The Bookshop Podcast
The Bookshop Podcast
Vinny Browne and the Magic of Charlie Byrne's Bookshop
In this episode, I’m chatting with Vinny Browne from Charlie Byrne's Bookshop in the heart of Galway City, Ireland. At Charlie Byrne’s, you can explore their labyrinthine maze of over 100,000 books: new, second-hand, bargain, and antiquarian.
Vinny takes us behind the scenes of this beloved institution, revealing how its organic growth mirrors the evolution of Irish literary culture itself. "Books have a continuous life," he explains, describing the shop's mission to connect forgotten volumes with new readers who might not yet know they're searching for these exact stories.
What makes Charlie Byrne’s special transcends mere commerce; it's about creating community in an increasingly isolated world. Our conversation expands beyond Charlie Byrne’s to explore Ireland's extraordinary literary ecosystem, particularly how literary journals provide emerging writers their first publishing opportunities. This infrastructure has helped sustain Ireland's remarkable literary tradition throughout decades of cultural and economic change.
Discover why independent bookshops matter now more than ever as spaces of serendipitous discovery that algorithms can never replicate. If you're passionate about books, literary culture, or simply the power of community spaces to enrich our lives, this episode offers a heartwarming glimpse into a world where stories and people find each other in ways both unexpected and profound.
Ready to experience the magic of Charlie Byrne's? Follow The Bookshop Podcast for more conversations celebrating independent bookshops around the world.
The Blue Road – Edna O’Brien Story
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a bibliophile. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. Each week, I present interviews with authors, independent bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe and publishing professionals. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to episode 290.
Speaker 1:Before I get into the interview, I'd like to give a shout out to one of my favorite bookshops, chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara. Thank you, greg and Jen and all the staff there. They supply my books for the Lunch with an Author literary series, and this week we have Maggie Shipstead talking about her fabulous book Great Circle. And then we have Martha Hall Kelly on June 12th talking about her new book the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club. And on July 10th I'm bringing Tova Mervis chatting about her new book we Would Never.
Speaker 1:September 11th, we have Anne Hood talking about the Stolen Child. October 9th, elizabeth Brink and World's Greatest Detective. And on November 13th, ivy Pocota and her book these Women. I hope to see you there. For more information and to purchase your tickets, please go to my website, wwwmandyjacksonbeverlycom. Forward slash events. Okay, here's this week's interview. In this episode I'm chatting with Vinnie Brown from Charlie Burns Bookshop in the heart of Galway City, ireland. At Charlie Burns, you can explore the labyrinthine maze of over 100,000 books, new secondhand, bargain and antiquarian. Hi, vinnie, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Mandy. It's a pleasure for us to be involved in a show like this that has such an international and broad reach across the book selling and book reading community.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, vinnie. That means a lot to hear you say that. I appreciate it. Now let's start with the birth of Charlie Burns Bookshop. What drew you to the store and who inspired you to read?
Speaker 2:OK, well, the shop as it is now. Charlie Burns was set up in 1989. So last year it was 35 years in business, which was a significant milestone. I suppose it began very organically. Every successful business, I suppose, has its own mythologized origin story, but in this case it's actually so that Charlie set up the bookshop from a market stall books that he was given by friends. There was a time when it was only a box of books. That was the stock of the shop and then it just kind of grew gradually over maybe a summer of books that was the stock of the shop and then it just kind of grew gradually over maybe a summer of 1989.
Speaker 2:And then in the winter of that year, in November, charlie moved to a very small premises on Dominick Street which is just beside the river here in Galway, and it began from there really as a bricks and mortar store. And that shop was very small but it was really well curated. I mean, you can have a very small shop but you can have lots of interesting books in it even if your stock is very small. And I went into that shop I was a student in Go Away at the time and I went into that shop and I can recognize straight away that this was actually something. There was something interesting going on with this shop. It had you know as much as you could do in a small place, in a small space. It had you know different sections Irish history, Irish archaeology and Irish fiction and poetry. All of that was all secondhand and you could see straight away that there was a kind of care for the stock that was in it and it was very well priced. So see straight away that there was a kind of care for the stock that was in it and it was very well priced.
Speaker 2:So I started to go there as a customer and I got to know Charlie and and one day I asked him for a job and he said well, actually I do need somebody at the moment. The shop was so small that back in the day you couldn't have two members of staff in the shop because there wouldn't have been any room for customers. It was very small and in fact for the first two years where we were in that space we didn't have a till. We had a little cardboard box with cash in it and there was only cash in those days. Nobody had credit cards. So it was kind of an interesting thing you know when you watch people coming in now paying with phones and watches and all sorts of little things, cash is kind of on the slide a little bit. But yeah, that was its beginning and from then the shop moved across the river into Middle Street, which is kind of more the commercial end of the city.
