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| photo: David Leyes | |
Elan Mastai, author of February's #1 Indie Next List pick All Our Wrong Todays, was featured in a recent Bookselling This Week q&a. Among of our favorite responses:
How have indie bookstores influenced your life?
Book City is a local indie bookstore chain of four stores in Toronto, and there is one on Queen Street near where I live so I go there pretty much every other day. I spend a lot of time there and I know the staff well and love to hear their recommendations.
To me, the most alluring tourist attraction in any new city is a bookstore that I have never been to before, whether it is Copperfield's in northern California or the Booksmith in San Francisco or Vroman's in Pasadena or the sadly departed BookCourt in Brooklyn.
I was in Denver a couple months ago and made a pilgrimage to Tattered Cover. I love bookstores, particularly independent bookstores because they tend to have a unique and curatorial point of view. I love going to a place that is owned by a person who might actually be there and you can have a long, interesting conversation about books and they may, because of their specific tastes, carry an author that you’ve never heard of but who may turn out to be one of your favorites. That has happened to me so many times. And so for me, no matter where I am in the world, an independent bookstore is home.