Local Focus: New owner for popular book store

"Beware of looking for goals, look for a way of life, decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN the way of life."

That quote by Hunter S. Thompson are words to live by for the new owner of Patrick's Bookshop in Whanganui. Daniel West has had a lifelong love of books, and now it has become his job.

"I remember when I was living here 20 years ago," he said. "On my lunch breaks I used to go up to Guyton St, there was a secondhand bookshop there and that's what I would do on my lunch breaks."

Returning to his hometown and dividing his time between kids, a large lifestyle block and the bookshop is a far cry from West's previous two decades working in television. But with decent internet and remote work now the norm, it means he can enjoy the best of both worlds.

"The job I left at the ABC has come a-knocking to ask me to work remotely from here, for them over there. I thought I had walked away from all of that, and I thought 'no that's fine'.

"Then I had a serendipitous conversation with Patrick about buying this place, so that marries in really well.

"I can set myself up in an office here and I work different hours over there and so have the best of both worlds, so I'm getting to live the dream really."

Patrick McKenna says he will miss the daily conversations in the shop but will continue to pursue his passion of looking for rare books. He says New Zealand is a surprisingly good hunting ground for collectable books.

"When these publishers in America launched these books, they often sent them to the colonies to try them out," McKenna said.

The bookshop's vast collection of books has been built over more than five decades.

"I started out in books in '69 or '70, I ended up working for Oxford University Press in Wellington. I was hired as the book rep for the schools because Oxford were the educational publishers. So I toured all of the South Island and half the North Island three times a year, so I lived in my car just about.

"I did book displays at schools and showed them new publications and concentrated on selling Oxford's finer publications, which are bloody good stuff."

The bookshop will stay in the same premises but there will be a name change to Book Hunters.

As well as book hunting, McKenna will moonlight as an auctioneer at Heritage Art. A framed, unpublished James K. Baxter poem is one of many items on offer at the first auction - September 11, 2pm at Heritage House in Whanganui.

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