@ PFB

PFB 3.0 Now Open

2012-01-20T10:46:00.000-08:00

PFB 3.0, 1830 Commercial Drive, beween 2nd and 3rd on the east side of the street, should be open today from noon-7pm, and every following day from 11am-7pm. Phone should be working as of this morning, too: 604.251.4311.

Lots of space yet to be filled; we will be happy to look at any quantity of books for potential purchase, any time up until 5pm, 7 days a week. No need to make an appointment; one of our buyers will be happy to take a look at whatever you've got.

Holiday Hours

2011-12-30T18:29:00.000-08:00

PFB Main Street and PFB Kits will close on Saturday December 31st at 5pm.

PFB Main Street and PFB Kits will be closed on Sunday January 1st, 2012. Reason: packing for PFB Commercial Drive.

Regular hours resume Monday January 2nd 2012 at 10am (Main) and 11am (Kits).

God willing, PFB Commercial Drive (1830 Commercial, between 2nd and 3rd, on the east side of the street) will be up and running by the 20th of January. News here (and maybe a few photographs) as things develop.

Breaking News: PFB 3.0

2011-12-05T15:44:00.000-08:00

1830 Commercial Drive.

New and used books, side by side.

January 2012.

How Can We Help?

2011-12-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

With Christmas fast approaching, an instant recap of what my microeconomics course calls "sustainable competitive advantage":

What's more, if you order $100 or more of books from us at once, we'll deliver your books to your home or office, anywhere in the city of Vancouver, at no additional charge.

Q: How do you guys make any money at this?

A: By selling lots and lots of books, and by receiving an extra bit of margin from our favorite suppliers, based on the steadily increasing volume of our orders.

Q: Phone orders?

A: You bet. Visa, MC, AmEx. Or our wireless debit machine at your door, just like the pizza guy.

Most special orders from come as fast, or faster, than when ordered online.

Example: book ordered from Big Canadian Chain and shipped from Ontario to Vancouver: 5 to 7 working days. Book ordered from PFB and shipped from Vancouver-based or Western Canadian supplier: 2 or 3 days. Plus, when you order from us (or any other real bookstore, for that matter), you never pay shipping, handling, or border brokerage. Nor do you have to wait in a 55-person lineup at your local Canada Post outlet, listening to Phil Collins sing "The Little Drummer Boy."

We hope you'll keep us in mind this holiday season. If you have any questions about any book-related issue, please phone or email. We are always happy to hear from you.

Nomados Book Launch Tonight @ Main Street

2011-11-19T12:02:00.000-08:00

Please join Nomados Literary Publishers as we launch four new books: Sonnets : Louise Labé by Edward Byrne; Lever by Stephen Collis; Twenty Objects for the New World by Alex Leslie; and that stays news by Nikki Reimer. Readings by the authors and a mystery guest.

Saturday November 19 at Pulpfiction Books 2422 Main, 7-9 pm. Light refreshments. FREE.

Associated with the Kootenay School of Writing, Edward Byrne is the author of Aporia and Beautiful Lies. He is also the co-editor of The Recovery of the Public World: Essays on Poetics in Honour of Robin Blaser.

Stephen Collis' most recent book of poetry, On the Material, won the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. He is currently writing a book about change.

Alex Leslie's collection of short stories People Who Disappear will be published by Freehand Books in April. Winner of a CBC Literary Award and a Gold National Magazine Award, she has published in literary journals throughout Canada.

Nikki Reimer's book [sic] was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert award. Her chapbooks include haute action material and fist things first, and her work has appeared in The Capilano Review, Dandelion, Poetry is Dead, West Coast Line, Matrix, PRISM, and other magazines. She is currently Managing Editor
of EVENT magazine.

CJB's Top 10 Ever Fiction List

2011-11-05T15:04:00.000-07:00

A client requests, and I warily supply, a list of my all-time top ten favorite novels. Your mileage may vary.

1. Paul Bowles, Let It Come Down (1952)

2. Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling (1966)

3. M. John Harrison, Light (2001)

4. Russell Hoban, Turtle Diary (1975)

5. Denis Johnson, Fiskadoro (1985)

6. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, tr. Lydia Davis (1857 / 2011)

7. Cormac McCarthy, Suttree (1979)

8. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1877 / 2000)

9. Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (1962) or A Scanner Darkly (1977)

10. Pete Dexter, God's Pocket (1983)

Breaking News: Free Delivery; Extra Savings

2011-11-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

Most paid-in-advance special orders from us are now 30% off Canadian cover price. Ever feel like you had to buy something on-line, or from a corporate giant, because you suspected that buying local & independent was going to cost you more? That's a choice you no longer have to make.

What's more, if you order $100 or more of books from us at once, we'll deliver your books to your home or office, anywhere in the city of Vancouver, at no additional charge.

Q: How do you guys make any money at this?

A: By selling lots and lots of books, and by receiving an extra bit of margin from our favorite suppliers, based on the steadily increasing volume of our orders.

Q: Phone orders?

A: You bet. Visa, MC, AmEx. Or our wireless debit machine at your door, just like the pizza guy.

Q: Can my friend in Nigeria order 500 copies of the new Steve Jobs bio?

A: No.

Cinemasewer #3 Launch Party!

2011-10-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

This coming Saturday, October 22nd, 7-10pm. Cash bar. Mr. Bougie will be in the house peddling his latest collection (above), while his extraordinarily talented wife, Rebecca Dart, will be selling copies of her new sketchbook, Battle Kittens, and some other publications.

We're (Still) Hiring

2011-08-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

Pulpfiction Books, Vancouver's largest independent used & new bookstore, is hiring for a full-time (40 hr/week) position, available immediately, and two part-time (20-30 hr/week) positions with flexible start dates later on in the fall.

Successful candidates will have:

• AT LEAST 2 years of used/new bookselling experience, with additional experience warmly welcomed. Please note that bookselling experience is ESSENTIAL for these current positions; while we *theoretically* welcome resumes from folks with no bookstore experience at all, we're super-busy at the moment and have no time to train new staff from scratch.

• The ability to think quickly under pressure in an absurdly busy retail environment, and abundant common sense.

• Deep familiarity with relatively obscure authors and micro-genres. If Kenneth Patchen, the Strugatsky brothers, Jack Ketchum, Tucker Coe, Maureen McHugh and Victor Serge are familiar to you, you'll probably get along just fine with us.

• Previous cash handling experience and basic familiarity with a variety of record-keeping systems and databases (Book Manager; Word; Excel; Filemaker)

• Patience in the face of endless requests for books you've never heard of (every day, guaranteed!). And bibliographic research skills, that will help you educate yourself, your co-workers, and customers about the same.

• The ability to work a variety of rotating shifts, including evenings, weekends, and holidays.

• The willingness to accept responsibility, and the ability to work unsupervised for long periods of time.

• A positive, upbeat, non-Type A personality.

• No serious physical ailments. All of our positions involve standing on your feet for long periods of time, plus frequently lifting 30-40 pound boxes of books.

• A minimum time commitment of one year.

We offer:

• Competitive compensation. None of our positions are minimum wage.

• Fully paid extended medical benefits, including dental, for full-time staff.

• An unparalleled opportunity to work in a creative, entrepreneurial, non-corporate environment.

• The opportunity to take on increasing responsibilities, and to be compensated accordingly.

If interested in either full- or part-time work, please send a detailed resume, including the names and contact details of at least three current references, to pulpbook@gmail.com. Please, NO phone calls or walk-in requests for work. Please also note that our part-time positions are a MINIMUM of 20 hours a week, and probably not suitable for those enrolled full time in school.

We thank all applicants in advance for their interest, but regret that we will be only able to contact selected applicants for interviews.

PFB Is Hiring

2011-08-22T14:54:00.000-07:00

We're looking for a candidate for a full time, 40 hour a week position. The successful applicant will have substantial new and/or used bookstore experience, or will be able to fake it under pressure. Perks: above-average compensation, health plan. Disadvantage: eccentric manic-depressive boss. Resumes in any format to pulpbook@gmail.com. Please, no phone calls or walk-in requests for employment.

Winter is Coming

2011-07-09T15:07:00.000-07:00

2 days and counting...

Our Main Street shop will be open until midnight on Monday night, so that we can begin selling George R.R. Martin's A DANCE WITH DRAGONS at 12:01am on Tuesday, July 12th.

