Lifeline Bookfest 2022

Overview

This winter, the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre is hosting a sales event of most peculiar stock. Strange things they are, full of pages, rampant with words and with covers of the most beautiful colours. You can't charge them, they don't run out of battery, their brightness is unalterable, and they won't smash when you drop them.

After being forced to shake up its usual schedule over the past few years due to the pandemic, Lifeline Bookfest is coming back for another round of vintage bargains between Saturday, June 4–Sunday, June 12. It's where you'll find everything from Australian Women's Weekly Cookbooks to a bit of cheeky erotica, as well as games, DVDs and puzzles. If you've been before, you'll know there are warehouse quantities of books for sale – your grade five diary is probably hidden under a copy of Shantaram, and you'll come across at least three copies of Cooking with Days of Our Lives. In fact, over this year's nine-day winter run, more than one million items will be up for grabs.

Prices tend to range from $2.50 to the big bucks — and when it last unleashed its treasure trove in mid-2021, the $1 selection got the axe so that the sale could spread out in these social-distancing times. Don't go thinking you won't have plenty to choose from, though. Whenever Bookfest hits Brisbane, it always brings hundreds of crates of reading materials with it.

You'll still want to bring a trolley and your glasses, obviously, and to clear some space on your shelves at home. And, you'll want to bring your cards, because this Bookfest is cashless. Also, you'll need your own bags, as books won't be wrapped for you this year.

Head along from 7.30am–6pm on Saturday, June 4; 8.30am–6pm between Sunday, June 5–Thursday, June, 8; 8.30am–9pm on Friday, June 10; and 8.30am–6pm between Saturday, June 11–Sunday, June 12.

Images: Bookfest.