Speaker 1:Is that like a high street or a main street?
Speaker 2:It was off. There's a main thoroughfare that runs down the middle of Galway called, imaginatively, shop Street and it is off that. So it's a little tributary off that street and it was a very nice street to be in and we had an upstairs, downstairs kind of premises and we were there for a couple of years. And then there was another bookshop across the road, um called the shield and the gig bookshop, and we moved into that space in 1995 and we've been here ever since and the shop um has kind of grown organically over those years. Uh, there was a shopping center area in in the space that we're in now which is called the Corn Store, and some premises came up and we just kind of added onto the shop as they come up. So it was a very organic kind of growth really, you know, which was good in a sense, because you know when you start a business small, then you make smaller mistakes initially. By the time you can make bigger mistakes you won't make them. That's kind of the idea, I guess.
Speaker 1:And do you have two stores or just the one?
Speaker 2:Just the one, just the one. We have a warehouse out in Ornmore which is kind of a depot for collecting books. The shop is a kind of a hybrid model. We sell new books, we, the shop is a kind of all the time and new stuff is always coming in and you'll never know what you'll find and you'll never know what you'll be interested in until you see it. And that kind of an experience, mandy, is impossible to replicate digitally or algorithmically. You just can't. You can't do it, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with you and Vinnie, who inspired you to read.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess my family really I mean everybody in the house my father was a big reader and my sister read a lot as well and there was always books around the house. So it was kind of apparent to me early on that books are a great escape route from the pressure cooker of living in a family. You could just disappear with the book and by the time you come back everything has kind of been sorted and fixed and calmed down and, whatever it is, life is always better with books. Also, we had a great library.
Speaker 2:I grew up down in County Clare in a place called Dennis Diamond and there was a library there run by this fantastic lady called Tessie Hill. Anybody who is a certain age from that part of County Clare would remember her. She was just a brilliant old lady who encouraged everybody to read as much as they like, and if she found somebody like myself who was kind of interesting, then she encouraged it. And then we had teachers and people like that. So it was a kind of continual thing and after a while you just knew that this was a fantastic way to spend your time. You just knew that this was a fantastic way to spend your time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say. Most of the authors whom I have interviewed have said that it was either their parents or family or grandparents who encouraged them to read.
Speaker 2:But there's a heck of a lot of them that have said it was their librarian and those places are so important as well. I mean, I think historically everybody understood how important libraries were, but sometimes you think that maybe the concept has been devalued as books got cheaper and more available. I suppose that maybe the library was not as important as it used to be, not true? I mean? It is actually more important now than ever, I think, because it's a place for people to gather, to do that very important thing of deciding what you're going to read next. You know so, and then having a bookshop culture is as important as that as well. So the two things run very hand in hand. They're kind of in tandem. And in many cases, for mothers and fathers as well.
Speaker 1:So the two things run very hand in hand, they're kind of in tandem and in many cases, for mothers and fathers who are looking after children, the libraries are a meeting place. It's where they can meet up with other moms or other dads and feel supported. Vinnie, I would love to hear about your work as a radio presenter. What's the show called the Arts Show radio?
Speaker 2:presenter. And what's this show called the Arts Show? Yes, now, I did that show for about 10 years, mandy, and it was a fantastic thing to do. I don't do it at the moment because the book selling world is very busy and the art show took up like one day a week to kind of prepare it. I mean, you, you kind of know how long these things uh, take to do. You know it, they kind of filter, they expand to fill the space and the time that you have.
Speaker 2:So, um, I don't do it from week to week now, I still do an occasional guest slot, but, um, it was a great experience to do that for 10 years in terms of the people that you got to talk to. You know, a lot of people would come to town, like musicians and writers and actors, theater people, poets. Yeah, it was a wonderful, wonderful thing and it was a great kind of adjunct to the day job as well, because you would meet people and you'd hear about what people are going to go and see and then you'd go and see it, and then you'd talk about it afterwards and then you'd talk about it on the radio, which is the importance of all of those things like live theatre activities, live films groups of people gathered in a room to see something is still so important, you know.