20% off Canadian cover price, 30% off if you COME IN COSTUME (which cardboard "armor" isn't).

More New Books @ Used Prices

2011-06-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

We just bought the stock of a bankrupt BC bookstore. About 16 boxes of brand new books, which we're selling at used prices. Lots of recent literature, visual art, books about BC, First Nations studies, & etc. As always, limited quantities.

Big 11th Anniversary Sale. TWO DAYS ONLY: June 11 & 12

2011-06-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

We turned ten last year, and I promised we'd do something to celebrate and then promptly forgot about it due to the usual deluge of new and used books, overtly optimistic expansion plans, etc. etc. So we're doing something for our 11th birthday instead.

Even though we are notorious for never having sales we're having one this weekend:

$200+ of books (new & used) = 50% off all used stock

That's like getting $100 of used books for free! New books count toward the $200, but don't get any additional love.

The fine print: Saturday and Sunday only at both locations. No trade slips, hold shelf items, gift certificates or half-assed "negotiation." Dealers welcome if we already know and like you. If we don't. . .

Oh, and we're also going to have a (free) barbecue sometime before the end of the summer. Details forthcoming.

(And, just because someone will ask: 2011 is shaping up to be the busiest in our ten-years-and-counting history, and the image above has been carefully selected in the spirit of "playfully flaunted irony")

We're 11 Years Old on Sunday

2011-06-09T18:16:00.000-07:00

Stay tuned for a big announcement tomorrow about this time. No, we're not closing or adding a new location.

Stephen Collis & Garry Thomas Morse @ PFB

2011-06-02T16:55:00.000-07:00

Stephen Collis and Garry Thomas Morse will read from their work @ PFB on Thursday, June 9, 2011.

Reading starts at 7:30pm, Thursday, June 9, 2011. Limited seating, arrive early if you want a chair!

Stephen Collis is the author of Mine, Anarchive, The Commons, Phyllis Webb and the Common Good, Through Words of Others: Susan Howe and Anarcho-Scholasticism, and On the Material. A member of the Kootenay School of Writing, he teaches American literature, poetry, and poetics at Simon Fraser University, while continuing his work on “The Barricades Project.” His most recent book On the Material, is the winner of the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.

Garry Thomas Morse is the author of Transversals for Orpheus, Streams, Death in Vancouver, After Jack, and aDiscovery Passages. In 2008, he received the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Artist. His new book Discovery Passages is the first collection of poetry about the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) First Nations.

Are Books an Endangered Species?

2011-05-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

Essential reading:

"The books that publishers choose are almost entirely of zero interest to actual book-buyers. After 9/11, there were a ton of books about 9/11, which nobody bought. Same thing with the Iraq War, the rise of Obama, the economic meltdown, and even, inexplicably, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Or the books are rehashed business lessons, religious truths, sports clichés, motivational babble, exercise fads, weight loss techniques, or pandering to the political left or the right. Who wants these books? Almost no one.

Most of the major publishers today are owned by international conglomerates who, at some point, will awaken to the realization that English majors in their employ are spending millions of dollars on books that no one wants to read. [For "English majors" I'd substitute "demographic marketers," but that's a minor point]

As a result, few trade books earn real money for the publisher (and certainly not for the author!). That’s because the publisher bears the entire risk of buying, editing, printing, and shipping copies of the book to bookstores all over the country on a 100% returnable basis. If your local Barnes & Noble doesn’t sell a particular book, it goes right back to the publisher, at the publisher’s shipping cost, for a full refund. [Again, not quite: it goes right back to the publisher for a partial credit against future purchases. But the "key takeaway" here is that much of the publisher's and retailer's profit ends up in the hands of the shippers who move the huge quantities of heavy books no one wants back and forth across the country] Especially in the Internet era, you can’t make money putting books on trucks and hoping someone buys them.

At [Book Expo America] next week, the attendees will solemnly discuss the latest trends, discuss how to get 70-year-old authors to use Twitter, and generally party like it’s 1989. But for traditional publishing, the party’s over. They just don’t want to realize that it’s time to turn out the lights."

[Also pertinent: a recent conversation with my old nemesis, Penguin Canada. We ordered a travel guide for a client who was heading to India on short notice. Penguin, after the usual 10 to 14 day wait, shipped an entirely different book, and I called to complain on behalf of my client, who was getting on a plane in two days and was understandably pissed:

PFB [after relaying the whole sordid tale]: What should I tell my client?

PENGUIN CANADA: Tell her these things happen.

We sourced the guidebook elsewhere, and the client boarded her plane book in hand. But the strong impression I took away from my telephone conversation was that, as with any monopoly, Penguin really felt that the client and I had no other option other than to wait for Penguin to fix the problem it had created in its own sweet time. This is an attitude that belongs to 1965, not 2011, and these days I feel more and more like a small, warm-blooded mammal running around the towering, but clearly unhealthy feet of such dinosaurs as Penguin and Random House and the Hachette Book Group]

BREAKING NEWS

2011-05-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

We just bought the best collection in the shop's history. If you don't come in every week, this weekend might be a good time for a visit.

Electronic Publishing Bingo

2011-05-03T16:32:00.000-07:00

(via John Scalzi)

Building Steam With a Grain of Salt

2011-03-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

Not many updates here this month because it's been very, very busy at both shops, and blogging always comes at the tail end of a long list of higher value activities, including:

• Doubling the number of new books available at our Kitsilano location (3133 West Broadway) and dramatically increasing the number of new cultural studies and philosophy titles at Main Street

• Better organizing the stock at both shops (no more half-empty shelves, books piled one on top of the other, or huge overflowing stacks of stuff in the aisles)

• Expanding our book distribution network once again. We can now obtain 99% of the books currently in print in North America in approximately 5-10 working days, typically at US$ cover price and often less. Unlike Amazon, Chapters/Indigo and the rest of the big online outfits, we never charge for shipping. And, if you special order $100 or more of new books at once, we'll promptly deliver your books to your home or office at no additional charge.

Interested? Give us a call or drop in.

We Can Haz Twitter?

2011-03-16T09:24:00.000-07:00

www.twitter.com/pfbvan

The usual sporadic updates, as time permits.

(Image courtesy Stasia's iPhone)

Coming Soon: George R.R. Martin's A DANCE WITH DRAGONS

2011-03-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

According to GRRM's website, A Dance With Dragons will (finally) be available for sale on Tuesday July 12th, 2011.

Our Main Street location will be open until midnight on Monday July 11th, 2011, and copies of DWD will promptly go on sale at 1 minute past midnight.

All copies of DWD will be 20% off Canadian cover price. We'll even provide an extra 10% discount if you come dressed as a "Song of Ice & Fire" character, or with alcohol for the hard-working late night staff.

We anticipate a block-long lineup, and have some festivities planned to keep everyone entertained during the long slow midnight countdown.

(We're already taking special orders for Dance, in case you can't make it in at midnight, or want to ensure that you receive a first edition, first printing).

"I Can Order That Out-of-Print Book Myself Online!"

2011-03-10T16:40:00.000-08:00

Or...we could source the book for you, arrange for shipping, customs duties, & etc., and usually negotiate a better price in the process.

We just obtained a mint first edition copy of Hunter S. Thompson's very rare novella, Screwjack (#1/300 signed and numbered copies) for a client. After taxes, shipping, and our finder's fee, our client saved approximately $300 USD over the prices quoted for similar condition copies by online sellers.

If you are thinking of ordering a scarce, out-of-print, or collectable book, drop in; we can definitely save you some time, and probably some money, too.

Totally Off-Topic Survey

2011-03-04T12:23:00.000-08:00

Readership-survey questions:

1. How much would you happily pay for a doughnut made with premium ingredients? (eg., something tasty, and of good quality, but not necessarily certified green, organic, or "locavore")

2. What are some of your favorite doughnut flavors?

3. Favorite doughnut spot in Vancouver? Canada? The US?

Replies of any length, even wise-ass ones, welcome.

Eileen Myles' INFERNO: A POET'S NOVEL

2011-03-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

In response to customer requests, and by special arrangement with New York's OR Books, we're going to be carrying copies of Eileen Myles' Inferno: A Poet's Novel up at Main Street. (Some other recent Myles titles, including Sorry, Tree (Wave Books, Seattle) and her excellent The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art are already on the shelves). Inferno is not readily available in Canada, and we expect it to sell briskly. Want a copy? Call us; we'll save a copy for you and will phone or email when it arrives. $16CDN = US cover price!

