Atlantic Books

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Alice Burdick

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Cookbooks Celebrating the New and Old (with Fresh Ideas) 

Karl Wells

Never underestimate the power of a cookbook. You may think it nothing more than a bound volume of recipes. A guidebook designed to help you create food that you’ll (hopefully) enjoy eating. It is that, of course; but it’s also a kind of curative.  

As I felt and examined the covers of Flavours of New Brunswick, Some Good Sweet Treats, Out of New Nova Scotia Kitchens and Grandma’s Cookies, Cakes, Pies and Sweets, and as I slowly turned each page of appealing photos and appetizing recipes, my somber mood changed. I felt reassured, optimistic.  

Who would have thought that staring at a fiddlehead salad or reading the ingredients for hotpot could make such a difference? It made me want to try some of the recipes. Consequently, I engaged in my personal, never-fail relaxation therapy: cooking.  

Coffee Rubbed Steak Tacos, Flavours of New Brunswick

A recipe for Coffee Rubbed Steak Tacos caught my eye as I leafed through Flavours of New Brunswickfrom Tom Mason and Heidi Jirotka. The recipe was created by Chef Gene Cormier of the outdoor restaurant, Euston Park Social, in Moncton.  

I love coffee. I love steak. Wrapping those flavours in a taco with punchy spices and accents sounded appetizing. If you follow the instructions, you’ll be making this recipe often, because the amount of coffee rub you’ll end up with is far more than you’ll need for 16 ounces of beef tenderloin.  

I opted to cook my steak on a pan instead of the grill. Be prepared for steak with a blackened surface. Don’t panic. As long as you’ve cooked it four minutes per side (and no longer) it will taste great.  

The rub imparts deep, rich flavour to the meat. If you’re using soft tacos and decide to warm them in the oven, do so on very low heat and for only a short time. I left mine in too long and they became brittle and broke when I started noshing. With a filling that also calls for salsa, shredded lettuce and grated cheese these tacos are a two-napkins two-hands dining experience.  

Tagliatelle d’Amalfi, Flavours of New Brunswick

Tagliatelle d ‘Amalfi does not sound like a recipe you’d find in a book called Flavours of New Brunswick, but this book isn’t about traditional dishes. It’s about today’s popular “flavours of New Brunswick.”  

Tagliatelle d ‘Amalfi is basically tagliatelle pasta (fettuccine works too) with nut sauce. The recipe comes from Chef Michelle Hooton of Italian by Night in Saint John.  

Once you’ve gathered up the wide variety of nuts called for (pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts, almonds, cashews and macadamia nuts), it’s just a matter of giving them a quick roast in the oven. Then the nuts and remaining ingredients of garlic, salt, lemon thyme, parsley and olive oil get turned into a coarse nut butter in the food processor.  

Next, the mixture is tossed in a large bowl with steaming hot tagliatelle.  

It took longer to thoroughly mix these ingredients than, say, spaghetti and tomato sauce, but adding some water from the pasta pot helped. The garnish of parmesan and cherry tomatoes looked attractive and added to the flavour.  

Speaking of flavour, I found the raw garlic to be too strong for my taste. Next time, I’ll roast the garlic (unpeeled or it will burn) along with the nuts. Roasting mellows out the flavour of garlic.  

A few other notes: if lemon thyme is hard to come by, just use thyme; also, this is a very filling dish. Tagliatelle d ‘Amalfi is not a light lunch. It’s dinner. You may not be left with room for dessert.  

Jessica Mitton, Some Good Sweet Treats

Making Avocado Chocolate Pudding from Some Good Sweet Treats by Jessica Mitton wasn’t much more complicated than putting ingredients in a food processor (or good blender) and switching it on.  

The wonderful thing about avocado is its texture. It’s creamy smooth, like butter; but only when it’s properly ripe. I guessed that the few avocados I bought at the market were ripe. I guessed wrong. They were too firm.  

I found that after I’d processed the chopped avocado, cocoa powder, honey and almond milk, the resulting pudding was grainy. Still, it tasted good, if less sweet than I’d expected. I added more honey to make it sweeter and it was fine.  

Later, eyeing avocados at the market, that I was assured were sufficiently ripe, I decided to make the dessert again. It was delicious and had the kind of texture I’d expected in my first attempt. Considering the handful of ingredients and the simple goodness of them, this is probably the most guilt-free dessert I’ve ever made.  

