Dear friends,
Well, this is it. The last big push is upon us, before the holiday comes crashing through like a blood red wave from the elevator doors of the new year. Perhaps this is an omen of new life and good things to come? Perhaps it is an omen of the apocalypse? We can’t but sure, but we will be raising a glass and retiring to the confines of our home to celebrate once this weekend is over. We’ll sit back with Baileys in our coffee as the kids ravage paper-covered boxes and massacre the packaging on useless toys that buzz and beep and swirl. We’ll stuff ourselves at the table and fall asleep, dreaming of the bunker we’ll dig in the backyard this spring to fend off the forces of chaos.
It’s been a year of change for us. After so many life altering circumstances and decisions, we’ve landed on our feet, and you came with us. We think of where we were the last time a Christmas email was written versus now, and we sit in quiet amazement. This little trade, over 500 years old, has many forms and enthusiasms. An office, a co-share, a storefront, a bus, and now here: a collaboration of entrepreneurs creating something new and incredible out of that bloody chaos. Bookselling is not for the faint of heart. We’ve been fortunate to make a living at it for nearly three decades, despite many adversities, and you’ve been our partners in this probably ludicrous endeavour. Thank you.
We owe so much to our colleagues here at the Vintage Showcase. They came up with an amazing idea and welcomed us along. While we’ve now formed a strange, urban family of misfit toys, and it feels like we’ve been together forever, it really was just this past March that we were painting and prepping, full of the promise that we’d be selling books in a permanent location again. Lenore couldn’t even crawl yet. We had her in a playpen rolling around like a puppy while we filled in wall cracks for primer. The transformation happened over night, it seemed. We suddenly had bookcases, books, a place to park the bookmobile, and, come opening day, an embarrassment of friends and customers both new and old, welcoming the latest iteration of our decade-long project. We were even able to buy new sweaters for the Christmas season so Jason doesn’t look so much like a poor country parson as usual. (Let’s face it: this child of Thorndale can’t escape the parsonage look).
What will 2025 bring? Only the spirits know. They have such a deep and confounding sense of humour that we have given up trying to predict their dreams. All we know is that we will continue with our travelling circus of literacy for at least another decade or so. Jason is unemployable otherwise. We will write books. We will sell books. Lenore will learn to recite Blake, terrifying us awake each morning:
TYGER TYGER BURNING BRIGHT IN THE FORESTS OF THE NIGHT!!!
She’ll shave years off our life with the fright of it.
In short, nothing will change. Everything will change.
Here’s to a good year friends. We look forward to seeing you in the Mandela Effect madness of 2025.
Much love,
Jason & Vanessa