Judgmental Bookseller Ostrich

2011-02-25T12:11:00.000-08:00

Lots more here.

(via Constant Reader Reiko T., with major thanks)

Alexander MacLeod Reads @ PFB

2011-02-22T21:38:00.000-08:00

Halifax resident Alexander Macleod will read from his Giller shortlisted debut collection of short fiction up at Main Street this Thursday, February 24th, from 7-9:30pm as part of the UBC Creative Writing program's monthly Locution series. Admission's free, but we expect this event to be way beyond capacity. If you want to get a seat, or to even squeeze in the front door, plan on arriving by 6:45pm at the latest. Books and beverages available as usual.

In other news:

Q: Why is this blog never updated?

A: It's nuts here. We probably took in between 400 and 500 books today, and sold just as many. 2011 is definitely turning out to be the busiest year in our going-on 11-year history. Blogging's fun, but it comes way behind buying books, selling books, and sourcing books for customers.

Q: Still taking special orders?

A: Every day, like mad. We've even added some new distributors so that we can order scarce academic stuff, and mysteries, science fiction and fantasy titles previously only available in the UK. And we're starting to experiment with sourcing out-of-print and antiquarian books on demand. Want a $2500 US limited edition Hunter S. Thompson hardcover? Come see us. Not only can we get it for you, we can likely save you some money in the process.

Q: Kindle...Amazon...Nook...e-books?

A: Not much of an issue here. We're busy, happy, packed to the rafters with interesting stuff, and hiring new staff to keep up with the demand. New lights installed at Main Street -- big hydro bill savings; more easily visible shelves! -- and lots of new titles in at Kits.

Q: Still buying?

A: Definitely! Every day at both stores, up until 5pm.

New Arrivals: Twain, Bernhard, Used Books x 1200

2010-12-07T13:19:00.000-08:00

In across the counter: Mark Twain's brand new award-winning uncensored 750 page doorstop, Thomas Bernard's long essay My Prizes (first appearance in English!), and 40-odd boxes of miscellaneous fiction and nonfiction, just unpacked this morning and currently piled 6' high end-to-end on the desk Plus some leatherbound gold-edged Franklin Library classics, a really nice hardcover edition of Marco Polo's Travels, and $800 of lumber for the new shelves that will be going up in the front room early next week.

NYT "10 Best Books of 2010" List Out; PFB Underwhelmed

2010-12-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

The NYT, apparently following the Giller Prize's lead of showering praise on the obscure, the unorderable, and the absurdly expensive, coughs up its Best-of-the-Year list for 2010. (With one brief concession to popular taste).

The Guardian has a longer and much more interesting list. Unsurprisingly, that Franzen guy is on it, too.

The PFB Best-of-2010 list isn't really objective or scientific, but here it is anyway:

John Valliant, The Tiger

Lydia Davis (trans.), Madame Bovary

Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

Michael Lewis, The Big Short

Daniel Clowes, Wilson

Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?

Sam Lipsyte, The Ask

Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad

Most of these are here on the shelves right now.

Live @ PFB: Sarah Leavitt

2010-12-01T11:03:00.000-08:00

Our friend, long-time customer, and recent media celebrity Sarah Leavitt will be presenting a multi-media slideshow/reading based on her critically acclaimed new autobiographical graphic novel, Tangles, in Main Street's front room this Thursday, December 2nd, as part of the UBC Creative Writing Department's monthly Locution event. Doors @ 6:45pm; books and beverages available behind the counter.

Out Of Print Tees

2010-11-29T12:34:00.000-08:00

"Out of Print celebrates the world’s great stories through fashion. Our shirts feature iconic and often out of print book covers. Some are classics, some are just curious enough to make great t-shirts, but all are striking works of art.

We work closely with artists, authors and publishers to license the content that ends up in our collections. Each shirt is treated to feel soft and worn like a well-read book.

In addition to spreading the joy of reading through our tees, we acknowledge that many parts of the world don't have access to books at all. We are working to change that. For each shirt we sell, one book is donated to a community in need through our partner Books For Africa."

(via Mr. Kurtis Kolt)

Snowbound? Not Us!

2010-11-20T09:47:00.000-08:00

Last night's big storm dumped a few inches here at Main Street and along West Broadway, but this morning the roads are plowed, the sidewalks are cleared, and we're here with the lights on, just waiting for you.

Davis' Flaubert

2010-11-17T13:02:00.000-08:00

Is it too soon to start nominating best-of-the-year titles? Lydia Davis' long awaited translation of Flaubert is out and it's a doozy. I read it once on a recent flight to Los Angeles and once on the way back, undistracted by the snowcapped volcanoes and flake-blue lakes passing by below. Davis' English sentences are flinty and precise. Coupled with Flaubert's exemplary psychological realism -- every character in the book is broken differently, and every word they speak affirms it -- it's an unbeatable combination.

New @ PFB: Rushdie's Luka, NOMA, Jay-Z

2010-11-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

Windy bright Tuesday morning new arrivals: Luka and the Fire of Life, Salman Rushdie's pseudo-sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories; Phaidon's humongous NOMA Cookbook (hyper-local Icelandic cuisine; hyper-abstract presentation); Jay-Z's oddball biography/lyrics collection, & etc. Plus a great whack of long out-of-print H.R. Giger art books and catalogs.

At Par

2010-11-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

Lots of hue and cry in the media today re: Canadian-US$ exchange rates, big trouble ahead for Canadian retailers, "Black Christmas," lookout below, yadda yadda yadda.

99% of our new books and special orders are already cheaper than US cover price. And will continue to be.

And when publishers extend extra discounts to us, or print one price on a book, and charge us a lower one, we'll pass our savings on to you.

Lots of new stuff in house over the last few days, too, including Stephen King's new collection of nasty, gloomy novellas (above), Paul Auster's latest novel, a new Thomas Bernhard collection, Lydia Davis' superb translation of Madame Bovary, & etc. Plus about 500 new science fiction and fantasy paperbacks.

Free Movie Passes @ Main Street

2010-10-26T17:59:00.000-07:00

We just received 4 double passes to a preview -- tomorrow night -- of the new Stieg Larsson movie. They're on the desk at Main Street. One pass per person. No phone or internet "holds." First come, first served. No nonsense, bribes, or pleading. Purchase appreciated but not required.

Massive New Iain M. Banks Culture Novel Now in Stock

2010-10-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

700-odd pages of stylish widescreen space opera. Early reviews claim a return to form after last year's deeply disappointing Transition, which, although heavily promoted by Orbit as an "M. Banks" novel, read like a sequel to the much-remaindered The Business, and also, like The Business, wasn't any good.

Big Folio Society Collection in @ Main Street

2010-10-08T19:21:00.000-07:00

About 80 different Folio Society titles, heavy on English and ancient history, including some nice multi-volume sets. All with slipcases, as originally issued. Out in New Arrivals up at Main Street right now.

Best of Vancouver

2010-09-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the readers of the Georgia Straight newspaper for voting us Vancouver's 2nd best bookstore, new or used, in the annual Reader's Choice poll. This is the first time we have ever placed as a "New" bookstore, and we're enormously stoked to be listed alongside longtime Lower Mainland favorites Book Warehouse and Banyen Books.

In other news, it's still incredibly busy here. We've taken in close to 2000 used books in the last three days, and the new arrivals are neatly stacked (well, relatively neatly stacked) all over the floor, and waist-high in front of the "New Arrivals" bookshelves, which are still full, despite having been emptied twice since the weekend.

We have some interesting new books in house, including signed first Canadian editions of John Valliant's The Tiger, available on a first-come, first-served basis. And program guides for the Vancouver International Film Festival ($10, inc. HST).

It's also Locution tonight, a monthly spoken-word event that we host for the UBC Creative Writing department. Tonight from 7-9pm four different UBC MFAs are reading up at Main Street, along with special guest Lee Henderson, author of The Man Game.

Oh, and it's CSA Space's fifth anniversary today too, with a new exhibition of photographs by neighbor and friend Mike Grill. 6-9pm upstairs from the bookstore at #5-2414 Main Street. Drop by, drink a frosty cold beverage, elbow your way through the crowds.

