titles in as many places as you can reach — piled in crates, poking into your back, up the stairs (there is another whole section there), behind the counter and on rows and rows and rows of shelves. In saying this, it really is a place you can spend hours lost in. There’s nowhere to sit and read, no café or toilet facilities in store, but you can always choose a lovely book stack to plonk yourself down on to read at will.
It is purely a labyrinth of old, used books of every genre, colour, publisher and quality. That’s another thing, some of these books are so old the pages have somehow glued themselves shut, some are dusty, dirty, ripped, written on, and illegible. If you’re looking for a particular book — do not come here. I mean you could always shut your eyes and pick a book at random… and do this a million times over. Believe me, you still won’t find it.

Immense second hand bookstore, but be mindful not too breathe in too much dust whilst you are there. It is quite an experience walking through the ailses with shelves of books towering above you. There are several levels and there is an attempt at some order and organisation. I did notice a few bargains, for example a copy of Shakespeares Macbeth for only $ 2.95, there were quite a good range of plays and a few biographies too. My favourite type of reading. The staff are tucked safely behind the counter and are sympathetic to your needs. I’d aways wanted to go into this shop and next time I want to spend $ 10 on a few plays I will come here first.

I am a guy who likes organisation. A through Z, 1 through infinity, big to small, light colours to dark colours. I am sure it has infuriated plenty of people through the years. To this effect, Gould’s Book Arcade is a little like my kryptonite. Sure, there are all kinds of books, which I love. Sure, all kinds of old timey comics. However. .. it is impossible to find anything. And on one level, I accept this Zen philosophy. Why not walk in and see what you find. But it never works. Because you will find one thing and then thing of that thing you saw that time and you’ll try and find this other book which you never had the chance to read and the cycle will repeat itself a few times and you’ll leave with a vague sense of «what have I done with my time, why haven’t I read any of these books, I gotta stop watching reruns of Cops all the time, and why exactly did I do an Arts degree???»
But it isn’t Gould’s fault that we’re (read: me, trying to include everyone else) crazy like that. After all, they just amassed a stupendous trove of treasures for us to dig through. So, search away, searchers. Just carry a dust mask.

Gould’s Bookshop in Newtown is a pretty amazing shop, it is possibly the biggest bookshop in the world, I have never been to another one that even comes close. It is an amazing atmosphere to wander in a space just filled with so much, someone could die in there and it might be weeks before the body was found.
Being second hand bookshop the quality is variable, there are some bargains, I found a very rare Peter Greenaway book which really was a lucky find, so if you have the time and patience it is worth checking out particularly if you are a collector.
The problem is as there is so much there and it is not well organised, it is difficult to locate what you may me looking for and navigate within the selections, I actually find it head ache inducing, I cannot go there often as it is just too overwhelming, they may have just the book I am looking for, but finding it is another story.

If you have an afternoon off and want to get lost in a what is possibly the bookshop equivalent of Narnia, then you best head to Gould’s books on King Street at the Sydney University side.
This is not a place to go to if you are after a specific book as there is very little rhyme or reason as to where the books are placed. This is the sort of shop you go to when you just want something to read and are prepared to spend the day looking.
The books are stacked vertically, horizontally diagonally and it wouldn’t surprise me if the owners, to make space, even stacked some of their books into the fourth dimension.
I love this book shop, you will almost always find a book to read, there are so many books and the hunt is half the fun. Countless books on photography, art, film, science fiction; magazines both new and old; vinyl; computer books upstairs; comic books down stairs; pornographic materials and literature both noteworthy and of petrol station quality.
I would advice to drop bread crumbs to make sure you don’t get lost, but that would be bad advice as you’ll need that bread to eat if you’re going to be looking long into the night, the store is open till late.

Flashbacks. I used to live right around the corner in my grungy, underfed undergrad days and spent innumberable hours lost in the bewildering stacks of books here. It was bittersweet to walk in the other day and not see Bob Gould at the counter like a bespectacled, scruffy spider in his dusty web. He died earlier this year, and some of you youngsters may not realise what a cultural icon he was, and how bookselling was a politically fraught activity in decades past. He was arrested for it. Google him and see.
He had a habit of trying to guess who you were from the purchases you made, and if I’d been better financed in those days I would have bought something on International Shipping Law, French Feminism and an Edwardian children’s book just to give him a challenge. And you’d find all of the above here if you’ve the time to look.
Believe it or not, the place is much better organised and cleaner than it used to be, I once spent a good two hours cleaning up a section upstairs in order to get to a book on the top shelf that I really needed. While I could have used a long bath (or a hazmat suit) after that, it’s those kinds of memories that make this place so special. Right at the back, there’s a small hole in the window-​grating signposted ‘Cat highway — no books here please.’

Gould’s Book Arcade, or ‘that huge second-​hand book store in Newtown’ as it’s known in my circles, is a labyrinth of second hand novels, magazines, records, scripts and, I like to imagine, hidden passages to other realms.
Stepping inside the store’s gaping entrance for the first time will steal your breath. I remember being taken to Gould’s as a teenager, my mouth dropping at the plethora of books that appeared to be falling and popping out of the shelves and collecting in piles higher than my head as if I’d stepped into the magical library at Hogwarts.
Once inside it was as if the entrance closed behind me, ruining any chance of ever finding my way out. The smell of musty books filling my nostrils, I hiked the staircase (also laden with books) to the area labelled ‘Plays’ that vaguely indicated two or three aisles. I climbed ladders, sat on piles of books, tried to figure out the filing system (there isn’t one, it seems) and ended up making my way to the exit hours later, my arms full of books, and still having only made my way through one very small section of the store.
If you’re heading to Gould’s make sure not to give yourself a time limit. Down any aisle you could lose yourself in a stack of books only to emerge hours later dazed, confused and with a greater knowledge of Australian flora and fauna. If you’re a man/​woman of order, then perhaps Gould’s isn’t for you. That is, unless you wish to personally take the time out to alphabetise the store — a task that I’m sure could never be completed. But, if you enjoy getting lost in a book, then I’m certain you’ll enjoy getting lost in Gould’s. Who knows, you might even find what you’re looking for.

Far too many modern bookstores, with their unopenable shrink-​wrapped plastic covers and their glaring assistants, don’t seem to appreciate that the bibliophile wants to pick up a book; feel its weight, touch its pages and skim its content. In Gould’s Book Arcade, the opposite is true. On first walking into this — emporium is the only word for it — of books, it’s hard not to gasp. This is not what
looks like underneath its website; it’s what real bookshops that have nearly one million books within the physical confines of their premises look like. Gould’s claim to specialise in rare and secondhand books; however, their shop suggests much more the collector than the merchant. On every available surface, books are piled high; arranged according to topic but with no discernible order beneath that, the multi-​level shop gives the impression of a pool of books to be dived into and swum around in. However, I wouldn’t stop by for a browse if you have anything to do later that day — it’s incredibly difficult, once you start looking, to extricate yourself from the seductive shelves. All things Australian are prized here, although I couldn’t find a topic that wasn’t amply covered by overflowing bookcases — but it’s the collection of historical left-​wing and labour movement ranges that have won Gould’s international acclaim. It’s fantastic that places like this still exist, and vital that they are maintained in the face of increasing digitisation; if you’re in Sydney and have (many) hours to kill, stop by and support them.