THEBookshops worth finding in person.
PLACES TO WANDER · ISSUE 001Map: Esri, TomTom, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, © OpenStreetMap contributors and GIS User Community. Selected streets and water; numbered points use the existing address matches. Use directions for your visit.
Browse the drawings. Open a shop for visiting details.
Poetry, art and design, food writing, children’s books, zines: TYPE leaves room for several kinds of reading. The Queen West shop is one of three Toronto locations, with a selection that extends from familiar literary forms to small publications with ambitions of their own.
Poetry beside design beside food. Nothing here waits to be told which shelf it belongs on.
883 Queen Street West, Toronto, ON
The step stool gives the shelves their scale. Ben McNally’s Queen East shop is built for browsing at eye level—and a little above it.
The step stool is the invitation. Reach for the book whose spine you can't quite read.
108 Queen Street East, Toronto, ON M5C 1S6
A book vending machine is a good place to surrender the brief. The Monkey’s Paw deals in old and unusual printed things; its Biblio-Mat supplies the surprise.
Put a coin in the machine. Take what comes. You'll survive it.
1067 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON M6H 1M5
Horror gets a room of its own at Little Ghosts. The Dundas West shop publishes books as well as selling them, with reading subscriptions and a newsletter of reviews and writing notes.
The next unsettling story might already be on the shelf—or still being written.
930 Dundas Street West, Toronto, ON M6J 1W3
Caribbean studies, African Canadian writing and picture books share the shelves at A Different Booklist. Its reach takes in the African and Caribbean diasporas and the Global South.
Go for the shelf you would never have searched. It was built on purpose.
779 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON M5S 0B7
A bookshop puts someone else’s choices in front of you. Spend time with a subject outside your work. See what comes back with you.
Another Story makes room for the books people read together. Its Roncesvalles shop pairs staff selections and Canadian independent presses with a separate service for schools.
The books people read together get their own section here. A conversation can start before the first page.
315 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, ON M6R 2M6
A bookshop with a publishing habit. Flying Books runs its own press and a writing mentorship programme, putting reading and making in the same conversation.
A press, a mentorship and a shop, in that order of ambition. Reading and making share the counter.
784 College Street, Toronto, ON M6G 1C6
Queen Books puts its booksellers’ names on their reading lists. Fiction, nonfiction and children’s books come with several distinct routes through the catalogue, alongside book clubs and events.
A bookseller’s recommendation puts a person behind the choice.
914 Queen Street East, Toronto, ON M4M 1J5
A shelf can make an argument. At SWIPE, books on graphic design, architecture and urbanism sit alongside objects that put those ideas into use.
A book, an object, a printed page. Each began with somebody making a choice.
401 Richmond Street West, Suite B04, Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
The Corporate Artist: The Art of Working Beautifully is Morgan Sage Norman’s book about bringing your creative self to everyday work. It explores how the roles we play, the conversations we have and the decisions we make can become creative practice.
Find your copy ↗Try Every Role Has a Medium (Your Craft) for a different way to look at what you do.
Or turn to Nothing Is Wasted and Rightsizing Importance. Begin with the title that catches you.
Another city. Another way to look.