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blogcutterSince today is Independent Bookstores Day, this seems like a good time to provide the second instalment of my Books Tour of Toronto. I did in fact visit a number of interesting independent bookshops during my brief stay in Toronto. Today, the Monkey's Paw bookstore, on Bloor Street West:
http://www.monkeyspaw.com
You won't find any recent mass-market bestsellers here! The place specializes in relatively obscure materials which nonetheless can be quite fascinating, at least to me. They're not necessarily expensive or valuable and at one time were not even particularly rare: think old dictionaries, the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, old Girl Guide and Boy Scout handbooks or little booklets of recipes put out several decades ago by the makers of Jell-o or Baker's Chocolate.
I browsed the shelves at leisure and ended up selecting three that I wanted to buy, as follows:
1) Children's Games Around the World, by Jeanne Clarke Wood and Helen Clarke (Dietz Press, 1963).
The little card inserted in it by the Monkey's Paw aptly describes it thus: "An exhaustive study describing games from 56 countries and illustrated with hundreds of b/w photos". What is not mentioned on the card but becomes abundantly clear at even a cursory glance is that the booklet definitely reflects the social, cultural and political biases of the day, seen through an American and Christian lens. Fascinating, informative reading both on and between the lines!
2) The Pennsylvania German Dialect and the Autobiography of an Old Order Mennonite, by Allan M. Buehler, a resident of Cambridge, Ontario (c. 1977).
This seems to be self-published and yet it's a beautifully-bound, wonderfully eclectic hardcover book (it even has an ISBN). It contains a glossary with German, Pennsylvania German and English equivalents. It has Pennsylvania German proverbs and folklore and photographs, photos of traditional Mennonite clothing and churches and the author's ancestors, not to mention the author's life story (in English and Pennsylvania German) which included being excommunicated from an old-order Mennonite church for holding a seminar on some of the (at the time) newer developments in farm machinery.
3) The Practical Guide to Book Repair and Conservation, by Arthur W. Johnson (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988).
The title really says it all. It's a slim, hardbound volume, just over 100 pages but containing many useful illustrations and diagrams as well as descriptions of bindings, adhesives, even pictures of the various bugs that might attack your books! Good for home use as well as for smallish libraries which do their own repair and restoration on-site, and who still like real books printed on real paper.
Having made my choices of books to buy, I decided to also buy a $4 token and try my luck with the Bibliomat. That's like a vending machine for books except that it's completely opaque so you don't know what you'll get. Here's what I got:
A Man Can Build a House, by Nathalie Sedgwick Colby (NewYork: Harcourt Brace, 1928).
This is not a book I would generally have picked out at a second-hand book sale but as I was obviously fated to own it, I decided to give it a go. And I'm glad I did! While a man does indeed build a house in this book, the novel is really more about women than it is about men. Women being defined almost solely in relation to men. Women who marry for money, women who marry for love, women who marry or don't marry out of a sense of duty or who leave their men or who are widowed. People who rise above their "station" in life or who scandalize their neighbours and become social outcasts. Social class, masters and servants. Double standards abound.
The book centres on the lives of the owner and the employees of Kaufmann's, a huge department store in 1920s-era New York City. Cora considers herself to be a responsible, reliable worker. She "has a way with customers" and trusts it 's only a matter of time before Mr. Kaufmann recognizes the fact and rewards her appropriately. Ruby, on the other hand, is a lazy, common tart but a serious social climber and Cora has finally had enough. "It's me or her!" she tells Mr. Kaufmann. Kaufmann, who is well-meaning but clueless, agrees he must fire Ruby but somehow ends up marrying her. The story unfolds from there. In a way, it's like a good detective story, with the intersecting or clashing means, motives and opportunities of characters for doing the things they do.
At 355 pages long, the book has no chapter breaks although it is arranged in paragraphs of fairly normal length. The last quarter or so of the book was really quite gripping: I could foresee what had to happen but couldn't quite see how we'd get there! As a physical book, it's hardcover, nicely bound and in pretty good condition. Abebooks is selling a copy of it for $35.
