March 21, 2011

My Adventures in the Land of Books

Our last vacation was in the land that books forgot, so I was excited to get away to England, the storybook centre of the universe. Whenever we go to England, we always come back with enough books to fill another suitcase (especially that one time), and this trip was no exception. Though I had less luck in the charity shops than I was hoping for– they used to be rife with 1960s Penguin Paperbacks but they’re all gone now, and now all that’s left are copies of Jenny Colgan novels that came free with a copy of Cosmopolitan. And the children’s books picks were rubbish in the charity shops, but I suppose I can imagine why the second-hand children’s book market might have its challenges.

The only books I ended up getting in charity shops were I Am Not Tired and I Will Not Go to Bed by Lauren Childs at the Oxfam in Ilkley, and Tyler’s Row by Miss Read at The Panopticon Shop in Glasgow (which is a charity shop to rebuild a theatre that burned down in 1938, and we sort of got turned off their cause when they made Stuart wait out in the rain with the pram). I also got a Brambley Hedge treasury at the Oxfam in Fleetwood.

And though I didn’t end up buying anything, the Oxfam Bookshop in Glasgow was beautiful– much more boutique than charity shop. It was in the same square as the massive old building (now vacant) that used to house Borders, and I was informed that the loss of that store had been a tragedy– it had been a wonderful place. We also had a good time in the Waterstones in Glasgow, which looked like not much from the outside, but as I rode the escalator down to the lower level, revealed itself to have this hidden middle section between the two floors, sort of like the half-floor in Being John Malkovich, and also a coffee shop, with made my reluctant partner in bookshopping a very happy man. We found the children’s section, and Harriet hurled picture books, and then ate part of a sandwich that she found on the floor.

I was thrilled to discover The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, because independent bookshops are few and far between even in England, and also because this one was bustling. The store has gorgeous window displays, a great selection, and seemed like a thriving community hub. There was a line-up at the till, and another woman there to pick up her special order. I delighted in the selection of Penguin merch, and bought a tote bag, and also Old Filth by Jane Gardam (and now I have to read The Man in the Wooden Hat). I also like The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley because their website boasts a “fast and efficient ordering system [which] means the vast majority of customer orders arrive the following day.”

We spent our second-last day in London, and had scheduled bookshops a-plenty. I was so happy to have a chance to visit Persephone Books, and actually, I’m grateful that budget constraints forced a limit of one book only, or else I would have bought the place out. Their books are so lovely, the shop so homey (but crowded! With Persephone books! Can you imagine anything more wonderful?), and I wanted to paw everything. To keep my fellow-travellers happy, I’d pre-selected my purchases so there was less browsing than you might imagine, but if I’d started, I never would have left and would no longer have a family.

I also enjoyed visiting the London Review Bookshop, which was not too far away. The Cake Shop proved disappointing, sadly, as it was too small to accommodate Harriet’s stroller or Harriet, and was crowded with people discussing existential things who probably didn’t want to listen to Harriet talk about her bum. I bought The Tortoise and the Hare here, though I’d been debating another Rachel Cusk instead, being that day in the thralls of her book The Lucky Ones. And I am a little bit sorry now that I didn’t get the Rachel Cusk books, because she’s so great, and I never found another of her novels in a bookshop the rest of the time we were in England.

Under Waterloo Bridge, I was happy to see the booksellers again, as well as a bit of sunshine. I didn’t buy anything because nothing immediately struck my eye, and because Stuart and Harriet were being very patient but I didn’t want to push them too far. I am sure if I’d browsed just a little while longer, I would have come up with one treasure or another. (I also wonder if the fact that I found less treasures amongst the used books this trip is because it’s now been a few years since I bought everything Margaret Drabble ever wrote.)

We spent the rest of our London day at The Tate Modern, and I enjoyed exploring both its bookshops with their wonderful selections of children’s books. It was especially exciting to see Sara O’Leary‘s beautiful Where You Came From on display, amidst some fine company.