Gently baked fruit is sublime. Crumbles are an easy and popular way to enjoy baked fruit and wild berries. Mitton’s recipe for Berry Crumble delivered an enjoyable dessert, or sweet snack with tea or coffee.  

The recipe called for a mixture of frozen berries. I used up the only frozen berries I had, blueberries; and to qualify as a “mixture” I added some frozen, dark cherries.  

The filling also called for honey and almond flour (to help thicken the mixture). When the fruit was placed in the baking dish, I sprinkled the topping on. It featured rolled oats, almond flour, coconut oil, more honey and cinnamon. I left it in the oven at 350F for the recommended 45 minutes.  

It wasn’t bubbling as the recipe said it should be, but it appeared to be done; except the topping had not browned. The broiler took care of the pale top. I jacked up the heat to high and left it under the element for about 30 seconds.  

Broilers are tricky. If you try this, make sure you watch the crumble constantly, or you’ll end up with a charred mess. Remove it at the first sign of browning.  

My crumble was quite juicy. Lots of dark cherry-blueberry juice pooled up in the bottom of the dish. Perhaps if I’d patiently allowed the crumble to bake on and bubble like crazy, I’d have had a less soupy crumble.  

I really didn’t care. That’s why spoons were invented.  

Oatcakes are popular. The ones sold in most coffee shops look like chocolate-coated manhole covers, able to feed an entire family for several days. Small and dainty is not how I’d describe them.  

Grandma’s Cookies, Cakes, Pies and Sweets

The oatcakes recipe in Grandma’s Cookies, Cakes, Pies and Sweets, updated by Alice Burdick, did yield small, dainty and light oatcakes. I’ve been told that traditional oatcakes are quite dainty.  

The recipe was very easy to follow. I was surprised when I read that the recipe yielded five dozen oatcakes. Yes, that’s right, 60 oatcakes. I guess all grandmas don’t make oatcakes the same way.  

The recipe called for the dough to be rolled out to ¼-inch thickness. The cakes were to be cut in squares. After doing this I realized there was no way this amount of dough would supply 60 oatcakes, unless the cakes were Lilliputian. I was willing to go communion wafer small, but no smaller. My only option, if I wanted to achieve five dozen oatcakes, was to roll out the dough thinner than ¼ inch. 

If I had gone with that thickness, the yield would have been about 40 oatcakes. Just over three dozen. Curiosity got the better of me. I had to see what kind of oatcake I’d get with a thinner layer of dough. Maybe they rose high, I thought. (Not so much.)  

In the end, I put 64 in the oven, just over five dozen. The recipe called for 15 minutes at 350F or until golden. They didn’t show any gold at 15 so I left them for another five minutes. Still no gold. I didn’t dare leave them longer.  

If I were to try this recipe again, I’d ignore the yield of five dozen and make them larger and a little thicker. I liked the taste. They were the opposite of stodgy. Quite light and sweet with plenty of oat flavour. Perhaps a little dry but my coffee took care of that.  

Oh yeah, I gave some to my mother-in-law, a grandma, and she loved them. 

Fortnum and Mason is a famous UK department store. It’s best known for its food hall, expensive food hampers and other gift items. Fortnum’s popular Dundee Cake was often enjoyed by the British upper class with an afternoon cup of Darjeeling. Sir Winston Churchill enjoyed a piece of the traditional Scottish cake every day at about four.  

I’d never made or tasted one, but I was keen to give the recipe in Grandma’s Cookies, Cakes, Pies and Sweets a go. Personally, I liked that it called for a cup of raisins and a cup of currants and only a quarter cup of mixed candied fruit.  

After mixing the wet ingredients, made quite soupy by five large eggs, I mixed all of the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and stirred them into the wet ingredients. It took quite a bit of physical energy to make an effective job of this.  

The blended ingredients kept getting denser and thicker each time I added more of the dry ingredients. What I ended up with wasn’t exactly something I could pour into my greased cake pan.  

The recipe generously called it batter. It was a very close cousin to dough. I had to spoon it into the pan and fight with the spoon each time to release its contents. I was concerned about the ultimate result and kept retracing the steps I’d taken in following the well-written recipe.  

As far as I could tell, I’d done as instructed. After putting the filled pan in the oven, I hoped for the best.  

I needn’t have worried. The baked cake was delectable. It was bright, with evenly distributed fruit and surprisingly light tasting. Perfect with a cup of Darjeeling. Hip, hip.  

I first dined at Craig Flinn’s Halifax restaurant, Chives, many years ago—in 2012. In fact, I reviewed it. It was a positive review and Chives remained a longtime favourite Halifax restaurant of mine.  