I decided to look up a bit of information on the author and it sounds like she had a pretty interesting life. Here's one page I found:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/136875892/nathalie-sedgwick-colby
In my next instalment, I'll share more of my bookish adventures in Toronto.
http://www.monkeyspaw.com
You won't find any recent mass-market bestsellers here! The place specializes in relatively obscure materials which nonetheless can be quite fascinating, at least to me. They're not necessarily expensive or valuable and at one time were not even particularly rare: think old dictionaries, the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, old Girl Guide and Boy Scout handbooks or little booklets of recipes put out several decades ago by the makers of Jell-o or Baker's Chocolate.
I browsed the shelves at leisure and ended up selecting three that I wanted to buy, as follows:
1) Children's Games Around the World, by Jeanne Clarke Wood and Helen Clarke (Dietz Press, 1963).
The little card inserted in it by the Monkey's Paw aptly describes it thus: "An exhaustive study describing games from 56 countries and illustrated with hundreds of b/w photos". What is not mentioned on the card but becomes abundantly clear at even a cursory glance is that the booklet definitely reflects the social, cultural and political biases of the day, seen through an American and Christian lens. Fascinating, informative reading both on and between the lines!
2) The Pennsylvania German Dialect and the Autobiography of an Old Order Mennonite, by Allan M. Buehler, a resident of Cambridge, Ontario (c. 1977).
This seems to be self-published and yet it's a beautifully-bound, wonderfully eclectic hardcover book (it even has an ISBN). It contains a glossary with German, Pennsylvania German and English equivalents. It has Pennsylvania German proverbs and folklore and photographs, photos of traditional Mennonite clothing and churches and the author's ancestors, not to mention the author's life story (in English and Pennsylvania German) which included being excommunicated from an old-order Mennonite church for holding a seminar on some of the (at the time) newer developments in farm machinery.
3) The Practical Guide to Book Repair and Conservation, by Arthur W. Johnson (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988).
The title really says it all. It's a slim, hardbound volume, just over 100 pages but containing many useful illustrations and diagrams as well as descriptions of bindings, adhesives, even pictures of the various bugs that might attack your books! Good for home use as well as for smallish libraries which do their own repair and restoration on-site, and who still like real books printed on real paper.
Having made my choices of books to buy, I decided to also buy a $4 token and try my luck with the Bibliomat. That's like a vending machine for books except that it's completely opaque so you don't know what you'll get. Here's what I got:
A Man Can Build a House, by Nathalie Sedgwick Colby (NewYork: Harcourt Brace, 1928).
This is not a book I would generally have picked out at a second-hand book sale but as I was obviously fated to own it, I decided to give it a go. And I'm glad I did! While a man does indeed build a house in this book, the novel is really more about women than it is about men. Women being defined almost solely in relation to men. Women who marry for money, women who marry for love, women who marry or don't marry out of a sense of duty or who leave their men or who are widowed. People who rise above their "station" in life or who scandalize their neighbours and become social outcasts. Social class, masters and servants. Double standards abound.
The book centres on the lives of the owner and the employees of Kaufmann's, a huge department store in 1920s-era New York City. Cora considers herself to be a responsible, reliable worker. She "has a way with customers" and trusts it 's only a matter of time before Mr. Kaufmann recognizes the fact and rewards her appropriately. Ruby, on the other hand, is a lazy, common tart but a serious social climber and Cora has finally had enough. "It's me or her!" she tells Mr. Kaufmann. Kaufmann, who is well-meaning but clueless, agrees he must fire Ruby but somehow ends up marrying her. The story unfolds from there. In a way, it's like a good detective story, with the intersecting or clashing means, motives and opportunities of characters for doing the things they do.
At 355 pages long, the book has no chapter breaks although it is arranged in paragraphs of fairly normal length. The last quarter or so of the book was really quite gripping: I could foresee what had to happen but couldn't quite see how we'd get there! As a physical book, it's hardcover, nicely bound and in pretty good condition. Abebooks is selling a copy of it for $35.
I decided to look up a bit of information on the author and it sounds like she had a pretty interesting life. Here's one page I found:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/136875892/nathalie-sedgwick-colby
In my next instalment, I'll share more of my bookish adventures in Toronto.
