A number of new books by Londoners came into the shop recently, including Crazy Beautiful People: 50 Years of Enchanting Stories of Home County Festival by Dan Ebbs and dlmorrow, and the excellent new novel Supply Chain by Aaron Schnieder. These two are worth checking out. We have been in and out of the shop, getting the final details figured out for our bookmobile (tires hitting the road soon). We are each making arguments for or against Edison or Christmas lights. What kind of flooring should it have? Do we stock regular books or rare books? Have we made an enormous mistake? Is retail the dying trade of the past century? And, most importantly, will we be murdered on a back Ontario road by a creep with a hook-hand and, if so, how amazing would that be?
There certainly is a there there, despite Gertrude Stein’s observation. Ontario is a place, CLEARLY a place, when you get out of your car and walk around in it. Sometimes that place feels good, and sometimes it feels “let’s get the hell out of here as quickly as we can” not good. Think the Harbinger from Cabin in the Woods. Jason survived this place. He biked through it, parentless to school every morning. He left his house after dinner and, as the cliche goes, was wild until the Dads of Thorndale whistled from their front porches. There are little libraries all over Ontario with archives full of official and read-between-the-lines lore. Our own kids seem attached to us in a weird way sometimes, and we wonder what’s stopping them from tearing up the neighbourhood. There is one girl on our block, though, who is a true ring-leader, and we hear her and her girlfriends’ screams up and down the street as they burn off the steam of childhood one ill-advised idea after another.
We’ve spent much of our creative lives trying to figure out what this place is. There isn’t really a language for it, honestly. Aaron’s new book definitely adds a lot to the conversation. Again, it is well worth reading. A small part of our itch to get out of downtown is to travel along Richmond Street north, for example, (saying hello to the excellent Cardinal Books in Birr, of course) and get out of the city into the wild world. Life seems to be kalidescoping inward and we desire to go outward. We’ve heard from some of you that the feeling is very mutual. The mental Pops and Fizzes of the surveillance state are taxing. We can feel the hum of London fade when we head into the road, weirdly being able to hear it more clearly 30 miles away. What this place is deserves attention, and our plan is to take a bit of London with us, in the form of a converted school bus, and see what’s out there in the wilderness.
Look for us on the streets very soon!
Much love,
Jason and Vanessa
We are finalizing our bookmobile for an imminent launch, travelling spooky back roads and school bus marketplaces to get everything right.
