A single woman’s open letter to Dymocks, George Street

Dearest Dymocks,

As I’m sure you’re aware from my Booklover’s card, I’m a big fan. I love wandering through your shelves, rearranging them so friends’ books are cover-out not spine-out, looking for nerdy guys clutching copies of EM Forster’s work and then choosing something new to take home with me (typically a book, not a guy…). But you have betrayed me. And I wonder how, after all these years of devotion, you could be so cruel. And not only to me, but to single women all over Australia.

You see Dymocks, I’m hoping one day my name will appear on one of your shelves (cover-out of course). As part of this process, I had to review books that publishers will see as competition (although I know you know, Dymocks, that none of your books are anything like mine…). This meant I had to spend a few hours in part of you that I rarely if ever visit, that I avoid at all costs: the self-help section.

I don’t object to self-help in theory. It’s just that I remember too well the episode of Sex and the City, where Charlotte discovers the lack of humiliation online book-shopping offers. If this self required help, she would turn to Booktopia for privacy and free shipping. But the philosophy of manMap is the same when it comes to men and books: online research just isn’t as good as research done in person.

And so it was that I set aside a few hours on a Saturday to carefully examine the advice your shelves offered on the topic of Being Single and Wanting to not Be Single. With great trepidation I noticed that your shelves were arranged so almost everyone alighting your escalator would see me in the self-help section, notebook in hand as I scrutinised your current listings. Would it not be kinder to arrange your shelves at an angle, so men on the way to the history section wouldn’t spy the woman nervously leafing through Textbook Romance and Finding Your Soulmate?  

This was not the extent of your treachery. Coming to the end of your self-help shelves I discovered, with an intense feeling of betrayal, that you had positioned the Wedding Book section next to the Single Women’s section. Why would you do this? Why would you rub salt into the wounded heart that loves you?

And so Dymocks, I would like to suggest a change. You are in a position to help singletons all over the country for very little effort or cost. Please move your ghastly wedding books far far far away from the books for single women and replace them with the Sports section, which is always brimming with men. This simple act could make you the Choreographer of Love, something which will surely give you Great Joy and Satisfaction. If you cannot oblige for reasons this Single Woman can’t imagine, then at least consider switching Wedding Books for Cook Books. That way the forlorn singleton can be consoled with fantasies of Manu or Curtis Stone stirring a pot on her hot-plate. Or at the very least, 101 Ways to Cook with Chocolate might help her deal with The Science of Single.

Yours ever hopeful,
Lucie Stevens.