All Those Years Shopping at Independent Bookstore Wasted

2010-09-14T16:54:00.000-07:00

"'I put so much time into supporting my quirky local bookshop, with its charming window displays and us-versus-the-world attitude, and for what?' said Brear, adding that she even went through the trouble of befriending the husband-and-wife owners and their cat, Ulysses. 'Countless hours wasted quietly browsing their shelves when I could have just ordered this shit for way cheaper online.'"

Yet More New Arrivals: Folio Society; Easton Press

2010-09-13T19:20:00.001-07:00

Absurdly busy in both shops all weekend long. Waist high stacks of books three deep on the floor in front of New Arrivals. Two separate vendors with great stacks of used graphic novels, a nice set of leather bound, 14K gold-edged Easton Press hardcovers, a Folio Society Philip Pullman 3-volume slipcased set, some large format art books and cookbooks, and hundreds of other interesting things.

(Image: Easton Press On The Origin of Species)

Big McSweeney's Collection in @ Main Street

2010-09-13T19:14:00.000-07:00

Lots of back issues, maybe twenty in all, including a first printing of #3; #11 with the DVD; the Comics issue with the scarce wrapper and the zine inserts; the issue disguised as a pile of junk mail; the fold-out slipcase with the comb; the tiny books in the shallow tray; and many more. Plus a big stack of Believer back issues, and a few books signed by Dave Eggers, including the somewhat scarce Sacrament (a rewritten-and-expanded version of You Shall Know Our Velocity).

On Sale Tomorrow @ 10am: @GreatDismal's Latest

2010-09-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

A Busy Few Weeks @ Both Shops

2010-09-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Early September, back-to-school rush, lots going on in both shops:

• Approx. 750 new graphic novels priced and out on Main Street's shelves

• Approx. 100 "For Beginners" books priced and out at Main Street

• Big collection of hardcover Heidegger titles, including a number of rare and out-of-print titles, purchased and on display behind the desk at Main Street

• Lots of new books in Kitsilano. New books are selling really well in Kits, and we've recently expanded the selection there, so that all the new titles we carry are now available at both stores. No more crosstown treks! Also, lots of new bookshelves going in at Kits as we speak.

• New lease in Kits! We really like the neighborhood, and plan to be in the 3100 block of West Broadway for the forseeable future. Also, huge shout-out to our new neighbors at Baugette & Co., located at 3273 West Broadway, for their awesome coffees, breads, croissants, pastries and chicken-salad sandwiches. Highly recommended by our staff, and a great addition to the neighborhood.

• Lots of quality used stock in Kits. Very few of our friendly West Side competitors seem to be doing much cash buying these days, and we're seeing lots of prime material. Hesse, Vonnegut, Murakami, Palahniuk, Bukowski & multiple etc.

As always, we're buying and trading books on a daily basis. No need to make an appointment; if you're in before 5pm, we will be happy to consider your books for cash purchase or trade. No limit on quantity; we have the interest and financial wherewithal to deal with collections of any size, and are always glad to see you.

"Say, Did You Guys Get Any New Books In?"

2010-08-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

Rebecca vs. the stack. Photograph by Keith Dunsmuir.

Huge Used Graphic Novel Collection In @ Main Street

2010-08-24T16:58:00.001-07:00

We just bought a massive collection of used graphic novels. Approximately 750 different books, all in exceptionally good condition, many like new. Mostly recent (1990+) Marvel and DC/Vertigo titles, with a smattering of independents, manga, anime art books, and some locally published stuff (Steve Rolston; Rebecca Dart's great Rabbithead) Some are on the shelves right now, and we'll be adding more every day until they're all out, which will probably take a week or more of careful cleaning and pricing.

Better Book Titles

2010-08-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

Lots more here

(Courtesy Peter Culley)

Mystery Section Rebuilt @ Main Street

2010-08-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

Several boxes of interesting stuff showed up yesterday for the new mysteries section, including a complete run of Sjowall/Wahloo's Martin Beck mysteries (originally published in English in the 1970s, inexplicably out of print for years, and the blueprint for every successful Northern European mystery/thriller since then, Dragon Tattoo included), a run of Henning Menkell's Inspector Wallander books, and -- not to neglect North America! -- lots of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, a nice reissue of Jim Nesbit's Lethal Injection, and Savages, the new California noir thriller by staff favorite Don Winslow.

International Relations 101

2010-08-08T16:08:00.000-07:00

Dear PFB,

I am Mrs Chantel Plentty from United Arab Emirate. I want to place an order from you. I know the difficulties encountered when shipping internationally, But that will not be a problem because i am registered with a shipping company whom i have used severally without any delay nor problems with my goods. Before i place these order, i want you to notify me if i am able to place the order and most important: If i can make payment with my credit cards MC/Visa because that is the only way we are set for payment now without no delay. I don't place online order can i e-mail my ORDER needed then you can give me a quote here? Looking forward to your swift response then we can proceed further as soon as possible.

Warmest Regards,

Mrs Chantel Plentty

Shipping Address:
1611 Mina Road Al Mariah (Near Sharjah Cinema)
Sharjah. Post Code 211
United Arab Emirate
___________________________________

Dear Mrs. Chantel Plentty,

Yes we can! Of course! Absolutely! But FIRST you will need to send us a photograph of your driving license, so we know that you are not a Known Terrorist or an Internet Scam Artist.

Please be sure to send pictures of BOTH SIDES of your license. If you can't take a photograph, you can also DRAW a picture of your license and send that in to us in its place.

Please also send us a photograph or drawing of 1611 Mina Road Al Mariah (Near Sharjah Cinema), so we know that it is actually your Real Address, and not a Post Office Drop Box.

Once you have sent these things we will send a International Customs Export Form for you to fill out and your order will be On Its Way!

Warm regards,

William "Billy" Lessingwell
International Orders Expediting Department
@ PFB

Our Review of the "Twilight" Franchise

2010-08-06T13:46:00.000-07:00

Work Available @ PFB

2010-07-19T14:18:00.000-07:00

We might be hiring a part-time position(s) in the next month or two, and, to that end, are now doing the looking-at-resumes thing.

The successful applicant(s) will:

• Be able to work 14-24 hours a week at Main Street and Kitsilano, including weekends and evenings

• Read widely and eclectically, be able to think critically, and be able to confidently conduct basic Internet and paper-based research

• Be comfortable in a busy and occasionally confrontational work environment (eg., be able to confidently decline trashed "trades" and visibly stolen books)

• Have previous new and/or used bookstore experience

• Be able to work well independently, without direct supervision

Benefits include working with a great group of people, competitive compensation, and a hefty discount on used/new books.

Please feel free to drop off your resume at either store, or email it to pulpbook@gmail.com. Please, no phone calls or walk-in requests for work -- "You guys doin' any hiring?" -- sans resume.

KEATON, by Elizabeth Bishop

2010-07-19T11:01:00.001-07:00

(enlarge)

Watch The Skies!

2010-07-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

There's a pigeon nesting under Main Street's awning, right above the bargain table. I have mixed feelings:

1. It's essentially a rat with wings, BUT

2. It's all fluffed up and making pleasant cooing noises, AND

3. It's amusing to watch its mate show up with potential nest additions (bus tickets; twigs; torn scraps of Metro and 24 Hours) which are then rejected and flung down on the sidewalk.

So the pigeon stays for now. I'll take the nest down once the fledglings can fly.

Moral of the story: if you plan to browse the bargain table, bring a hat.

(Today's soundtrack: Genesis, Pigeons)

Why Indie Bookstores Matter, by Charles Demers

2010-07-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

"Capitalism in Vancouver is an especially cruel mistress—by my last count there are only four business models left in this town that are guaranteed to turn a profit: sushi restaurant, grow-op, yoga gear supplier and being Bob Rennie.

So in a city where every day businesses (and individuals) fail and fall through the cracks, it’s not necessarily obvious why Vancouverites should care that their independent bookstores are dying.

The story generally goes that there are a tiny handful of people for whom the need to save these stores is a given, an article of faith; the rest of the population doesn’t particularly care, reads only a book or two a year anyway and doesn’t mind picking them up at a big-chain ‘bookstore’ that specializes in aromatherapy and exercise balls.

I’ve never been fully convinced of this pessimistic scenario. I’m constantly hearing about how nobody reads anymore, and yet everywhere I go people are reading. Every day, newspapers paint the picture of book-reading as a fringe activity, while their business pages describe how the richest companies in the world are jockeying for position in a race to provide people the electronic books of the near and distant future. So I think books do matter to people—the question is whether bookstores do.