Speaker 1:While I was listening to you speak, I was thinking about a documentary my husband and I recently watched. It was streaming on Netflix and it's called Join or Die. The premise of the research is that when we join a club or group, it lifts us up and nurtures community, thereby nurturing the cultural aspects of the wider collective. The documentary explores the idea that when countries are at their strongest and their kindest is when people are involved with community, with clubs, and that when people allow their memberships to drop, or they just let go of the clubs that they were a part of, measures for happiness and joy in that country dropped. It is a wonderful documentary to watch and it made me think about book clubs and the importance they play in communities all over the world.
Speaker 1:I'm lucky because I have this connection with like-minded people all over the world through books, through the podcast, which is great, but I missed that in-person connection. So I started the Lunch with an Author series, which is great, but I missed that in-person connection. So I started the Lunch with an Author series which is now in Santa Barbara, in California and Los Angeles, and for a while we weren't together. For three months we were trying to find a new venue and the first time we got together last month, again, it was like one big family just coming together and giving each other hugs and talking about which books we'd read, and I think it makes a difference. You can feel it and I'm sure you feel this great experience through all the events you have in your bookshop.
Speaker 2:Yes, we do. Oh well, I mean, I remember a customer saying to us many, many years ago that what you need to be is a mixture of a very good pub and an art center. That's what your book shop should be, you know, and have books everywhere. Obviously, of course it's not. It's not a bad, uh, it's not a bad template. It's not a bad vision to aim towards, because, like all of the events that we have, well, nearly all, nearly all of them are local writers and local authors.
Speaker 2:That's the kind of events that we like to have, because then it is a community event and it is a thing where people are together, the enjoyment that people get out of the simplest gatherings around something that they see as worthwhile, which is like a book of whatever it is, a book of poems or a novel or some nonfiction or a memoir or whatever it is, the idea of people gathering together to kind of mark that the event, of most of the events are launches. So it's a beginning of a journey, of something, and it's a kind of a celebratory thing and it makes the community less atomized and, as you say from that program, people are happier when they're less atomized and less individualized and less isolated. We're a community species. You know we need those kind of events to function properly.
Speaker 1:I think yeah, and while we're speaking about this, for anyone who is lonely and I know there are hundreds and thousands of lonely people in the world and I understand you might be a little anxious about going to an event at a library or an independent bookshop, but the more you go, the easier it becomes to speak with other people.
Speaker 1:You start to feel better and slowly you discover that you don't want to miss any of these events because it warms your heart. You know, and I equate it to when you think, oh my God, I got to exercise. But the more you start exercising, you realize that you don't want to miss a day of exercise because it works so well for your brain and your body and everything. It just helps you feel better. So when you start to feel anxious about perhaps going to an event and being surrounded by people you don't know, perhaps think of it as exercising your loneliness emotion. Okay, now on your website you offer a service I've not seen before and that is to help develop library connections. Can you share more about this and what led you to develop this service?
Speaker 2:There's a couple of things there, mandy. Actually One of them is that we will buy libraries, you know. So it works from both ends that you know if somebody has a large collection of books and they wish to dispose of it, we will. We're interested in coming around to your house and having a look at it and buying it and giving it another life. You know, which is what most people that have books in their life, and that books are an important part of their life, they want to make sure that they don't end up in a skip. You know that that horrendous thing doesn't happen, that they get a continuous life, and that's what our bookshop is A lot of. It is about that idea of moving books on that somebody had loved in the past and somebody else is looking for. Even though they don't know it yet, the book is finding its way to them. So that's part of it.
Speaker 2:But also we do kind of help people to put together libraries if they're looking to do so. We've done that in the past where people have requested and say well, you know, I have an interest in Irish fiction from the 19th century. I'm missing whole swathes of it. Help me to fill it up. And then over a period of time, we can do that. Um, we can also do that for schools, for school libraries. We have some very expert um staff here, um mave mcdonald, who's our children's bookseller. She is an unbelievable resource in that regard and and she can help schools to cover everything that they need. It's a very gratifying thing to do, you know, to build up a library for a couple of people or for a larger group of people as well.
Speaker 1:I think it's a great program that you offer, especially for the schools. I wrote down what you just said about books having a continuous life. I love those words.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, they do, because you know, sometimes things have a certain kind of time or a fashion or whatever and then they disappear and for one reason or another they are rediscovered or they are not.