We spent our last day in Windsor, where I tried and failed to find a bookish treasure in the charity shops (including a wonderfully stocked Oxfam Bookshop, but everything good they had, I had already). We stopped in at the Windsor Waterstones and bought Harriet The Gruffalo and Alfie’s Feet, and I tried and failed to find a Rachel Cusk novel to buy, just as I would do the next day at the airport. Regrets, I’ve had a few.

But not too many. Our trip was full of bookish wonder. I arrived home with a most respectable stack, and what’s more, I’ve since read each and every one of them.

February 28, 2011

We love Ilkley. Thank you, Jackson Brodie.

Today Harriet stayed home with her grandparents, and Stuart and I drove to Ilkley in Yorkshire (which is very close to Burley Cross country). I wanted to go to a Bettys Tea Room after reading Starting Early Took My Dog (which should probably receive a commission for our visit). Jackson Brodie certainly did not mislead us: if the Bettys girls ran the government, indeed, there would not have been recent economic disasters, or disasters of any kind. Tea was completely delicious, definitely the best we’d had since Saturday, and I was particularly in love with the woman having her breakfast at the table across from ours’ (“Anything else for ye, Vera?” they asked as she was preparing to go, as she tied a kerchief around her hair).

We had fun exploring the town afterwards, visiting the best butcher in Britain, and the Grove Bookshop, a fabulous independent bookshop whose business was booming. We got a steak and kidney pie at the former, and at the bookshop, I got a Penguin 75 tote bag, and Old Filth by Jane Gardam (which I’ve had out of the library twice, but have always had to return before I’ve had a chance to read it).

October 5, 2010

Doomed

All right, used bookshop owners are always a bit strange anyway, so I won’t even start on the woman who, because it was hot that day, couldn’t locate a book she knew was in her stock. Or rather I will start on her, then stop there, and just say that this experience is pretty representative of my efforts to support my local independent bookshops. Where I go out of my way, and spend even more money than elsewhere so that I can help these stores remain in my neighbourhood (because what we would lose if they didn’t), and then the customer service is so absolutely abysmal and I wonder why I bother.

I am fortunate to have independent bookshops all around me where I live, and when I needed a book for our next meeting of the Vicious Circle, I made a point of ordering it from the more-independent bookshop than the other one. I know that ordering a book takes time (which is another problem. Why does it take 2-4 weeks to have a book delivered? As a business model, this totally sucks, and it has to be changed. It just does.), which might be another “why do I even bother?” scenario, but one I was fine with overlooking.

Today I went into the store to see what was going on, and once they finally located my title, I was told that it had been ordered from a distributor that didn’t have the Canadian rights. Somehow it had taken nearly a month to figure out this had happened, no one had gotten in touch with me about it, but they would be happy to place another order from the correct distributor, which would take another 2-4 weeks. Except I need the book on Tuesday, and I was just annoyed by the waste of my time and my effort– I could have had this book from amazon in days at a discounted prize, I could have bought it right off the shelf at Book City. And though I really want to support this other bookstore, why on earth would I ever order another book through them again?

Seriously, if you’re an independent bookshop and you can’t keep *me* as a customer, than there really is no hope for you. And that this doesn’t seem to bother anyone is totally depressing.

August 15, 2010

The Toronto Women's Bookstore, how I became a feminist (and how I learned to be alone)

Last Thursday, it was my absolute pleasure to be buying books at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore (and the book was Sweet by Dani Couture, if anyone’s asking, along with C is for Coco). It was my absolute pleasure, because a few months ago it looked like I might never be buying books at the TWB again, and I was a bit heartbroken about that. Although I hadn’t been around to the bookstore for a long time, truthfully, but about ten years ago, the Toronto Women’s Bookstore saved my life.

It all has to do with how I became a feminist, which, interestingly enough, has much to do also with how I learned to be alone. I can’t remember exactly what the catalyst was, but it all had to do with magazines like Bitch and Bust, and this place where I could go to buy them. But I’ll backtrack to just before that, to when I was about twenty, and would pick up a copy of Cosmo if I needed something to read on a long journey. I didn’t know that there was an alternative to that kind of media, and I was also the type of girl who claimed to be a “humanist”, because “feminist” was too confrontational, too exclusive.