Well, they do—and not just on the level of civic pride, though that’s part of it. Seattle is a great book town not only because of its Koolhaas library, but because of Left Bank Books and the Elliot Bay Book Company. It’s hard to imagine Victoria without Munro’s, or San Francisco without City Lights. Fact is, cool cities have cool, non-chain bookstores."

(via Megaphone)

Honest Bookseller? GUILTY!

2010-07-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

"During the three-week trial Scott [...] painted himself as an honest, if eccentric, book dealer.

He claimed to have been told of the [First Folio] by a Cuban waitress called Heidi Garcia Rios, who introduced him to its owner, a retired major. It had been kept in a wooden Bible box for a century, Scott professed. He said he offered to take it to the Folger Library for authentication as a favour.

When police came to arrest him, Scott told officers: 'I'm an alcoholic and need two bottles of top-of-the-range champagne every day, but only after 6pm. I hope you have some in the police station.'"

Hey Penguin Canada!

2010-07-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

How high were those "new" Stieg Larsson hardcovers that you recently shipped to us dropped from? TWENTY FEET? Their shiny metallic DJs look like tinfoil! WHY ARE YOU STILL IN BUSINESS?

YOU'RE The Audience

2010-07-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

"Tin House, which is both a book publisher and a literary magazine publisher, recently announced that any unsolicited manuscript received by their book publishing arm that is postmarked between Aug. 1-Nov. 30 must be accompanied by a bookstore receipt for the purchase of either a hardcover or paperback book. The same requirement is made of any unsolicited submission received at Tin House magazine that is postmarked between Sept. 1 and Dec. 30. Any writer who cannot afford to purchase a book or cannot get to any bricks-or-mortar bookstore may have the requirement waived by writing in haiku or in one sentence -- of 100 words or fewer -- why they could not purchase a book. A receipt for the purchase of a digital book will be accepted only if the writer explains why he or she did not go to a bricks-and-mortar bookstore and why he or she prefers digital reads, as well as the preferred device and why."

(via PW)

Give Me Your Love

2010-07-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

Music for summer. 30 degrees out on Main Street, fans twirling inside, boxes of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo all over the desk.

Dept. of Schadenfreude

2010-06-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

Amazon.com totally kaput as of 12:33PDT

"At an annual revenue of nearly $27 billion, Amazon faces a potential loss of an average of $51,400 a minute when its site is offline."

Going Out For Business

2010-06-24T09:29:00.001-07:00

The bailiff's locks are on the doors of Sophia and This Ain't The Rosedale Library, and everybody wants to know, Are you guys next? Should I come up and cash in my trade slips?

Well, don't run. Six months in, 2010 looks like it will be quite a bit busier than 2009, which in turn was busier than 2008, & etc. Both shops are packed to the gills with interesting stuff. Most stores in town aren't doing much cash buying and sending everyone who wants cash for their books on over. Yesterday at Main Street we added 500 or 600 new books to the shelves, and there was nothing unusual about that Wednesday, just a steady stream of people with interesting stock for sale, and more of the same going back out the door.

Lots of online commentators think that Amazon's gonna kill everybody, or that it's all Costco's fault, or that indie bookstores are full of snarky assholes and don't provide coffee, couches, free wireless, and tables where you can play World of Warcraft for hours (My first thought: a teenage boy's bedroom is not a viable business model). And my hunch is that rabid Amazon.ca and iPad fans aren't my customers and probably aren't any other independent bookstore's, either. So, no loss there.

If you want to look at the root causes of the recent contraction of the North American bookselling industry, you might examine:

1. Publishers who were more than willing to extend far-too-generous discounts and return terms to Amazon, Chapters, Costco & etc., who now find those terms onerous, but can't get out of them, because those same huge retailers now make up too much of the publishers' business.

2. Too many bad books; that is to say, books no one will give a shit about 12 months from now; books that we and every other surviving used bookstore will refuse to purchase for cash or credit when offered for sale. Sarah Palin's autobiography; teen vampire books; NASCAR cookbooks, etc. This stuff has a shorter shelf life than a jug of milk in the hot back seat of a car.

3. Useless Canadian book distributors who routinely back order major titles (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? How can Raincoast Books and Penguin Canada both be out of this book simultaneously?); continue to charge an absurdly high US-vs.-CDN$ markup; and have enjoyed a culturally protected monopoly for years at the expense of Canadian consumers and retail booksellers.

4. Bookstore managers and employees who've never heard of teh intardnets, and can't accept that their customers often know more about what they're looking for than they do. Running a used or new bookstore without a computer in the shop -- hell, without several computers in the shop -- seems to me to be about as productive as performing brain surgery by candlelight.

Anyway, we're still here; both stores are full of great stuff; and we are always happy to obtain any currently in-print book for you, always at 20% off, sometimes at even more. It was our 10th anniversary on June 12th. No special fanfare, just another day of buying, selling and trading books. (Though we are planning a big public celebration in September; stay tuned!) Hopefully we'll be around for a long time to come.

New Pricing System Now In Effect

2010-06-10T15:28:00.001-07:00

(Courtesy Lisa Helps, with thanks)

"What Are You Looking For?"

2010-05-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

Not a day goes by that someone doesn't phone or email wondering what kind of books we buy and trade. The short answer: books we can sell quickly that we don't already have fifty million copies of. Thus: recent fiction, recent higher-end nonfiction, recent murder mysteries, recent science fiction and fantasy, and enduring literary classics (Huxley; Orwell; Hemingway; Hesse; Vonnegut & etc.). Plus anything that we are currently ordering in new copies of (Steig Larsson; Malcolm Gladwell; Thomas Bernhard; Zadie Smith; Hunter S. Thompson, etc.). The new book wall in the front room is a convenient Cole's Notes of the kind of books we'd like to see every day, and we always try to add a little extra when new books originally purchased from us are returned for credit or cash.

That said, certain kinds of books are never good candidates for trade or resale: worn or damaged books; most debut novels; stuff widely available on the bargain tables at Chapters and Book Warehouse; books that everybody's book club read 3-5 years ago (Camilla Gibb; Miriam Toews; recent Michael Ondaatje; Sue Monk Kidd); books on topics that our customers don't care about (sports biographies; travel picture books; manky mass-produced kids' series (Animorphs; Goosebumps), spiral-bound cookbooks; diet books; textbooks, etc. Plus most bestsellers that you can buy in an airport bookstore or at Costco (Dan Brown; John Grisham; Danielle Steel; Stuart Woods).

In general, we only buy and trade books that we know we can resell. That way, the shops are always full of recent and interesting titles, and you don't have to wade through thousands of mediocre or badly dated books to find the good stuff.

Our trading policy is largely identical to our buying policy, except that you receive a higher rate for trade credit, based on how quickly we think your books are going to sell. Unlike most other book stores, our trade credit doesn't expire, can be used at either one of our stores, and doesn't have to be combined with cash. That said, trade credit can't be used to purchase new books (everyone, even the staff, pays cash for them), and material that is being offered for trade has to meet a basic common sense test. (Eg., a box of John Grisham and Stuart Woods pocket books never equals a bag of used Bukowskis, Murakamis, Fantes and recent graphic novels).

New Arrivals, New Shelves, New Cookbooks & Kids' Books

2010-05-27T12:19:00.001-07:00

We just spent the last week and a half building new shelves up at Main Street to accommodate a recent influx of cookbooks and kids' books, including out-of-print back issues of Art Culinaire magazine, a recent Cordon Bleu guide, and specialty titles by Rob Feenie, John Bishop, Charlie Trotter, Michelin three-star Pierre Gagnaire & etc. About 200 books in all.

New Classics Collection in @ Main Street

2010-05-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

One of our best scouts just returned from a sale in the Pacific Northwest with a car full of classic paperbacks, including a stack of old orange Penguins, and lots of inexpensive popular favorites (Orwell, Huxley, Hemingway, & etc.). Almost 1000 books in all, which will be hitting the shelves over the next few days.

The Future of Print

2010-05-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

Via the New Yorker, a thorough and detailed look at Kindle v. iPad, Amazon v. everybody, print v. digital, & etc. Worth reading.

