A Novel Spot

I buy books. Sometimes I need them for research and other times I just need their company in the shade of a good wide tree on a warm autumn day.
   
There are two large, chain bookstores within walking distance of my home but there isn’t a single independent bookstore in all of Mississauga, the sixth largest city in Canada. No doubt the big stores sell lots of books and have a good selection but nowadays I buy all my books from the closest independent bookstore, A Novel Spot, located on The Kingsway just inside the western sleeve of Toronto.

Sarah Pietroski and her crew of Helen, Chris, Susan, Diane, Mary, Kathleen and Katie know everything about new fiction and nonfiction and they will source anything that is in print from anywhere in the world. Recent finds they have made for me include Killing the Black Dog, Early Tennessee Land Records, Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and The Plurality of Worlds.

Now, it seems, all I have to do is call and say, “She’s seventeen with ripening attitude” and they do my choosing for me. They ask, hardcover or soft? Then get an idea of price range and I have the gift cornered. I trust them. You will never get this kind of experience and knowledge of books in any of the big-box stores in the city.

And now I write as a writer. I know that Sarah and company bend over backwards to support all writers by reading and recommending their books. My novel Great Village was published in 2011 and there were enough reviews to get it distributed in some public libraries and the Chapters/Indigo chain for a few months but they’ve all moved on to the many books that have been published since. This little bookstore, alone, has flogged my book and virtually kept it in print. It would be all but forgotten were it not for these good women, their hard work and their love of books. And, they aren’t just doing it for me. They have writers at the store almost every month. They run a book club. They regularly send out recommendations and reviews. They’ll do whatever it takes to get good books into your hands.

Yes, it may be more convenient to walk the two blocks to the big players, but it takes lots of courage to enter the fray of book-selling these days when the big players have pushed out so many independents. I for one will continue to buy all my books from A Novel Spot and support the things they believe in. We can’t take this little book shop for granted. They’ve survived four years now but it’s tenuous. Sarah struggles every month to keep her little store solvent. Why not make a statement with your book budget this year? You can do this.

Saint John of God is the patron saint of booksellers and it’s clear he had as tenuous a hold on his sanity as on holiness. If selling books is madness, it’s the kind of madness with which I wish to be associated.