We chat to Jason Austin from Readings Carlton about chancing upon Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, the appeal of morally ambiguous characters and not underestimating Young Adult fiction.

Why do you work in books?

I have always loved stories and although I love film too, books offer something very different. You create the author’s world in your head and that version of that world can differ greatly from that created by another person who has read the same book. For that reason, I feel that bookselling is about the exchange of opinions and ideas, and finding that someone likes or dislikes a book as much as I did is interesting to me.

What’s the best book you’ve read lately and why?

Late last year I read Alexander Maksik’s debut novel, You Deserve Nothing, and loved it. The story of a charming English teacher behaving badly at the International School of France plays out like a mix of Dead Poet’s Society and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I seem to love novels where the characters, like the teacher in this one, are flawed and morally ambiguous. I also loved that the novel is told from three different points of view, so we get differing angles on what is unfolding and how the teacher’s actions effect and affect his students and colleagues.

What’s the strangest experience you’ve had in a bookshop?

I was working at the Borders’ South Yarra store about 11 years ago and we had a slightly unhinged guy come in. On his first visit to the store he asked me, ‘Where are ya books on murder and death?’ I gingerly directed him to the true crime section. A couple of weeks later, management had to kick him out of the store as he was reading through the true crime section with such relish that he was literally chewing his nails down to the quick and bleeding all over the books.

What’s the best experience you’ve had in a bookshop?

There have been lots, but to cut it down to a recent event, a customer came up to me last year and asked if we had a copy of Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden. We didn’t have it in stock at the time but he said that if I ever had a chance to read it, to do so. He continued to praise the book so much and with such passion that I ordered a copy and read it. It would now have to be one of my favourite novels of all time. So I just would like to send my thanks out there to that man who gave me an awesome recommendation.

Name a book that has changed the way you think – in ways small or large.

I’m cheating a bit but, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy have both taught me not to underestimate the strength of young adult fiction. Kids’ books are some of the best that I have read as an adult and I think more adults should take the time to read young adult fiction.