On a related note, I just spent two and a half weeks on the road in the USA, where I noticed several things:

1. Almost a third of the bookstores that were open when PFB first opened in June 2000 have now closed. Of the used bookstores that remain, most are no longer buying books at all. Sales at those stores, based on my first-hand, limited, and admittedly anecdotal observation, are awful. The few stores that still regularly buy for cash are, like us, seeing more good books than they ever have before, and almost all of their owners told me that they expect 2010 to be their "best year ever."

2. Books @ PFB, new and used, are by and large cheaper than those at stores located in major US metropolitan markets (Seattle; Portland; San Francisco; Las Vegas).

3. Paperback exchanges that only carry mass market paperbacks -- a concept that's always struck me as an incredibly flaky business model -- are done, a victim of rising rents and their owners' reluctance/inability to buy for cash. The survivors' stock, which ranged from great to middling ten years ago, is now uniformly terrible.

4. Thrift stores in the States are now charging as much for recent books as we are. This doesn't make much difference to me, but it should to any bookstore owner whose business model is predicated on heading to the local thrift store first thing in the morning and loading up.

Share Your Opinion. Write a "Review"!

2010-04-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

"If someone were to take out all of the useless part of 1984, it would be half as long. Why would he wirte so much about nothing? I havent ever meet someone who could wirte such a boring book about the goverment. I have meet many people who have loved this book, but i dispised it. I am not at all intrested in the goverment. This may be part of the reason that I didnt like it. I would advise you not to read this book."

Used Cookbook Collection in @ Main Street

2010-04-11T13:05:00.001-07:00

Big collection of quality used cookbooks just arrived at Main Street, including lots of French/Italian/Spanish specialty titles, some of which have been inexplicably out of print for years. Also in over the last few days: about 750 recent pocket books (mysteries, thrillers, science fiction & fantasy), a dozen different Bukowskis, mostly modern Ecco Press reprints, and a collection of twenty different Philip K. Dick paperbacks, including my favorite Dick title, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, a collection of late stories bundled with the heartbreaking autobiographical introductory essay, "How to Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later."

We probably saw 40 different vendors yesterday, a more or less typical Saturday of nonstop buying/cleaning/pricing/filing.

Son of Massive Science Fiction Collection

2010-03-31T14:29:00.000-07:00

Another 40+ boxes of mint condition science fiction pocket books and hardcovers just arrived up at Main Street, many originally purchased from my old employer, the Granville Book Company, c. 1986-2001. Shelves stuffed full; lumber for new shelves ordered and on the way.

New Arrivals: Rick Steves, Jhumpa Lahiri & More

2010-03-18T14:20:00.000-07:00

Just arrived: a new assortment of publishers' hurts and remainders, including a dozen different recent (2008/9) Rick Steves European guidebooks, just in time for the spring travel season, nicely illustrated kids' books by Beatrix Potter, Jhumpa Lahiri's acclaimed short story collection Unaccustomed Earth, Edward Bunker's long-lost novel Stark, with a new James Ellroy introduction, hardcover copies of The 100 Mile Diet, books on the history of modern graphic design, & etc. All at 50% or more off original Canadian list price. Plus a collection of approximately 400 recent mystery and thriller pocketbooks, which we haven't even had time to touch yet.

It's busy here today!

Genre Fiction March Madness

2010-03-11T08:54:00.000-08:00

No kidding. Great Cthulhu v. Philip Pullman's Lyra; Elric v. Roland Deschain; George R.R. Martin's Jaimie Lannister v. Hermione Granger, & etc.

(Some wag writes: "Honestly? Jaime vs. Hermione? I'm not perturbed about the matchup, but for the love of God, the TV version was just greenlit, and you flat out expose one of the best twists in the story? How the hell do you justify that?")

Massive SF Paperback Collection in @ Main Street

2010-03-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

We just bought a 700 piece science fiction paperback collection, which includes 30+ vintage Philip K. Dick titles, c. 1968-1984, about a dozen H.P. Lovecraft Ballantine reprints, many Harlan Ellisons, a number of scarce Glen Cook mass market paperback originals, & etc. All of the books are in immaculate, as new, unread condition. If you collect high-grade vintage SF/fantasy, or are just looking for a particularly scarce title, now might be a good time to stop by.

(Update, 4pm: 16 linear feet of science fiction pocket books!)

Rudy Rucker's FLURB

2010-03-08T19:53:00.000-08:00

Webzine of astonishing all-new tales of various shapes & sizes, by John Kessel, Kim Stanley Robinson, Cory Doctorow, John Shirley, Bruce Sterling, Charles Stross, Richard Kadrey, Eileen Gunn, and numerous other PFB science-fiction wall favorites.

R.A. Lafferty, being dead, isn't on the contributors list. But he should be.

Peter Straub's A DARK MATTER

2010-03-07T10:03:00.001-08:00

New Peter Straub novel, a long tale narrated from multiple unreliable points of view which describes, with much stopping and starting and chronological back-and-forth, an act of ritual magic carried out by a group of university kids and a slightly older guru-figure in the late 1960s, its repercussions on their later lives, and, as with all of Straub's novels, the intrusion of the supernatural into the clearly-delineated present day. A contemporary riff on Arthur Machen's 1894 novella "The Great God Pan," one of the creepiest and most deeply ambiguous horror stories ever written, echoes of which crop up in M. John Harrison's excellent, but now sadly out-of-print novel The Course Of The Heart, and in frequent Straub collaborator Stephen King's recent novella "N." (collected in Just After Sunset).

Spurred by A Dark Matter's wonky potboiler plot, gorgeously crafted sentences, and genuine air of supernatural unease, I'm currently rereading his 1999 Lovecraft pastiche, Mr X., which was one of the first books I ever ordered new for the shop, which attracted exactly zero attention and no sales upon its release on our shelves. We still have maybe half a dozen copies of this complexly plotted doppelganger tale in the back room, which turns out to be a very enjoyable read: a tale of a young man, his "evil shadow," and their time-travelling psychopathic killer father, the "Mr. X" of the book's title, who imagines himself the servant of H.P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, and communicates in a kind of pidgin Lovecraftese (Exclamation marks! Deeply purple prose!) that's as dead-on its target as Don DeLillo's Lenny Bruce riffs in Underworld. Funny, scary, and suspenseful in turn, Mr. X is that rarest of creatures, a truly great genre novel.

(Recent short interview with Straub here, plus some pictures of his writing desk and the manuscript of A Dark Matter)

(New Straub-edited Library of America volume of American weird, uncanny & fantastic tales, which we should have in early next week)

If You Can't Find The Book You Want Here, You're Probably in the...

2010-03-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

Jump Start Your Professional Reading Program

2010-03-06T19:04:00.000-08:00

A six-pack of suggestions for platoon leaders, courtesy Small Wars Journal.

I find suggestions for new books to carry in many places. Lists of books professionals in any field are recommending to other professionals are often far more useful to me than mass-media bestseller lists. This is one of the more specialized and interesting reading lists I've recently found online.

(Image credit: US Army Center for Company-level Leaders)

Paul Auster's INVISIBLE

2010-03-03T16:41:00.001-08:00

Paul Auster's new novel Invisible, his best since The Invention of Solitude. It's 1967. Adam Walker, a young New York City student and poet-in-training meets, then becomes hopelessly entangled with, a professor who may or may not be an American intelligence operative and his slinky French girlfriend. The shock of a brief affair with the slinky girlfriend either does or doesn't cause Adam to sleep with his own sister. Murder possibly occurs. Adam Walker may actually be "Adam Walker," that is to say, John Smith or John Doe. Adam's story may be a nonfiction memoir that's purposely ambiguous on key details, or a novel-in-parts in which "Adam Walker" is a character created by "Paul Auster." Memoir blends with twice-removed third-party recollections and other texts that keep interrupting, and rewriting, Walker's story. A thoughtfully conceived and gracefully written psychological mystery that keeps you in suspense right up until its ambiguous final page. Disturbing and highly recommended.

Top Ten

2010-03-02T18:43:00.000-08:00

Top ten bestsellers, January-early March 2010:

1. Food Rules: An Eater's Manifesto, by Michael Pollan

2. In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, by Gabor Mate

3. The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, trans. Peavar and Volokhonsky

4. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

5. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris

6. The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

7. Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris

8. Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

9. In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan

10. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Surprise #1: Michael Pollan and David Sedaris have a pretty firm lock on 50% of the list.

