July 22, 2026

Road Trip Bookshop: Stirling Book Company

Fortuitously, Stirling Book Company was celebrating its second birthday when we rolled into town the other weekend, a road trip bookshop stop that appeared on the map when Google sent us up Highway 33 on the way to the Ivanhoe Cheese Factory. It was a particularly exciting stop for me, because Stirling was the very first town I ever knew, the town and its vicinity my original landscape. I have a theory that the places we’re located when our consciousness emerges become the building blocks of our understanding of absolutely everything, the foundation of our perception of the world, forever locked in. I remember Stirling circa the early 1980s in a way I know my own bones, the peculiar three-way intersection, where the Beckers used to be, the butter factory, the bank. Most of all though, I remember Shaw’s Shoes—most likely because I spoke with a lisp, and Shaw’s Shoes was a very hard thing for me to say.

And when I told the good people at the Stirling Book Company that I remembered Shaw’s Shoes, they told me, “This IS Shaw’s Shoes.” The very place, a shoe store the way that shoe stores used to be with boxes of shoes piled high along the walls, and a man who was able to making a reasonable living selling them. They showed me imprint on the wall from the old shelves, and the sign on the door in the back to the room which once housed a cobbler, and when I was there as a very small child, I didn’t note the beautiful wood floors or the tin ceiling. It is likely that the wood was covered with linoleum back then, the ceiling covered up with ugly panels, or perhaps these just weren’t the details I was paying attention to at the time.

I noted these details now though—Stirling Book Company is stunning. Carefully chosen selections, focused on local authors and presses, fun book merch, all the popular fare for those en-route to the cottage, and more elevated titles too. I ended up purchasing the fourth book in Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume series, which was one of Tracey’s staff picks, and my kids partook in celebratory treats as part of the birthday celebrations.

I love the idea that the spirit of Shaw’s Shoes—one of my most essential places—lives on as a bookshop. Welcome to my psychogeographical landscape, Stirling Book Company! Looking forward to the years to come.