Speaker 2:But they are rediscovered, maybe individually, by somebody who comes upon something and they say oh yeah, muriel Spark, she was a really big figure in the 1960s and 70s or 1950s when she wrote all of those novels. And then people like Ian Rankin rediscovered her in the 1980s and 90s, talked about her and then she got another lease of life. But it is often done on a much smaller level, where people just pick up something that they find interesting and they go oh yeah, nobody reads these novels anymore. But you know what, they're actually really good, and that begins a discussion among a couple of people and then you know that person's work kind of comes back into focus a little. And all of that is really important because that broadens the palette, because then you're not just talking about what's coming out and you're not at the mercy of the publishing behemoth. That is the current and the next coming thing. So I mean the past is as important as the future in that regard.
Speaker 1:When you're curating the store and you have a used book with one title and the same title in a new book, do you put them together or do you separate them?
Speaker 2:I tend to separate them because it's kind of easier to run the shop that way, because you know, sometimes if you put secondhand and older books beside new books, then it might be difficult to return them if you ever need to do that, you know. So if, if you have a new section at the very front of the shop and then the rest of the shop is second-hand and remaindered as well, I mean that that's kind of an important thing as well. You know the way that books are out in the world for a certain period of time and they may have stopped selling at that full price but you know they're still an important book and if you drop the price then they'll still have another life as well and that continues. And we kind of buy remainder books from all over the world and you know we get them from America and from the UK and from anywhere we can really. So that's an important aspect of it as well.
Speaker 1:And for our listeners, a remaindered book or remainders they're printed books that are no longer selling well and whose remaining unsold copies are liquidated by the publisher at greatly reduced prices, which, of course, then the bookseller can hand on to the customer.
Speaker 2:I would love to hear about some of your local Galway authors would love to hear about some of your local Galway authors as a whole. Okay, well, we're very fortunate that we have some fantastic local writers here. We had a famous man called Walter Macken who wrote historical fiction and, I suppose, contemporary sagas set in the west of Ireland. This would have been back in the 1960s and 70s and he wrote a great collection of Irish historical novels and it's called a historical trilogy and it's a wonderful series of books and it's a great introduction to the history of art. I often give it to people.
Speaker 2:Now they've been out of print for a good number of years. The great news is they're now back in print from this year and the trilogy is now available again for a whole new generation of people and it still works. It's amazing. You know, good fiction, good historical fiction, never gets old and that's a great example of it, and we've been talking about maybe getting them done for so long and now it's happened, so we're delighted. We have a prime novelist called ken brun who's quite famous in america. His main character is is, uh, an ex-guard.
Speaker 2:He's an ex-policeman an irish policeman's called a guard he's kind of a hard child private investigator, I suppose you'd call him. But he's got a heart of gold and he's got a great, uh reading habit. So there's lots of books in the books and he comes into the shop here and he has conversations with me and charlie and noreen and other people who work here in the books.
Speaker 1:So, uh, that's great fun oh, that's fun, and can you tell us the names of some of his books?
Speaker 2:The first one is called the Guards. I think there's about maybe 25 books in total, but there's about 15 of them are the Jack Taylor books and this was the most recent one. It's called Galway, confidential.
Speaker 1:I was just looking at one of my bookshelves and I actually have that book. I can't wait to read it.
Speaker 2:All of them have got Galway in the title, which is a clever piece of branding, but it's great. They're very popular in the US and they're published by the Mysterious Press.
Speaker 1:Yes, I've had Otto Pinzler on the show and they're a great little press and a fun little bookshop too.
Speaker 2:Oh, they're a fantastic publisher and the new one which we haven't got yet, but we'll have it in about a week's time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that one's called Galway's Edge.
Speaker 2:Yes, and we're really looking forward to that one as well. And because we feature and the shop is a character in the books, he keeps saying that he's going to make us do something terrible, but he hasn't done so yet. We're hoping we can stay on the right side of the law. That's Ken Brown, and there was a TV series of them done as well, and I think they used to be on Netflix US. I don't know if that's still the case now.
Speaker 2:I should have checked that before I came on, but we have a huge array of local talent, of short story writers in Galway. We have a great selection of people who are really adept at it, People like Claire Louise Bennett, who is she was a New York Times winning writer. Her last novel was called Checkout 19, but her first collection was it was a collection of stories called Pond was. It was a collection of stories called Pond, but it was actually kind of a novel in stories as well, but incredibly creative and beautifully, a beautifully original style. We have a lady called Mary Costolo who lives in Canvara, which is about a half an hour's drive from the city. Her most recent collection of stories is called Barcelona, and Mary is one of the best of the Irish short story writers at a time when the Irish short story is doing extraordinarily well. So I mean we're blessed really with the amount of local talent that we have, and serious local talent.
