Dear friends,
We’re often asked, “What kind of books do you buy?”
We’ve come up with all sorts of answers.
Arts and Humanities.
Anything our parents would hate.
High points in all subjects.
Books that will sell.
It really comes down to Beautiful Books for Smart People.
In all subjects and genres there are those titles that glimmer a little more than others. Maybe they have a lovely design. Maybe they are just a tad richer than the rest. Maybe they’re like that one performer in a band who is bringing their game just a little harder than the others.
We can love Canadian Literature, sure, but L.M. Montogmery, in the avalanche of tender female Canadian children’s writers, just pushed things a little more carefully towards something fascinating.
Or in the piles of Beat Literature, a Gary Snyder book of essays just sits a little lighter and more graceful than the rest.
We are not even sure why this is. But as we’ve had 100,000s of books cross our desk, these beautiful titles just sort of reveal themselves like a wallflower at a party you’d like to talk to by the end of the night.
Sure we can say we’d like to specialize in Literature or Occult titles, but in these categories there are a SLEW of titles that would fit the collection of a generalist shop but also SIT THERE like that guy at a party who will not leave or shut up.
But that wallflower.
They’ve been watching the show all night. They know things. They are careful and lovely and gracefully isolated.
They’ve been writing a better book than all of us.
We want to buy THEIR book.
If it’s something you or us would read beneath a tree or in a quiet room or on the bus (lost and lovely in public) then we’d like it.
We seek out those books for the jewels that they are. We offer them to you.
This is what makes what we do a Vocation and not simply a Trade.
If we just traded we’d drown ourselves in a lake.
So please do bring in your beautiful books. We will buy them. We will buy them and give you that secret wink that only book people know.
A wink that says, “You’ve seen it too. You’ve felt beautiful when alone.”
Much love,
Jason & Vanessa