Surprise #2: no women writers on the list, though we do carry plenty of books by and about women. Some recent favorites: Zadie Smith's terrific essay collection Changing My Mind; Zoe Heller's just-released-in-paperback The Believers; Kelly Link's collections of short fantastic stories, which we specially imported from the US after discovering that no one in town seemed to have ever heard of her; and Nicole Krauss' breakthrough novel The History of Love, which just sells and sells and sells, new or used, has been read by at least half a dozen local book clubs, and is definitely one of the bestselling books in the shop's history.

Live in Person: Peter Carey & Ian McEwan

2010-03-02T18:26:00.000-08:00

Via our friends at the Vancouver International Writers Festival:

IAN MCEWAN

The acclaimed author of Atonement and On Chesil Beach will make his eagerly anticipated Vancouver appearance. In conversation with Jerry Wasserman.

His new novel Solar, is a darkly comic, satirical look at climate change—a stylish new work by one of the world’s greatest living writers.

VIWF members: Receive a $2 member discount for Ian McEwan event tickets. (If you have not received an email with your special member discount code, please call 604 681 6330.)

Author website

7:30pm April 15, 2010
St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church (Burrard at Nelson)
$20 general / $18 students & seniors (plus service charges)
For tickets, phone Vancouver Tix at 604 629 8849 or purchase online.

PETER CAREY

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction winner and the author of Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang in conversation with Hal Wake.

Peter Carey’s new novel Parrot and Olivier in America is a dazzlingly inventive reimagining of Alexis de Tocqueville's famous journey, brilliantly evoking the Old World colliding with the New.

Author website

7:30pm May 7, 2010
Frederic Wood Theatre, UBC (6354 Crescent Road)
$20 general / $18 students & seniors (plus service charges)
For tickets, phone Vancouver Tix at 604 629 8849 or purchase online.

We'll have new, discounted copies of both titles as soon as they are published by Random House of Canada.

Now Arriving: More Remainders

2010-03-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

Late-in-the-day phone call from the customers broker, notifying us of the first of approximately 250 boxes of publisher's remainders that will be arriving some time tomorrow morning. A mix of better quality art, architecture, cultural studies, and cookbooks. Photos coming once everything's unpacked and divvied up between the two stores.

PFB to World: Special Orders? Absolutely!

2010-03-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

Lots of phone calls recently from West Side residents lamenting Duthie Books' recent closure and wondering if we carry new books. Short three part answer: yes; more of them all the time; and we can usually now obtain any in-print book in no more than a week. Even better, special orders are 20% or more off of Canadian list price, making them as inexpensive as the new books we already carry in the store.

We special order all kinds of books -- cookbooks (as above); scholarly books on gardening and anarchy and economics; obscure 19th century British horror writers and illustrated kids' books; first novels and poetry chapbooks and books on graphic design and photoconceptual art. We like carrying new books; it makes our job more challenging and interesting, and helps us keep abreast of what's actually in print these days, which, with the advent of print-on-demand publishing, seems like more titles than ever before. (It's also fun to procure books for our customers more quickly, and often more cheaply, than a large Canadian chain or an online merchant can).

Leonard Gardner's FAT CITY

2010-02-26T13:00:00.001-08:00

Gardner's only novel, first published in 1969 and long out of print. Recently reissued by University of California Press. The story of two washed-up amateur boxers stuck in Stockton, California, and going nowhere fast. Denis Johnson calls it "a book so precisely written and giving such value to its words that I felt I could almost read it with my fingers, like Braille." Adapted by John Huston into a fine film, starring a very young Jeff Bridges and Stacy Keach (1972). We currently have copies.

Some Recent Favorites

2010-02-24T12:28:00.001-08:00

Two recent arrivals and one perennial bestseller:

The Rebar Cookbook, by Audrey Alsterburg and Wanda Urbanowicz. Vegetarian recipes from the celebrated Victoria BC cafe, many drawing freely from Asian and pan-Asian cuisines. Simple ingredient lists and straight forward preparations make this a book you'll actually cook from, and not just leave lying out on the coffee table. #3 on our in-house bestseller list, and the most popular cookbook we've ever carried, easily beating out the New Moosewood and Julia Child.

Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. Winner of the 2009 National Book Award. Kaleidoscopic, densely-written novel that begins with Philippe Petit's famous 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers and then fractures into several different narratives that move forward in time to the aftermath of 9/11; reminiscent of Joseph O'Neill's Netherland and DeLillo's Underworld.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel. Winner of the 2009 Booker Prize. 700-odd page fictionalized account of the life of Thomas Cromwell, by one of England's best living prose stylists. Murders; courtly intrigue; adultery and political scheming, like an upmarket version of The Tudors or George R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice. Mantel is also the author of Beyond Black, a terrific novel set in Thatcherite Britain, about a female psychic, her best friend, and the malevolent spirits that restlessly hound both of them. Beyond Black is reminiscent of Twin Peaks: nominally realist, but occasionally veering into black comedy or full-on horror, and, like Wolf Hall, comes highly recommended. But don't just take my word for it.

The Death of Print. The Death of Local.

2010-02-22T11:42:00.000-08:00

Phone call from a local radio reporter who wanted to know how we were coping with Amazon, e-readers, Costco, the Olympics, "the death of print," skyrocketing retail rents & etc. "Just fine," I told her. "Sales at both stores are actually up over last year." Puzzled silence. There wasn't time to add much more, because the shop was busy and because actually helping customers and ringing up sales always beats yakking with the media. But if I'd had time I would have said that we plan to be here for the forseeable future, and that having a twenty, fifty, or hundred-year horizon for your business changes how you think about short-term problems. Eg., Should I order fifty copies of Greg Iles' latest thriller, the one that's heavily discounted at Costco and London Drugs and Wal-Mart, and which, six months from now, will be clogging up the sale table at Chapters, priced $4.99? Or should I order copies of The Invisible Committee's Coming Insurrection and all of Peavar and Volokhonsky's Russian translations, and everything in print by Italo Calvino? Viewed in this long-term light, bookselling looks less like a problem, and more like a set of ongoing opportunities.

Still Buying Books @ Both Locations

2010-02-16T10:53:00.001-08:00

Spring 2010 is turning out to be the busiest year in the shop's history, and we're energetically buying books at both locations. We're seeing lots of stock already, but can always use more. In particular, we're looking for:

• Recent ($9.99-$13.50 cover price) mass market paperbacks, esp. recent science fiction, fantasy, and murder mysteries.

• Recent literary fiction (eg., Dave Eggers; Haruki Murakami; Cormac McCarthy; David Sedaris; Paul Auster; Zadie Smith; Nicola Krauss)

• Recent quality nonfiction (eg., Christopher Hitchens; Richard Dawkins; Daniel Dennett; Jared Diamond)

• Award winners (eg., New York Times Notable Books of The Year)

• Literary classics (eg., Orwell, Hemingway, Huxley, Hesse, Borges, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Richler)

• Modern first editions; deluxe Folio and Easton Press editions; rare and scholarly books that we think we can resell within 12-24 months

We pay up to 40% of our retail price in cash on the spot for prime material.

We buy books every day up until 5 pm, unlike many local competitors who just issue trade credit, or only buy on certain days of the week. There's never any need to make an appointment; just bring your books in and our staff will gladly to examine them and make an offer on those we can use.

There are also certain kinds of books that we're never looking for:

• Damaged books of any kind

• Books we have way too many of (eg., if we already have 14 copies of Ian McEwan's Atonement in the back room, we don't want a 15th copy)

• Most Book Club editions

• Books widely remaindered by Chapters, Coles, Book Warehouse, etc.

• Magazines, textbooks and computer books

• Very common airport-bestseller mass market paperbacks: Danielle Steel; John Grisham; Dan Brown; V.C. Andrews; James Patterson et al. These authors are printed in massive quantities, are available in every thrift store in town, and are almost never good candidates for resale.

Olympic Parking Restrictions @ Main Street

2010-02-01T14:32:00.000-08:00

From February 4th until March 1st, street parking will be restricted in front of the Main Street store. If you're planning to bring in a large quantity of books for sale, you can find parking in one of the following locations:

• East side of 0 block of Kingsway (city meters)

• 8th Avenue between Main and Quebec (city meters)

• 8th Avenue east of Kingsway (free - good luck)

• Pay lot on the SE corner of Main and Broadway

• Pay lot on the NW corner of Main and 7th Avenue (across the street from The Foundation)

You are always welcome to borrow our industrial dolly and/or surplus staff to help bring your books in.