Out of New Nova Scotia Kitchens

Out of New Nova Scotia Kitchens is Craig Flinn’s latest collection of recipes, and the good taste he’s always shown is very much present in this book. Your cupboard may not contain every ingredient listed (some ingredients can be substituted or omitted), but you won’t be wasting your time or money by picking up whichever ingredient it is that you don’t have.  

I smiled when I saw Corrie Hotpot in the winter recipes section. As any fan of the UK soap, Coronation Street knows, Corrie refers to Betty’s Hotpot, which has been on the menu of The Rover’s Return since barmaid Betty Turpin first made and served it. Essentially, it’s lamb stew (not watery) also known as Lancashire Hotpot in the north of England.  

There’s some peeling, slicing and dicing involved at the outset. All root vegetables. Once that’s taken care of, you dredge pieces of stewing lamb in flour and brown them in a hot pan.  

The lamb is added to a mixing bowl along with less than half a cup of red wine and a variety of herbs and seasonings. Don’t forget the good old English mustard. It makes a difference.  

When you’ve thoroughly mixed everything, tip all into a Dutch oven. Then add bay leaves, sliced onions and top it all with a layer of very thinly sliced potato. Once covered, it cooks in a low, slow oven. It’ll be at least three hours before you can eat, but it will be fantastic.  

I had a frozen chicken that needed to be cooked; I decided to try Craig Flinn’s recipe for BBQ Whole Chicken. Gathering all of the spices, flavourings and herbs, measuring them out and mixing them was the most taxing part of the preparation.  

Key ingredients included: garlic powder, onion powder, salt, paprika, cumin and thyme. Don’t omit any because it won’t taste as good.  

Once you’ve rubbed this pungent dry mix on the skin of the chicken (which has been flattened out after removing the bird’s backbone) it’s also important to let the chicken sit in the fridge for many hours. This will help the skin absorb the rub’s flavours.  

Before letting the chicken cook on a covered grill, I put it on direct heat to achieve a golden hue and grill marks. Watch it very carefully.  

The recipe suggests too much time for this procedure, at least for my grill. If I’d followed instructions, the grill marks would have been beyond black. After browning, the chicken is placed away from direct heat and allowed to cook covered on indirect heat for about 40 minutes.  

About 10 minutes before removing from the grill, the chicken is brushed with a combination of lemon juice, zest, honey and butter. There should be plenty left over to brush more on just before serving.  

The result was a succulent chicken made beautifully fragrant and flavourful by the rub and basting sauce. A thoroughly successful combination.  

By the way, please check the internal temperature of the chicken’s thigh before carving. If it’s at least 170F you can safely tuck in—with a large glass of pinot noir, of course!  

Karl Wells is an award-winning food writer in St. John’s, a television producer and a restaurant panellist with enRoute magazine. 

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Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi

Ekwuyasi’s writing is so rich and enlightening, and her storytelling so captivating that I had to keep reminding myself while reading her book – it is her first.

I’m not the only one awed by her deeply moving debut novel; a book exploring trauma, healing and the beautifully complex relationships between mothers and daughters. It was longlisted for the prestigious and lucrative 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

The novel tells the interwoven stories of Kambirinachi and her daughters, Kehinde and Taiye. Being an ogbanje, a spirit that plagues families with misfortune by dying in childhood to cause its mother misery, Kambirinachi is convinced that she made an unnatural choice to stay alive for her family and now fears the consequences of that decision.

Stay the Blazes Home by Len Wagg

Photographer Len Wagg’s collection of stirring images and stories not only reminded me of some of the pleasant and not-so-pleasant things I endured this past year, it also made me think about how future Nova Scotians will look at 2020. Wagg did the same.

“When I saw social media posts with stories and photos from the Nova Scotia Archives referencing the influenza pandemic of 1918, I began to wonder how future generations would see this pandemic. Where would the images of this unprecedented time come from? After the Facebook posts and tweets went away, what would remain as a snapshot of life during COVID-19?” he writes.

The book’s most touching images include: Betty Dryden, a resident of a long-term care facility in Hubley, blowing a kiss to her daughter, Tracy through a closed window during a Sunday visit; Sandy Wagg, a Grade Two teacher at Holland Road Elementary School in Fletchers Lake, going through an online lesson with her students from her kitchen table.

Memoir: Conversations and Craft by Marjorie Simmins.

A nice mix of memoir history, inspiration and how-to tips, Simmins’ book is encouraging for anyone keen to write a personal narrative.