Speaker 2:You know, elaine Feeney is another name that we like to brandish. Elaine has a new novel coming out called I Will Go Mad In my Own Way, which is a great title, which is a third novel from Elaine. She's a fantastic talent. Claire Louise Kiefer, a Franco-German writer. She published the first collection of stories which we launched in the shop about a week and a half ago and those are, you know, the announcement of another new and vibrant talent. So there's no end to the freshness and vibrancy of the local writing scene. It's very different from how it was 35 years ago when the shop started, which I suppose is reflected in the Irish kind of writing scene at large. There's a confidence and there's an ability and a kind of owningness of how people feel about where they are in the world and it's it's a great time, a really rich time in Irish writing.
Speaker 1:Well, let's face it, ireland is known for their short stories through centuries of short storytelling. Yeah, I've had Jan Carson and Lucy Caldwell on the show and they've both turned me on to a lot of wonderful Irish writers. Contemporary Irish writers Claire Kilroy, colin Barrett.
Speaker 2:Okay, there we go. All of those great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Irish writing scene is absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of that has to do, mandy, with the magazine culture in Ireland. There's a lot of journals. There's even more now than there was pre-2020. The pandemic unleashed another fresh round of new journals. But I mean there was such a healthy ecosystem of journals where people could get the first couple of publications could happen and they would be emboldened.
Speaker 2:I suppose you know the, the first place that you get published is so important it. It gives you the encouragement to stay at it and then, you know, maybe a year or two down the line you might get the first collection of stories and then that might need to to the novel in in a couple of years subsequent to that. But you know there's. There's journals like the Stinging Fly for instance. So many amazing writers have come out of that stable.
Speaker 2:Mary Costler was one of them that we've mentioned already, and Clare Louise as well, and Kevin Barry and Colin Barrett that you mentioned, danielle McLachlan, a wonderful short story writer. So many people have come out of that journal, but there's so many others as well. But the, the, the, the health of the, the whole Irish writing scene, I think is certainly has a huge amount to do with the encouragement that people feel with, with, with being published. First, you know, and then people feel, okay, well, if I have a story in the Sting and Fly, then I have something. You know, it is an encouragement, but it's a serious encouragement because so many great writers have been down that road already.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely think the magazine culture in Ireland has really helped introduce readers to these new young Irish writers. I've got a question Do you sell the Stinging Fly in the bookshop?
Speaker 2:Oh, we do Absolutely, and we sell lots of them, you know, and there are so many others. There's the Poetry Ireland, which is one of the oldest ones, and that was such a great encouragement for all of the poets over the last 40 years. Again, the first encouragement, the first thing to happen is I have had a poem in Poetry Ireland and everybody goes, oh, all right, okay, well, you're kind of on the road at that point.
Speaker 1:Vinnie, what keeps you in Galway? Tell me about its magic.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a very artistic kind of city and it's a city that is full of water. There's water everywhere. There's a lake behind us, loch Carb, which is one of the biggest lakes in Ireland, and the river that flows out of the lake into the sea, which runs right down through the middle of the city and has loads of tributaries that goes off into canals.
Speaker 2:so it's a city of water and it's a beautifully light place with all of that water around the place. And over the last, you know, 30 years there have been huge artistic companies that have developed here, like Druid Theatre Company. They're a kind of a national theatre in all but name and they have had massive successes all over the world really. But everything they do starts here, so the very first people to see it are the people of Galway and then it goes out into the world. Martin McDonagh, his plays were first kind of. He was kind of discovered by Drew, the theatre company, and then the amazing Irish playwrights like Tom Murphy and many, many others.
Speaker 2:I've given the city, I think, a cultural heft that for a city of its size you know it's less than 100,000 people live here but it has that feeling that there's something happening. There's always a festival around the corner. We have a literary festival, the Courts International Festival, which happens in April every year. That's coming up very shortly and the place will be awash with people of a major literary stripe and that's a great event. And then there are things like the Arts Festival which happens in Galway every July, which is the biggest arts festival in Ireland, and then there's a film festival that happens the week before that, which is like a major event as well. So there's lots going on. Culturally it's a rich place.
Speaker 1:Plus, you have a wonderful university in Galway.
Speaker 2:We do. There's about 25,000, 30,000 students here and that gives a great energy and a sense of usefulness and hope, I think, to the proceedings, and having that many young people is a great addition to any city, particularly a city of this size. And then there's a lot of visitors come here during the summer months and in fact it's kind of a year-round thing now that there's tourists coming here all of the time, not overrun by tourism, but it's a very significant thing. One of the great things about Galway is the conversations you can have on the street. You can meet anybody and you can stand there and talk.