Are You Sure?

2010-01-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

Courtesy Priscilla Equis, who's apparently been there too.

Happy New Year From All of Us @ PFB

2009-12-31T14:56:00.001-08:00

Thanks to everyone who bought, sold, or traded books with us in 2009. A busy and successful year.

Coming soon to both stores: new shelves, way more new books, and tons of publisher's remainders (about 1500 pounds of them, scheduled to arrive some time in the first week or two of January).

We have also just received a massive shipment of protective plastic Brodart book jackets, and can now cover anything from tiny Science Fiction Book Club hardcovers to oversize art books. Never Brodarted your books before? Bring yours in to either shop; the jackets are really inexpensive, and we'll cover your books while you wait.

Kits will be CLOSED New Year's Day, but Main Street will be open from 12 noon to 6pm. See you next year!

2009-12-27T10:50:00.001-08:00

Why There Haven't Been Any Updates Here for a While Now

2009-12-08T09:41:00.001-08:00

* 3000 volume estate collection, including hardcover first editions by Bruce Chatwin, Thomas Pynchon (pictured), Cormac McCarthy, W.H. Auden, Italo Calvino, Phyllis Webb, J.D. Salinger, David Adams Richards, & etc.

* 1000 pounds of remainder books, including lots of art, poetry, Japanese woodblock prints, high-end gardening books, cookbooks & etc.

* Tons of new books, all at 20% off Canadian list price.

If you haven't visited in a while, now might be a good time to. We're busy!

We're also raising food for the Vancouver Food Bank. Any donation of food that's not instant noodles or K.D. will receive 10% off any used book in the shop now through Christmas Eve.

Gregory Maguire's New Novel: Free!

2009-11-25T11:18:00.000-08:00

The Next Queen of Heaven, "the best novel money can't buy."

While They Last: Signed Copies of 8 x 10

2009-11-25T09:41:00.001-08:00

Michael Turner dropped into Main Street yesterday to dry off, and kindly signed all our copies of 8 x 10. First come, first served, while they last. He also showed off the UK paperback edition of Faulkner's New Orleans Sketches recently mentioned in passing on his blog: red and black cover, sans serif typography, a little crystalline piece of British industrial modernism, unscathed by the years.

Phoebe Tsang Reads @ PFB

2009-11-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

Toronto's Phoebe Tsang will read from her new collection of poems, Contents of a Mermaid's Purse (Tightrope Books), this Thursday, November 26th, in Main Street's front room at 7pm. Please join us for the usual books and beverages.

Phoebe’s poetry can be found in the anthologies Garden Variety (Quattro Books) and Not a Muse (Haven Books). Journal credits include Asia Literary Review (Hong Kong), Atlas 02 (UK & India), Brand (UK), Room and Freefall (Canada). Her chapbooks are Solitaires (Lyrical Myrical Press, 2006) and To Kiss the Ground (Press On! 2007). A professional violinist, she is a multi-genre artist who holds a BSc in Architecture from the University of London. Contents of a Mermaid’s Purse is Tsang’s first full-length collection.

2009-11-23T09:10:00.000-08:00

New vinyl record, coming soon.

2009-11-23T09:05:00.000-08:00

"These days it seems as though everyone is constantly checking to see which of their friends came of age in a tenuous time and discovered their mentors and role models were not who they thought they were."

Elliott Bay Book Company On the Move

2009-11-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

The Elliott Bay Book Company, my favorite independent book store in Seattle, and one of the best bookstores on the West Coast, has all but moved from their Pioneer Square home in the historic Globe Building to Capitol Hill, according to the Seattle Times. Noteworthy in the article is the fact that the bookstore has apparently been financed by the owner's line of credit for the last few years.

When I visit -- maybe six times a year -- I almost always buy a book, even though that purchase is pretty much guaranteed to be more expensive than it would be back home @PFB. Elliott Bay's astounding selection helps me find things that I couldn't have found any other way, and that service -- exposing me to books that I might otherwise never have seen; "curating" the stock so I don't have to wade through endless shelves of NASCAR books, entertainment biographies, communicate-with-your-dead-pet books & etc., is worth paying for.

Last time I was in EBBC, I walked behind a couple making notes of books they wanted to buy on a Blackberry, in order to buy them later, at a discount, from Amazon. Which will work just fine for them until EBBC and everything like it is gone, at which point Amazon, which is no slouch in the competition theory department, will be more than happy to jack their so-called "bargain prices" right back up to full retail.

Now in Stock: More New Books Than Ever!

2009-11-20T09:42:00.000-08:00

A month or two ago, we decided to start stocking new releases from most major publishers, in addition to the usual assortment of used books, out-of-print books, and publisher's remainders. Mornings now routinely begin with a parade of courier vans arriving at Main Street's front door, and we've built new shelves at both stores to handle the influx.

Our new book ordering guidelines are very simple: will anyone still care about the book a year from now? If someone buys a book from us, reads it carefully, and brings it back for store credit or cash, will we want to see it again? Questions like this eliminate 90% of the new releases in most major publishers' catalogs. We will happily sell what remains for years to come.

So, no thanks to Sarah Palin's ghostwritten autobiography. Yes please to Barabara Kingsolver's first novel in nine years (above), and Anthony Beevor's history of D-Day, and the Momofuku Cookbook, a new edition of Wade Davis' perennially requested The Serpent and the Rainbow, & etc.

Also noteworthy: the strengthening Canadian dollar means that many of our new books are now priced way below US cover price. Just saying.

Cormac McCarthy Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal

2009-11-19T18:30:00.000-08:00

On the occasion of the release of the film version of The Road, semi-reclusive Mr. McCarthy jousts with the press.

"Q: Didn't you start No Country for Old Men as a screenplay?

CORMAC MCCARTHY: Yeah, I wrote it. I showed it to a few people and they didn't seem to be interested. In fact, they said, 'That will never work.' Years later I got it out and turned it into a novel. Didn't take long. I was at the Academy Awards with the Coens. They had a table full of awards before the evening was over, sitting there like beer cans. One of the first awards that they got was for Best Screenplay, and Ethan came back and he said to me, 'Well, I didn't do anything, but I'm keeping it.'"

Still Standing

2009-11-12T09:55:00.000-08:00

We didn't burn down in last night's big fire. Main Street is open for business, with lots of firefighters and other emergency personnel still in evidence. Our thoughts go out to the staff of Kishu Island, Zocalo, Slickety Jim's and Lugz Coffee Lounge, all destroyed in the fire. Also to the bingo-playing spare-change guy on the corner, who's going to have to find somewhere else to stand for the foreseeable future.

Kate Braid Reads @ PFB

2009-11-04T13:52:00.001-08:00

Kate Braid, poet and winner of the Pat Lowther Award, will be reading as part of the UBC Creative Writing Department's Locution series tomorrow night, November 5th, in Main Street's front room at 7 pm. Other readers include Jay Torrence, Tenille Campbell, Kevin Spenst and Christine Leclerc. Limited seating; if you don't want to be sitting on the floor in the front row, better plan to arrive by 6:45 pm or so. Books and beverages will be available for purchase; the event itself is free.

Richard K. Morgan Video Games

2009-11-04T07:32:00.000-08:00

[posted by James N.]

Science fiction author Richard K. Morgan is writing 3 video games for Electronic Arts (the same company adapting Dante's Inferno into a game).

All 3 games are described as works of science fiction, which makes sense.

I, personally, would play the crap out of an Altered Carbon game. Or a Market Forces racing game!

(via)

Shop Class as Soulcraft

2009-11-01T10:36:00.001-08:00

This book is really good; I'm rereading it now for a third time. Crawford, who holds a PhD. in philosophy, disliked managerial and administrative work, and took up fixing motorcycles as an antidote to frustration and boredom, and then as a permanent career. Crawford writes plainly and directly about the value of working with one's hands, and how manual labor is, at its heart, a kind of philosophical practice, a means of engagement with the world.

Crawford's work took on special relevance for me last week as Main Street's toilet breathed its last. Confronted with a $125 estimate to repair it, I opted for a visit to Home Depot, followed by several hours of monkeying around on the bathroom floor with brass washers, hoses, and a big pink rubber gasket that looked like something that had recently escaped from a tide pool. No flood, and Main Street's bathroom looks better than it has in years.