I was also totally, and completely boy crazy, in a way that I never entirely got over, and there’s nothing really wrong with this, except that it seemed a boy’s opinion of me was my sole determination of self-worth. Which might have been fine, actually, if a boy had actually held a high opinion of me, but no one did, and it made me crazy, and lonely, and a little bit sad. (At this point in my life, I also wore tye-dyed t-shirts with floor-length skirts and running shoes. You really couldn’t have blamed the boys…).

Anyway, may I connect all this to the How to be Alone video that swept the world last week, and which Russell Smith opined was “anti-feminist” in The Globe & Mail (which I won’t link to, because I hate The Globe‘s link-baiting. What joy it would give me to link to an article because it was actually good, but anyway, you can read about it here).  When I learned how to be a feminist, it was when I learned how to be alone. It was when I began to let go of my obssession with using male affection to define myself and my value. It was when I realized that sex wasn’t as empowering as I’d considered it to be, because I’d thought I was garbage unless someone male was looking at me admiringly, and I would have done anything to make sure that look lingered. It was when I realized that I’d been waiting for a boy to come along and save me, to liberate me from aloneness, and I was thinking that only then would my real life finally begin.

When I became a feminist, it was when I realized that real life could begin anyway, on my own terms. And I learned this when I started reading magazines like Bitch and Bust, and magazines I’m now far to old for, and even scoff at, but back in the day, they were a revelation. First, I learned to celebrate a far more diverse kind of beauty than any I’d ever seen before in a fashion magazine. I learned about women’s sexuality in and of itself, beyond simply a way to attract male attention. I learned about women’s issues beyond my insular little world, and realized the need for something called feminism was as strong as it ever was. I learned about something I might have called “sisterhood” about thirty years before, but couldn’t put a name to at the time because “sisterhood” was twee, but it basically came down to the fact that womanhood itself was powerful. And I’d never even realized. All the things I didn’t need a man to do, let alone define who I was.

And yes, I remember the first time I ate in a restaurant by myself (during the summer of 2000), and taking off on my bike to Toronto Island where nobody knew where I was, and when I decided to produce my own photo-copied feminist zine (which became legendary in a certain circle), and going to the movies alone, and driving my own moving van, and how I was determined to spend the summer of 2002 backpacking through Europe all by myself, which I did, and it was the discovery of feminism, the discovery that I was a feminist, that made any of this possible. I was nothing before it.

And that even in “post-feminist” turn of the century Toronto, that there was a place where one could go to be a feminist meant everything. It meant the movement was still vital, and that a community was thriving (the proof in the plethora of flyers posted just inside the door), and all the books and magazines that so inspired me on my way. I was finally a part of something bigger than myself, and it even bigger than being a part of a couple.

If we were actually post-feminist, than none of this would have been necessary. If we were actually post-feminist, however, Russell Smith probably wouldn’t be writing articles about women in publishing being “hotties” either, and I also think it’s interesting how articles such as Smith’s hottie piece, with its abject objectification, actually condition women to feel badly about not being on the receiving end of the admiring male’s glance. How Smith is not even a symptom, he is the disease, and then he has the nerve to decide what “feminist” is?

The point of all this being that the Toronto Women’s Bookstore was so important to me once upon a time, and I shouldn’t have turned my back upon it just because I don’t need it anymore. Because you never know when I might need it again, or how many other women are lacking empowerment just like I was, and the freedom they’re sure to find there once they venture through its door.

August 9, 2010

Adventures in the land of (almost) no bookshops

So we made a major error when we went away on vacation, assuming that the second half of The News Where You Are, a magazine, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo would be books enough to tide Stuart over. It distinctly wasn’t, and though he came to the end wanting to find that girl who played with fire, he said he’d be content with any book, and so we went searching. We spent a couple of hours in Bobcaygeon on Tuesday, where Stuart was generally irritable because The Tragically Hip had got his hopes up. In amongst many stores gone out of business, there was one bookshop, but it was so crap that my one purchase there was a wind chime. Not knowing then quite how much desperate times would call for desparate measures, we’d had the nerve to turn our noses up. (I had also been promised $30 Birkenstocks at Bigleys. We really did leave Bobcaygeon terribly disappointed).