“Writing memoirs is empowering: it’s your story, told your way. Remember: your job is to create a beautiful, moving story. With memoir, your life is art,” she writes.

Simmins has kind and stirring words for anyone who thinks they might not have anything interesting to write because they haven’t travelled the world, found a cure for a life-threatening disease or won a prestigious award.

“Sometimes the quiet lives can be the most staggeringly beautiful lives.”

Blood in the Water by Silver Donald Cameron

Reading this book, it’s not hard to see why Cameron, who died this June, was one of the country’s most esteemed writers and winner of many awards. It marks the end of his illustrious career.

In this masterfully told true story, Cameron traces a brutal murder in a Cape Breton fishing community, raises questions of what is right and wrong and explores the nature of good and evil. From the opening paragraph, Cameron’s writing grips.”

“It was in 2013 that Phillip Boudreau was dropped – allegedly – to the bottom of the sea, but his neighbours would not be entirely surprised if he walked out of the ocean tomorrow, coated in seaweed and dripped with brine, smiling.”

Grandma’s Cookies, Cakes, Pies and Sweets by Alice Burdick

I admit, I probably have one of the biggest sweet tooths – so this book, with its beautiful colour photographs by Callen Singer, was a natural draw for me. I love baking and I love the idea of food and recipes drawing generations together.

“Recipes handed down through a family are a form of time travel — you can imagine a great-great-grandmother tasting the very same flavours as you eat a forkful of home-baked apple pie,” writes Burdick.

The book’s recipes were originally published in 1967 in A Treasury of Nova Scotia Heirloom Recipes — a centennial project of Nova Scotia’s Department of Agriculture and Marketing. Collected from books dating as far back as the 1870s, many of the recipes came from old family cookbooks and notebooks. Burdick, a baker and poet, revised and tested all the recipes, trying to make them more appealing, while keeping their essence and time-honoured traditions.

Nova Scotia and the Great Influenza Pandemic, 1918-1920 compiled and edited by Ruth Holmes Whitehead

Living in the midst of a pandemic and not knowing when it will end, it was eerie to learn that more than 2,000 Nova Scotians died during the influenza pandemic a century ago. Maybe the most chilling part of this thoroughly research book comes at the end: a list of names of the dead that covers several pages.

Relatives of people who were alive during the great influenza were interviewed; their heart-wrenching stories show that every city, town, village and isolated settlement was affected.

Whitehead wanted her book to be “a useful guide for what to do and what not to do” in a pandemic. But by the time the book was published, the world was seized by COVID-19.

Looking back, the great influenza taught that the most important thing any government, at any level, can do in a pandemic is to tell people the absolute truth about what’s going on, what the dangers are and what measures they will have to take, writes Whitehead.

—Allison Lawlor is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Homemakers, Canadian Living, and University Affairs magazines. She is a regular book reviewer with The Chronicle Herald. Her own books include Rum-Running, A Royal Couple in Canada, Broken Pieces: An Orphan of the Halifax Explosion and “The Saddest Ship Afloat”: The Tragedy of the MS St. Louis. 

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Photo by Sarah Baker-Forward

Walls lined with shelves of books. A pair of comfortable armchairs tucked into a reading nook. A cat dozing on a table display of spring-themed books, the sound of a dog’s toenails skittering on the wood floor as it greets a visitor who has just stepped through the door. Reading socks and book bags; scented candles and mugs.

Stop—you had me at books.

No matter how large or small, there is nothing more satisfying to a reader than a bookstore. And despite those who declared, “Books—and bookstores—are dead,” there is nothing more gratifying than the fact the retail book industry is stronger than ever. The national Indigo chain posted growth and profits last year, publishers are increasing their output of books and independent bookstores are opening up in the most unlikely, yet inspired, places.

“We knew we were taking a chance,” says Alice Burdick of Lunenburg’s Lexicon Books, one of several independent bookstores that have opened in Atlantic Canada since 2014. “There were people coming into the store saying ‘Are you crazy?’ but we paid attention to trends in North America and the trend of three years ago, which continues to strengthen, is that independents are on the rise.”

Ellen Pickle might argue that’s always been the trend. She has put her faith in the staying power of books since opening Tidewater Books (now Books and Browsery) in Sackville, New Brunswick, in 1995.

“The sky has been falling since the day I opened the doors,” she says with a chuckle. “A lot of people thought they saw the writing on the wall but books have such value, people keep coming back to them.”