Speaker 2:I know this probably happens anywhere in Ireland, but I think particularly in Galway, you'll end up having discussions with people that are astoundingly interested and involved.
Speaker 1:So you won't go short for a friend in Galway. You will not.
Speaker 2:No, you will not. That's one of the great things and there's a great cultural life to the whole place.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, let's talk about books. What are you currently reading?
Speaker 2:At the moment. I am reading a couple of things. Now there is a new book by somebody who would be very familiar to audiences in America called Colin McCann. He won the National Book Award with Let the Great World Spin some years ago. I happened to be in New York at the time when that was going on. I ended up at the after show party of that and that was on for quite a while. What a gift that was to be there in that very moment.
Speaker 2:This is Colm's new book. It's called Twist. It's about the very peculiar fact that not very many people know is that the internet is very dependent on undersea cables and a lot of them converge on the south coast of Ireland, which is why our security issues have become an item of kind of world importance really, because the Internet is right outside our door. Promoting this book, but it's a most interesting idea that very many people are not at all aware of, because it's the idea that the internet can be as precariously positioned as that. I mean it's almost like a 19th century kind of idea where you lay under C cables. You don't think that that's part of the digital world, but it actually is and you know it can be sabotaged and it can be interfered with and that would have catastrophic results for it really, would you know for how we live our lives. So that's a very interesting book from Colm. That's a very interesting book from Colm.
Speaker 2:This is Róisín Ó Danann's book Nesting.
Speaker 2:This is a great novel from a writer that many people wouldn't have heard of, but it's been shortlisted for quite a number of awards and it's a very contemporary novel and it's a novel about what's happening now really, you know, in Ireland.
Speaker 2:It's a woman fleeing from an abusive relationship, but she's also kind of trapped in. There's a housing crisis in Ireland at the moment. I think there's a housing crisis probably everywhere in the world, but it's particularly acute in Ireland at the moment because we had a bit of a crisis in our construction industry in 2008 and it never really recovered from that, so we haven't been building houses like we should have been and it's been very difficult for people who can't afford to get onto the housing ladder, and that reflects that as well, and it's a very kind of keen look at that, and it's great to great to to see novelists focusing on the now, you know, on what's happening right now, which you know. A lot of them maybe shy away from, because it's a difficult thing to get right. Perhaps you know, you think maybe you might just be going up a cul-de-sac and it won't read that freshly in a couple of years' time, but I think that she's done a great job at that.
Speaker 1:And kudos to the publisher too for taking it on.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, it's a great piece of work and Roisin is, as I say, nominated for a number of awards, so it'll be interesting to see if her bravery gets rewarded, as it should be, I think.
Speaker 1:Oh, that would be wonderful.
Speaker 2:Well, vinnie, it's been great chatting with you. I'm going to be in Ireland in June, but I don't think I'm going to get to Galway. Hopefully at Christmas I'll pop in and say hi and buy some books from you about it. And, um, yeah, the, the, the irish, uh, writing world is as healthy, thanks to god, as it it ever was.
Speaker 2:I, I came from the cinema there um earlier actually, I went off to see a new documentary about the great edna o'brien. The film is called the blue road, so I, I would, uh, I would urge people to keep an eye out for it. It's an amazing piece of work about an amazing Irish personality and an amazing Irish writer. Edna died only last year, so I mean, she has an incredible long and fruitful career. An amazing lady, you know, following on also from people like John McGahern and really massive figures of Irish writing for the last part of the 20th century, and then people like Roddy Doyle and Joseph O'Connor, and then the newer generation of writers like Sally Rooney and Garrett Carr, who has a new book just published, and Colin Walsh. It's endless, thankfully endless. We would need to lead several lives for all of the books that we would like to read.
Speaker 1:Yes, isn't that the truth, Finney? What time is it over there? It must be getting late.
Speaker 2:It's coming up to six o'clock now, so it's time to maybe batten down the hatches and visit one of those hustleries around the corner that are so sustaining to our literary culture as well as to everything else.
Speaker 1:Enjoy yourself, vinnie, and thanks again for being on the show.
Speaker 2:My pleasure.
Speaker 1:Okay, mandy, all the best, Bye-bye. You've been listening to my conversation with Vinnie Brown from Charlie Burns Bookshop in the heart of Galway City, ireland. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson-Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, executive assistant to Mandy, adrienne Otterhahn, and graphic design by Frances Perala. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.