The next day we went to Fenelon Falls, which had been pretty central to my childhood summers, and I was sad to see the main strip had become a bit bleak, with Canadian Tire and the grocery store moving into bigger stores on the outskirts, leaving a few (very) poor man’s Bargain Harolds in their midsts. We thought maybe the grocery store might stock a novel or two, but they didn’t, and they didn’t even have good magazines. I kept driving up and down the one street in Fenelon Falls, willing a bookshop to appear, but one didn’t and I was so sad. “What kind of town doesn’t have a bookshop?” I kept railing, slapping the dashboard. “What does this say about us as a people?” Fed up with my melodrama, Stuart asked a passer-by if there was a bookshop. The woman shook her head, said we could try the library, but it was closed by now. Which made us even more depressed, because it was only 3:00.

“Maybe Coboconk has a bookshop?” I wondered, which is when you know you’re really desperate. At the very least, we thought it might have a Shopper’s Drug Mart, which does stock mass-market paperbacks. So we drove into town, and noted they had a Rona AND a Home Hardware, but no bookshop. So we turned around to go back where we’d come, when Stuart noticed a dilapidated warehouse with a sign that said, “BOOKS!”. It was one of those places that sold liquidation stock, with other signs including, “WINDOWS!”, “TIRES!” and “FIREWORKS!”. Not holding out a great deal of hope, we stopped and went in. They had a toilet seat section. The books section was totally bizarre though, comprising mainly horrid romance novels and study guides for 19th century classic novels. There was a massive stack of a book about Grace Paley’s short stories. There were three copies of the Louise Fitzhugh biography for $2 each. Of the lot, we found one novel which Stuart might have contemplated reading not under duress (or even reading for pleasure) and it was Watchman by Ian Rankin, so we bought it for a grand six bucks.

That night, back at the cottage, I was recounting our adventures, and somebody said to me, “Why didn’t you just go to Bob’s?” Which, apparently, is Fenelon Falls’ great used bookshop, across the road from the library even. A few blocks off the main strip, around the corner from the LCBO, and Fenelon Falls grew eight sizes bigger in my estimation at that moment. The world was a less bleak place, where the crap books aren’t always on sale with the toilet seats. (We also phoned my mom, and asked her to bring up the next Steig Larsson when she came).

We went to Bob’s on Friday, which is actually Bob Burns’ Books, and it was everything I’d been promised. Big and bustling, stocked with cottagey tomes, yellow paperbacks in alpha-order, but also a wonderful selection of literature, and children’s books, and plays and poetry, and coffee. I wanted to kiss the ground it stood on, or at the very least its floor, but I didn’t. Instead, I bought The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner, because I am enamoured of commercial fiction short story collections, and The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, because I’d heard him on the CBC the week before and it sounded interesting. Though I read now that the book might be misogynistic, and that India Knight hates it, so it’s probably not my usual thing, but should make for something interesting.

August 9, 2010

More new books

Today I used up my gift-card from Ten Editions that Stuart had bought me for my birthday. I initially went in to find The Comforters, which we’re reading next month for The Vicious Circle, but they didn’t have that one. Instead, I got The Viking Portable Library Charles Lamb, because Anne Fadiman inspired me to, and My Friend Says It’s Bulletproof by Penelope Mortimer, who I know nothing about, but it’s by Virago, and Carol Shields and Blanche Howard like another of her books (according to A Memoir of Friendship, which I’m currently [joyfully] rereading). Also, she had a copy of Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris, except that she was currently reading it and couldn’t find it (“it’s not the time of day to find its place in the pile,” is what she said) but she promised to put it aside and it will be there when I go back for it. Amazing! (And then I found The Comforters at another shop along the road).

