Announcement: After 40 years in business @chaptersbooks will close its doors early in 2022. To extend our sincere gratitude to customers old and new, we are hosting a huge clearance sale. 2 for 1 on ALL items, excl Bestsellers. Buy 2 items, get cheapest free. In store only.
— Chapters Bookstore Dublin (@chaptersbooks) October 29, 2021
A sincere thank you too all our customers. We have had 40 wonderful years in business thanks to your support. Keep reading and enjoy shopping for some wonderful titles in store. #chaptersbookstore #shoplocal pic.twitter.com/iYAnrtzAHP
— Chapters Bookstore Dublin (@chaptersbooks) October 29, 2021
This morning.
Ivy Exchange, Parnell St, Dublin 1.
Damn you, Bezos.
Meanwhile…
Almost every book on this shelf was bought in @chaptersbooks. Without it, Dublin will be a lot less meaningful to me and to a lot of other people. Grim day pic.twitter.com/URVKvj8LXW
— Kevin Power (@KevPow3) October 29, 2021
Amazon killed the radio star
here comes another soulless Starbucks
my guess is a huge Boots if the one in Jervis isn’t too close :(
Genuinely very sad about this. Their store on Abbey street was a refuge for me when my life and health weren’t going too great. Hodges and Figgis better hold fast.
Very sorry to hear: It was difficult to leave without buying something.
I had assumed their very comprehensive s/h section gave them an edge?
Ah feck.
Very disappointing, staff so helpful and a lovely shop to have a mooch around. Always left with something.
It appears as if book sales are up in general and that demand is high but i suppose it’s the online retailer that’s getting the benefit. I guess the last 18 months haven’t helped either.
The gentrification of Dublin will continue and we’ll be all the worse for it.
I used to shop there a lot, especially when they were on Abbey St, then stopped when the owner refused to let me return a book I bought the previous day because it was second-hand. He was quite snotty about it as I recall.
*Correction: he was Chapters manager, not its owner.
Rents, Rents, Rents. Our ‘economy’ is eating itself. Actual business is unsustainable.
Their rent was quite high but hearing from past employees, it has been doomed for years due to mismanagement and lack of interest in modernising. Shame really, some of the staff there are quite friendly.
Science Museum is going.
Chapters is going.
Dublin is going…
It wasn’t a ‘Science Museum’…..it was a gallery, so like an art gallery, it just put on small exhibitions/shows/talks and never had any curated material that it owned/rotated.
Bezoff.
Same with he Cobblestone & the Science gallery. People write a few angry letters to the Paper of Record but then never actually shop or drink n these places. Like Ulysses a lot of these places are more admired than read.
Or you go & browse or use it as a child minding facility & then go home & buy it off amazon trader. Soon enough Dublin will just be one generic experience indistinguishable from the main streets in Leeds or Sheffield.
+1
+2 ”Leave wringing of your hands” as auld Hamlet would say – it’s the latest virtue signalling trend to act aghast and despondent at the closing of this and that and yet if you were actually giving enough business to this or that they’d most likely stay open, name checking them on Twitter is useless.
PS. I have read Ulysses, have never been in The Cobblestone so don’t care, Dublin is riddled with pubs, don’t miss Clery’s, sorry to see The Science Gallery go but didn’t go often enough to really care, don’t want to lose Merchant’s Arch as it’s quite a unique landmark, found Chapter’s completely soulless once it moved from Abbey St so no big loss.
I for one can’t wait – we do need more drunken painted slappers in miniskirts waddling around in the middle of the day.
Hopefully full reunification with Britain is just around the corner.
Does Chapters stand? – Bibliophile’s question of travellers from Dublin
This is truly sad news. I used browse the second hand section often, looing for the book to fill out a series. Occasionally buying a whole series. And many is the DVD and CD gracing my other shelves that came from there.
But my favourite was a serendipitous find. Many years ago my mother organised what has become a regular event – a gathering of the Clan from across the country and globe. I was away, and she did the evil deed of selling my book collection, mostly second handers themselves, to pay for my room and the Meal. I was aghast!
Over he years I have replaced most of those lost once more. But a particularly difficult one to find was Jerusalem Fire by Rebecca M Meluch. One day in Chapters I was browsing the unsorted second hand section, and there is was! Not only that, as I opened the first page, my own name greeted me, albeit from an older address. This was destiny, and you can be certain that book once again has a place on my shelves.
The Booker Surprise…
I’ll get my dust jacket! ;-)
Hah! Very good!
Easy to blame Amazon but lazy. Also a lot of comments here, demonstrate how out of touch people are with those that work in low paid employment. They’re invisible.
(unattributed quote removed)
Attribution/Source below
https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/qi8xz1/why/
(cut and pasted body text removed)
That’s interesting, thanks Andrew, chimes with my own experience. Fun fact: the owner was Paschal Donohoe’s General election campaign manager in 2007.
Turns out he was the manager of Chapters, John Gannon, not the owner.
Yes. If only they’d have other nationalities running the place eh Andrew? A missed opportunity
A real shame, like others i always left with 1 if not 2 books.
Was never on the receiving end of the floor managers strangely aggressive manner but witnessed it a few times both to other staff and customers.
the trip advisor reviews are worth a read for a bit of a laugh.
It’s always sad to see a bookshop go. However, despite general predictions of their demise good ones have been doing quite well recently. Off the top of my head here’s some brilliant ones around the country:
Charlie Byrne’s in Galway – for me the best shop of any type in the country, the Salmon Bookshop in Ennistymon, Reds in Wexford, Time Traveller’s in Skibbereen, the Clifden Bookshop, Prim’s Bibliotherapy in Kinsale and their sister shop in Youghal, the One Foundation-supported community bookshops in Louisburgh and Letterfrack (and one soon to open in Dublin 8), the Secret Bookshop in Camden St and a couple of very good ones in Dingle.
Also remember that the online retailer, Book Depository with its decent prices and free delivery, is Amazon by another name.
Charlie Byrne’s was top class when i lived in Galway, even saw Alan Ginsberg doing a reading in the murk of the 1990s .. which was nice …
Sure couldn’t the Man himself have been describing Galway when he said:
“ I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the…streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night”
Anyway, here’s some nice footage of Ginsberg and Dylan visiting Jack Kerouac’s grave.
https://youtu.be/NZ8HTu_MOMA