The arrival of Bleak Midwinter was signalled to this bookseller by a disquieting squirrel who maintained direct eye contact while gnawing through a strand of fairy lights on the magnolia bush last week. That they were unplugged at the time was to the squirrel’s advantage. So now that we have plunged fully into the gloomy mire of January, with our festive garlands defeated by Nature’s nibbling antagonists, a lot of you are seeking books with narratives that are cheerful and uplifting. Unfortunately we do not sell those. However, we do have a drawer full of “books” (technically) that are full of “light” (literal not figurative) and they are also cheap and portable and offer a diverting history of the motel, restaurant, and cabaret culture of yesteryear. That’s right, our January staff pick is that you take up cigarette smoking! We will revisit this recommendation once the handful of vitamin D gel caps we tossed in our evening martini (“sunshine boba”) kick in.
On the last day of the year, we scan through our past exploits and then, gingerly turning the page with our remarkable flippers, orient our beaks to the future: an ice floe drifting on a brisk current to some unknown destiny, ideally abundant in krill.
We will be closed on New Year’s Day, as always, for contemplative reasons.
Best wishes for 2026!
Your Hounds, Kim and Rod.
Last year, a young man approached us with an intriguing pitch: “I have some very dull overviews of art history that I thought you might want to buy”. When we questioned why he thought we would want to buy such objectionable material he said “You know how grandparents give boring presents at Christmas? These would be perfect boring presents to sell to them! They are really very dull!” We admired the audaciousness of his salesmanship but it’s not the dullness that offended us, it’s the vagueness of the general survey. Here chez ’Hound we will happily sell your grandmother a collection of Gaelic songs of Nova Scotia, a graphic overview of pre-Colombian fashion in Mesoamerica, a “Lag’s Lexicon” of slang from British prisons circa 1950, a 1976 Winter Eaton’s catalogue, a scholarly monograph on Coast Salish gambling games or a collection of Edward Gorey’s illustrated envelopes sent to his friend Tom Fitzharris over a one-year period. All of which may be boring for a kid who was hoping for AirPods but at least they have the merit of SPECIFICITY! An underrated quality that is often flattened under the tiresome anvil of “quirkiness”.
Some more specifics for grandparents and others who prefer to shop at the very last minute: we are open from 10 to 6 on December 21-23 and from 10-3:30 on Christmas Eve. We are closed Christmas and Boxing Day, then reopening with regular hours on the 27th.
This will be our final communication until New Year’s Eve, as our vocabulary recedes to the cavemanlike syllables of “ho ho ho” and “fa la la”, so before the lexicon, er, lags, let us wish you very happy holidays!
Attempts to crop out the newly-installed security camera were unsuccessful, but isn’t Christmas actually all about an omniscient unblinking eye that captures all our deeds, both naughty AND nice? Perennial thanks to our friend Kate from Weekend Flowers for the wreath and also a fresh thanks, perhaps to be repeated in years to come, to our neighbour Simone from Estratto Coffee for holding the ladder as I decked the hound in his seasonal finery. In conclusion: be good for goodness sake. Specifically, we’re addressing the faceless antagonist who shoplifted a very expensive grimoire from us in August. May you be marinating in a viscous brine of remorse. If you decide to return it (no questions asked) we will commend you to that karmic arbiter of behaviour and perhaps you will receive something more than a sockful of moldy potatoes this Christmas.
To correct her historical exclusion from the Yule narrative (viz.: “not even a mouse”), we’ve offered our bright-eyed resident a role in decorating the bookshop for the festive season. Her nimble-fingered handiwork can be viewed in the window display at any hour, but if you want to come in for a browse we are here daily from 10 to 6.
Women and children, are you worried that your priority boarding pass on the lifeboat may not be honoured? At this historical moment, your concerns are not unfounded. Fortunately, we have this book.
Experimenting with putting the message in the image (and specifically “on the poodle” for maximum impact) instead of burying it in a needlessly verbose caption. Who even reads this stuff? But for those of you who still prefer to absorb information through letters threaded into units of meaning like magical beads on an enchanted necklace, the intended communication here is that November 11, Remembrance Day, we will open at 11:03, after the two minutes of silence down the block at Victory Square, and close as usual at 6.
The tumble dryer that is my brain has long been tossing around the damp and wrinkled theory that the relentless popularity of Clarice Lispector has just a bit to do with the sibilant pleasure of hiss-purring the agreeable syllables “Cla-riiisss Liss-sspector” and contemplating her glamorous author headshot. It’s a minor but undeniable advantage over her less-exotic literary sisters Mavis Gallant, Doris Lessing, and the Barbaras Comyns and Pym. This copy of Dumps: A Plain Girl by L.T. Meade really does nothing to articulate whatever thesis was being churned in said appliance, but it did get me thinking of it again, and so I deposit it here, in the untended lint trap of my intellect: our social media output.
Shadow play performed by amateur actors in an urban amphitheatre.
Alter our very regular business hours for the Thanksgiving Weekend? These Canadian turkeys would never! As always, this Sunday and Monday we enter the 344 West Pender St oven at 10 am, basted, brined and stuffed, and emerge burnt to a crisp and basically inedible at 6pm.