June 24, 2010

Goodness turnips!

I have a vivid memory of the day my mother bought me a copy of Pollyanna on a visit to The World’s Biggest Bookstore when I was about eight years old. (This was back when TWBB was my favourite place in the universe.) I must have read the book a few times because many parts of it have stayed with me, but what I remember the most is the afterword to my edition, which was written by the great Lois Lowry. What I remember is one phrase in particular, one that applies to most of the books I like best; I think of it today because I’m currently rereading February by Lisa Moore.

The phrase is, “Goodness triumphs; I like that.” Except that I didn’t know the word “triumphs” when I was eight years old, and I read it as “turnips”. I read the whole phrase as a kind of exclaimation similar to “Goodness gracious” or “Merciful heavens”, but with a root vegetable twist.

“Goodness turnips; I like that.”

And all these years later, I still do.

April 26, 2010

In which a poem is dispensed from a vending machine

Because we live in a wonderful city, the highlight of this afternoon was visiting the poetry vending machine at This Ain’t the Rosedale Public Library, as installed by the Toronto Poetry Vendors. Like all the best vending machines, this one jammed a little bit once I’d put in my twoonie and turned the crank, so I had to stick my hand up the chute to get my poem out, and (imagine if I’d gotten stuck? And they’d had to call the fire department? Because I’d gotten my hand stuck in a poetry vending machine? Now, there‘s a story, if only it weren’t fiction, because) my purchase slipped out easily. My luck of the draw was a poem called “Rhyme Scheme (for Condo Country)” by Jacob McArthur Mooney, and now it’s hanging on my fridge.

And, because I was in a bookstore, I picked up Joy Is So Exhausting by Susan Holbrook, as pitched by Julie Wilson today for Keeping Toronto Reading. (Hear Susan read her collection at Seen Reading; I recommend the poem “Nursery” [second from the end] in particular, mainly because the world needs more breastfeeding lit. and the poem is joyous).

March 20, 2010

Dogs in (children's) books update, and other children's lit bits and bobs

In an attempt to overcome my aversion to literary dogs, I went to see the exhibit “The Little Dog Laughed…” this afternoon at The Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books. Harry the Dirty Dog was featured, and also Alice’s dog Dash, and Farley Mowat’s Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, Snoopy, the Poky Little Puppy, Cracker “The Best Dog in Vietnam” (what a distinction!), Eloise’s dog Weenie, and Maurice Sendak’s dog Jennie from Higglety Pigglety Pop. A lovely display of books old and new, literary dog paraphernalia, and dog art. If I enjoyed it, just imagine what someone who likes dogs might think.

In other Toronto Library children’s book news, I followed everybody’s advice and requested The Night Kitchen. I loved the kitchen cityscape, and the story, and I get behind anything to do with cake in the morn. I also got out Brundibar, upon the recommendation of our wonderful librarian. Today when we were at Lillian H. Smith, I got a bunch of other books, including A Day with Nellie, and Miss Nelson is Missing which I probably haven’t thought about in twenty years but  upon glimpsing immediately realized that I used to be obsessed with.

If all this wasn’t enough, yesterday we made our second trip to Mabel’s Fables. I bought a gorgeous edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa, whose illustrations are absolutely timeless. As Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems seem to be too, after 125 years (and I was inspired to seek them out after reading How the Heather Looks). The classic nature of this purchase is balanced out by our others, which were (delightfully) Sandra Boynton’s The Belly Button Book, My Little Word Book, and Baby Touch Colours.

February 18, 2010

A question about links

As a reflex, I resort to Amazon.ca when linking to books on my blog. I do try to link to the titles on their publishers’ websites, particularly with current books, but with some books, this doesn’t make a lot of sense (or isn’t even possible). I know a lot of American bloggers link to Powells, but I’d like Canadian links whenever possible. And I also know that many people don’t like Amazon for many reasons. And so my question is, is there a better option for catch-all books links? Any feedback would be appreciated.