From experience, she believes if a bookstore can ride out the ebbs and flows of industry flux, it will be fine.

Perhaps it was the ebb and flow of the river running past her rural property in River John, Nova Scotia, that inspired author Sheree Fitch to become the newbie to the Atlantic Canadian bookstore scene.

“We didn’t have money to pay rent and we knew there had to be more than books to bring people out of their way,” she says of the decision to turn an old outbuilding into a bookstore. “That’s the reason we decided to be seasonal and why we integrated the sense of nature and books and reading.”

While she admits her motivation for opening Mable Murple’s Book Shoppe and Dreamery was to bring something back to a community that had lost so much—including its elementary school—she also wanted to create an experience for visitors. She brought Maple Murple’s famous literary house to life in a separate building alongside a barn, pasture and chicken coop.

Of the success of her first season in 2017, Fitch says, “People came and usually stayed an hour. Some stayed half a day. The picnic tables were well used. We discovered people like the idea of coming, browsing and lingering. So it was an experience as much as it was a bookstore.”

The inside of Sheree Fitch’s imagination, photo by Sarah Baker-Forward

Fitch sees this as fitting in with an emerging industry. “From Anne of Green Gables to all the festivals we have, I think Atlantic Canada is developing a literary tourism industry. I’m part of that and I’m pushing that.”

While they didn’t deliberately set out to create a destination bookstore, Gael Watson and Andra White took advantage of existing infrastructure when they jumped at the opportunity presented by a space opening up in the historic outfitters building along the LaHave River in southwest Nova Scotia. Watson has owned and operated LaHave Bakery in the building for 30 years; White does the bakery’s bookkeeping. The two simply expanded their business partnership.

“Our expectations weren’t huge,” White says. “We weren’t desperate for the money as much as just having a place where people could come and buy books. As a result, it’s been better than we expected.”

White admits that the presence of a popular bakery, an already established community hub in a beautiful stopping spot, benefits the bookstore. But, she adds, “I think we were surprised by how supportive the community is. And by how much we love being in the bookstore.”

If anyone knows how hard it is to resist the siren call of owning a bookstore, it’s Matt Howse of Newfoundland. On the cusp of turning thirty and wanting to plant potatoes in the fall and pick them in the spring, Howse decided to give up the life of an itinerant teacher (he taught for six years in four different communities) and fulfill a 10-year desire to work in a bookstore. He settled in St. John’s and opened Broken Books on Duckworth Street in 2014.

He now admits owning a bookstore isn’t as idyllic as he thought it would be. “I feel like working in a bookstore is much more fun than actually owning one,” he says with a laugh. “I spend half my time on the phone and the internet, talking to people, dealing with publishers and publicists and the government.”

That didn’t stop him from jumping at the chance to expand into a larger space a few doors down earlier this year. “Since we’ve moved, we’ve seen an increase in foot traffic. We have more space, more chairs, and we still have the chess board.”

Ask any independent bookseller, however, what brings them the greatest joy and they’ll say it’s the chance to curate a unique collection of books. “For me, part the appeal is that visitors are getting Atlantic-focused books curated by somebody who studied children’s literature and is a book maniac,” says Fitch of her book shoppe and dreamery.

Andra White in LaHave says she and her business partner simply pick books they like. “Some of them are classics, a lot are Canadian and local, and we have a big non-fiction section.”

Or if you’re Julien Cormier, a lifelong resident of northern New Brunswick, it’s the joy of offering books at all. Growing up in Shippagan, on the Acadian Peninsula, Cormier loved to read but there was no place to buy books. After living in Montreal as a young man, he returned to his hometown and in 1989, opened Librairie Pelagie, selling French-language books.

“That’s what I’m proud of,” he says after nearly three decades in business. “I offer to the people around here what I didn’t have when I was a child. For almost 30 years, they have that. For me, that’s a big achievement.”

In 2005, Cormier expanded to nearby Caraquet, where the bookstore benefits from being attached to a popular cafe/bistro, and then to Bathurst in 2011, where the cottage-like store is located in a quaint boardwalk-style strip. He says they are fighting every day to keep the three stores open but he credits book sales to schools and the annual book fair, held in Shippagan every October since 2003, for keeping them competitive.

Creating a steady source of income is a priority for every independent bookseller, especially in a region with a considerable seasonal economy. “The biggest challenge is maintaining the store over the course of a year,” admits Alice Burdick of Lexicon Books. “The South Shore, like so many places everywhere, is deeply seasonal. We knew this coming into it so we had a plan but it’s still a challenge maintaining an acceptable level of sales in the winter months.”

