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

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).

Eileen Myles' INFERNO: A POET'S NOVEL

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!

PFB to World: Special Orders? Absolutely!

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).

"Do You Sell New or Used Books?"

Both now, side by side. We can obtain any title currently in print in North America within two weeks or less, typically at 20% off its Canadian list price. This month, we helped our customers find everything from James Patterson's latest high-seas-and-murder adventure, to Guy Debord's Society of The Spectacle, to "that kids' book from the 70s with the little worm." (Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, starring Lowly Worm).