Books are my business: Bookshop owner Antonia Daly

Irish Examiner

4 days ago

Antonia Daly owns Antonia's Bookstore in Trim, Co Meath. She is also on the committee of the Hinterland Festival Kells, which takes place from June 26 to June 29.
How did youget into bookselling?
When I decided to open a bookshop, I didn't really have a history or a background in bookselling, I actually had a diploma in civil and structural engineering. I was working, and I was studying part time at night to finish my degree. I always had it in the back of my mind that I'd love to open a bookshop, and my parents and my husband told me to go ahead and do it, that I would have the degree to fall back on if it didn't work out, but to give it a go and see. And here we are, we're celebrating 20 years open in December.
I grew up in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, but my dad is from Meath and I would have spent a lot of time up here. When I started talking about opening a bookshop, I looked at a lot of different towns but there was something about Trim — when you come into it, you have this big fairytale castle and the Tidy Towns committee here are amazing.
There's flowers everywhere; I come in here at 8am to open up and there are people out picking up rubbish on their own time
It's a beautiful town, and the perfect town for a bookshop. The library in Trim is fantastic as well and the schools really promote reading. It really is a town of readers.
What does it involve?
A bit of everything. Normally, my day to day would be ordering stock, doing displays, accounting, and paperwork. But at the moment, it's even busier because it's schoolbook season. We're dealing directly with schools now rather than parents, so we would be doing quotes with schools, talking through what they might need, and then ordering the books and delivering them.
We also have the Hinterland Festival, and I'm currently putting together all the books to sell at that. We have to go through all the authors that are coming, and make sure that we have everything they've written.
What do youlike most about it?
You have the lovely experience of meeting your customers in the shop day to day, then at Hinterland, there are people who've come from all over the country that we see every year.
Historian and broadcaster Myles Dungan and local schoolchildren Dara Sheridan, seven, and Róisín Byrne, six, outside the Courthouse in Kells, Co Meath, at the launch of the 2025 Hinterland Festival of Literature & Arts programme.
So you're catching up with them again. It's a fabulous festival and it's lovely to meet the authors and just to get out there and do something different.
What do you like least about it?
Nobody enjoys doing the paperwork.
You could probably make it easier on yourself if you stayed up to date on it day to day, but I think we all tend to pile it up in the corner and think 'I'll get to that', and then you regret not keeping on top of it
I actually enjoy the other parts, like the ordering and all of that because there is the excitement of getting stuff in and seeing what people are buying.
Three desert island books
My first one came out 20 years ago, it was a big seller when we opened the shop — Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. When I read that, I just wanted to go to Carcassonne. And myself and my mum actually did go there, just because we had read that book.
For the next one, I would definitely have a classic, I'm torn between Little Women or A Christmas Carol. I'd probably go with A Christmas Carol, because if you're going to be stuck on a desert island, you won't have Christmas, and I do love a Charles Dickens every so often.
My last one would be Dissolution by CJ Sansom, who unfortunately passed away last year. The first time I read it, the way he described things, I could smell London in the 1500s and taste what they were eating. He has a style of writing that means you're completely immersed in the place.
www.hinterland.ie
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