Ellen Pickle has kept costs down at Tidewater Books and Browsery for 23 years by doing her own accounting. “You have to know where you stand at any given point,” she says. It’s one of the reasons she doesn’t discount her books outside customer appreciation days. “I think they’re too important to do that, and there’s not enough [profit] margin to keep your business viable if you do.”

The high cost of rent and online retailers are the biggest challenges to “indies,” particularly if sales decline considerably during the winter. Creative strategies for keeping the community engaged and devoted are key for an independent bookstore’s success.

Lexicon Books and suddenlyLISTEN Music (a multidisciplinary presenter of improvised, adventurous music) cohost evenings of words and music, while Tidewater’s Ellen Pickle has turned a third of her bookstore into a “browser” featuring the work of local artisans. Matt Howse offers up a chess table; Sheree Fitch has donkeys and Andra White offers cake. “Everyone can count on having a piece of homemade cake when they show up to an author book signing.” White says she’s thinking of the writer as she decides whether chocolate or blueberry-zucchini or carrot cake is called for.

Matt Howse of Broken Books

This is why Howse in St. John’s, along with others, see the bookstore-as-hangout as the future of independent bookstores, because they can offer something that online retailers cannot. “The future of bookselling is creating community, creating space,” Howse explains. “It’s really important for us as booksellers to fill this void of third space, a place you can go to that’s not home and not work but a place to hang out and be social. I think it’s important for us to stay open a few nights a week and have lectures and poetry readings and live music.”

Anyone daring enough to open a bookstore does it not to be trendy but to be happy, and to share that happiness with others. After all, consider the added benefits of owning a bookstore of one’s own: curating a particular selection of books, providing a hospitable space for hanging out, supporting the local writing community and, of course, meeting diverse and interesting readers.

What every independent seller of books and gifts has in common is the feeling that the bookstore is their “happy place.”

“I love coming to work,” says Alice Burdick. “When someone comes in that door, they visibly brighten up. People relax; you can see their shoulders drop as they get into the zone. It’s such a pleasure to see how much people enjoy being in here.”

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Jo-headshotA new Nova Scotian bookstore owner explains what drove two authors and an illustrator to dive into the book business

“Why open a bookstore now? In this economic climate and when online shopping rules the universe?” is a question we – Alice Burdick, Anne-Marie Sheppard and Jo Treggiari – hear a lot as proud co-owners of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia’s brand-new Lexicon Books.

But the question we three most ask ourselves is: when did our lives not revolve around books?

We are all voracious readers. We are the type of people who can’t walk past a bookstore – new or used – without stopping in and (almost certainly) buying something. We judge towns and cities by their enor- mous, quaint or eclectic bookstores. We revel in the smell of books and the comfort found among them. We share great finds with friends and are passionate about seeking out new authors, stumbling across them or
having someone whose expertise we trust recommend them to us.

The written word informs a great part of our lives.

“Do what you love” is a wonderful mantra, but it is not enough. You also have to be skilled at what you love. Two of us have many years of experience in retail sales and management, and two of us have many years of experience start- ing and nurturing
new businesses.

Transforming our starry-eyed dreams of own- ing a bookstore (“Imagine being surrounded by books all day every day!”) into a viable business model was not easy.

Lexicon BooksOur space is a mere 500-square-feet. Figuring out our starting inventory versus blowing our entire budget, bearing in mind that the store has to appear fully stocked, is one of those nightmarish math problems we all thought we’d left behind in high school. How many are too many? How few are too few? What’s the ratio between cur- rent literature and classic? Bestsellers and overlooked gems? Which genres to focus on? What do we love and what will our customers love? What selections will best reflect the area in which we live? How can we provide the optimum customer service and the best shopping experience?

And how to compress all that information into something that makes sense? A bookstore is not just a store that sells books. It identifies the people who live and work around it. It is a warm and comforting place to go to. It is a com- munity hub, a culture and arts centre hosting author events and book clubs. It is an information source and a social gathering place. Staffed by knowledgeable people who love books, it is a friendly place to engage with others.

There is no algo- rithm devised by a technician and directed by a computer program that can replace a recommendation from someone who knows your tastes, likes and dislikes, who can make leaps from one author to a similar one, or from one subject to something equally intriguing. The relationship between a bookstore customer and a bookseller is, dare we say it, a sacred one. There is trust there. Trust that the recommendation will be – if not spot-on – at least pretty damn close. And that’s what we’re aiming for.