Happy Bloomsday to its adherents. Our cigarette dispenser is stocked with Pomes Penyeach (adjusted for inflation and the size of the coin slot, actually Twoquarterseach). Find a lucky ticket in your pome and win a free copy of a James Joyce novel courtesy of the Consulate-General of Ireland! And from 1:30 on, join poet Kevin Spenst on the sidewalk in front of the shop for a paradoxically casual marathon reading of Ulysses. Any Irish people feeling excluded from the ambient nationalistic deliriums being expressed in the various FIFA FanZones are welcome to establish their own HQ here, provided no mention of sports in general or football in particular is made, though an enormous soccer ball will loom over the proceedings (literally and figuratively). As if this weren’t incentive enough, folding chairs will be provided! This is the only event we promote all year, forgive the brittleness of our marketing department’s copywriting - we’re rusty but still we ReadJoyce!
This Tuesday, we will once again celebrate the exploits of Leopold Bloom, a middle-class Dublin Jew, who on June 16th, 1904, experienced the epic struggles of Odysseus scaled to human size and contained within the modest framework of his everyday in James Joyce’s monumental stream-of-consciousness opus Ulysses. The Consulate-General of Ireland marks Bloomsday in Vancouver with a giveaway of James Joyce’s works: our poetry vending machine will be stocked with Joyce’s Pomes Penyeach, twenty of which (extremely good odds!!) contain a lucky ticket entitling the holder to a free copy of Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Ulysses. One special Pome is actually a 100-letter Thunderword, which can be redeemed for the trickster’s choice: a copy of Finnegans Wake!And from 1:30 on, poet Kevin Spenst will lead a casual sidewalk reading of Ulysses at our storefront. Bring your own copy or purchase one in the shop, and ReadJoyce!
A major sporting event looms. Our special promotion: if the giant inflatable soccer ball over our entrance comes unmoored from its webbing and brains the client as they enter the premises, an immediate 20% discount will be applied to their purchase.
A little proof of life from your increasingly cyber-reticent Hounds - though since nothing in this image was published in the past quarter century, it is hardly the equivalent of holding up today’s newspaper for the ransomer’s photograph. You’ll just have to take our word for it, and so in the interest of full up-to-the-minute window display transparency, please note that the Farsi edition of Tintin sold in the interval between snapping this pic and posting it here, and has since been replaced with a 1970s bilingual souvenir programme of Habs goaltenders. The books may be old but at least you can leave your suspicions of AI-authorship at the door, oui?
POV: you’re walking into The Paper Hound on Saturday, April 25th, which happens to be Canadian Independent Bookstore Day. The sun slants in as if to suggest a cosmic approbation for our bookselling mission. A fire extinguisher sits at the ready in case an overstimulated bibliophile’s ardor results in combustion. A large flour jar from the pantry has been rinsed and re-deployed for the purposes of a draw (the prize is our usual offering: a $50 store gift certificate, a $25 gift card to our neighbours at Saunter, and of course a handsome tote bag). And, per tradition, if you bring a wire coat-hanger, we will twist it into a bespoke bookstand keepsake BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES!
And a special offering this year for our colleagues in the indie bookselling trenches: the first five booksellers to DM us with their shop mailing address will receive one of five exclusive “The price is in pencil on the first page” temporary tattoos, which can be applied to neck, forehead, knuckles, left buttock….whatever anatomical surface is most “customer-facing” in your retail milieu. We ship worldwide!
Does your “Book Haul” require two flippers upraised to convey it over the threshold? Is your “TBR” pile so vertiginous that it obstructs your view and has you sometimes walking off the edge of an Antarctic ice shelf? Do you crack open your charming 1931 copy of Dear Doggie only to find that it faintly wafts an aroma of lanternfish? You might be the ornamental King Penguin greeting customers at the till at The Paper Hound.
A new generation of book buyers seems to be unfamiliar with the venerable custom of marking the price of the book in pencil on the flyleaf. Being asked dozens of times each day “where is the price?” makes a bookseller feel ancient and out of touch, so on an impulse I did something youthful and got the reply tattooed on my neck. It hurt like hell and my sister says I can’t be a bridesmaid at her wedding this summer because of it, but if I never have to answer this question again it was worth the pain and alienation. Like Piaf “je ne regrette rien”, which is good because unlike a pencilled price, this can never be erased!
***An update: This was an April Fool’s joke that wildly exceeded its modest goals. I have neither a neck tattoo nor a sister. Happy to have raised awareness about used bookshop pricing conventions! But leave my imaginary uptight sister alone!***
The fascinating contradictions of the public’s attitude towards second-hand bookshops, here charmingly summarized by perennial Paper Hound favourite Edward Ardizzone.
Happy International Women’s Day from us and this treasured Marina Tsvetaeva-quoting bookmark, printed by the Quartermains at the Keefer St Press, 2002.
Most of the principles of business administration continue to elude us, but we have finally grasped the concept of vertical integration. That’s when you put a few good titles on the very top shelf and make the customer climb.
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