Nicholas Hoare Books

This small, elegant and curious store used to have the best couch in Toronto to sit and read a book on, or just sink into. "Used to" because the couch is getting tatty and more springy instead of cushy. The smell has stayed more or less the same. The selection may or may not be disappointing depending on your tastes - apart from the pretty books, they tend to focus on middle-brow to upper-middle-brow (excuse the term) literature and social issues titles - not too intellectual and not too light, perfect for the businessman-by-day, intellectual-by-flight shopper. The selection is also necessarily small due to the bookstore's (laudable but impractical) design choices and limited space. They prefer to keep many titles displayed with the front cover (instead of spine) facing the browser - which delights the literally gluttonous book-as-fetish-object lover who senses s/he is in that long dreamed of candy store where books can finally be eaten. The shelves are cute but narrow. All in all, a great place to visit and discover a parallel world of book-reading, not too engrossed in current bestsellers and not weighed down by obscure esoterica. I've never bought anything here, however, although I've always been tempted to simply to keep the place in business and give in to the impulse of grabbing the paper candy and biting into it to confirm its aromatic flavour. Ben McNally Books, eponymously named after the long-time manager of the store who decided to break away and set up his own, is a variation on this theme.

This small, elegant and curious store used to have the best couch in Toronto to sit and read a book on, or just sink into. "Used to" because the couch is getting tatty and more springy instead of cushy. The smell has stayed more or less the same. The selection may or may not be disappointing depending on your tastes - apart from the pretty books, they tend to focus on middle-brow to upper-middle-brow (excuse the term) literature and social issues titles - not too intellectual and not too light, perfect for the businessman-by-day, intellectual-by-flight shopper. The selection is also necessarily small due to the bookstore's (laudable but impractical) design choices and limited space. They prefer to keep many titles displayed with the front cover (instead of spine) facing the browser - which delights the literally gluttonous book-as-fetish-object lover who senses s/he is in that long dreamed of candy store where books can finally be eaten. The shelves are cute but narrow. All in all, a great place to visit and discover a parallel world of book-reading, not too engrossed in current bestsellers and not weighed down by obscure esoterica. Ben McNally Books, eponymously named after the long-time manager of the store who decided to break away and set up his own, is a variation on this theme.