Amore Librorum

Book Bar, Toronto. Photo by Maya Visneyei. See more here.

“…nearly half of all women read just one novel or short story in 2022, but only one in four men did.”
- Alaina Demopoulos, The Guardian, 03 Sep 2026

“Reading scores among American 12th-graders have fallen to their lowest level since testing began in 1992, with 32% of seniors performing below basic. The share of adults on the bottom rung of the international literacy survey rose from 19% in 2017 to 28% in 2023. Harvard’s Martin West notes that just 14% of 13-year-olds read for fun almost every day in 2023, down from 27% in 2012.”
- Lee Escobedo, The Guardian, 15 Aug, 2026

I’d like to say I read a lot as a teenager in the 1980s because I wanted to maintain high academic standards, or that I knew it would sharpen my mind and critical thinking across many disciplines, but none of that was true. It was pure escapism. It was easier to read a good book than do homework. It was easier to read a book when the main TV was showing news. There was no chance of watching videos on a phone. If you wanted a video, you had to drive 20 minutes to the closest video store and rent one. There was no social media and no distracting Internet. The Internet was for scientists and soldiers, and maybe deviant nerds. In all those ways, it’s easier to see how books were the cheapest and most accessible forms of escape. For me now, it’s still true. The easiest way to forget about war, famine, the climate crisis, or the Cheeto in Chief is reading about something entirely different and completely made up. I read a lot and usually have two or three books on my nightstand. The downside is I read very slowly, so the list of what I want to read expands at an ever greater rate than I could ever keep up with.

This love of reading also has led to a love of bookstores. It’s odd how many people love an independent neighbourhood bookstore (in a Hallmark Christmas movie), yet most bookstores, even successful ones, are always hanging on by a thread. Most local businesses know that bookshops act as magnets to the neighbourhood. Ironically, Barnes & Noble, once the antithesis of small local bookstores, have revitalized their business by treating each of their own locations as an independent bookseller. I buy a fair number of books, which is a problem because they take up so much room, though fortunately, I also like being surrounded by books. I’ve gone to bookstores with others who were not at all interested, and it sort of breaks my heart a bit and confounds me. Standing in a well-stocked bookshop to me is like being in a fancy patisserie surrounded by cakes or a gallery of fine jewels. Being surrounded by so many things that catch your eye can be overwhelming and make me a bit giddy - like a clotheshorse standing in a vintage clothing store.

Toronto has some great bookstores, not just for what they sell but how welcoming the store is. I’ve been making it a quiet side quest to visit them all this summer. I may have to expand into autumn. I’ve put them in order of geographic proximity if you ever wanted to try and do your own version of the New York Times Book Crawl right here in Toronto.

The Beguiling
319 College Street
One of my favourites is The Beguiling, which might be one of the best bookstores for comics and graphic novels in Canada, if not North America.

Balfour Books
468 College Street
When I briefly worked for a national bookseller, I learned that as little as 28% of books that are read had been purchased new. The other 72% came from libraries, gifted by other readers, or used bookstores. That was over 20 years ago, and I doubt the number has changed. As soon as you enter this shop, the musty odour tells you immediately this isn’t a fruit stand but a used bookstore, and it’s great.

The Scribe Bookstore
375 Danforth Avenue
With the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers marque in the window, bearing their motto “Amor Librorum Nos Unit” (“the love of books unites us”), you know you’re entering something of a lost world. There’s so much in there it’s easy to get lost letting yourself wander over their shelves.

Circus Books and Music
866 Danforth Avenue
This is our modest little book and record shop, only a couple of hundred metres from home. We’ve filled out our record collection mostly with their musty but loved records. Their display window is right at the intersection of Jones and Danforth, and it’s easy to stand there and ogle at whatever they’ve set up. It’s like every day is Christmas, and I’m little Ralphie gawking at the Red Ryder BB gun in Higbee’s Department Store window display.

Re: Reading Used Books
548 Danforth Avenue
Another used book store on Danforth. This is another really well-curated shop. Luckily, they have a terrible graphic novel selection (luckily for my pocketbook, I mean), and when you enter the back room where the sci-fi pulps are displayed, you hear the sliding door sound from the original Star Trek series, which I think tells you everything you need to know.

Book City (the Leslieville location)
1950 Queen Street East
Book City in Leslieville on Queen, which also has a location on Danforth, is a bookstore made up of books destined for the chipper but are all brand new and sold at amazing discounts. It’s the perfect place to find eccentric books, especially on art and architecture, at a cut-rate price.

Queen Books
914 Queen Street East
Not that far from Book City is one of those super cozy bookshops that is the kind of place you’d go to cool off on a hot summer afternoon or warm up on a cold winter’s morning. It’s like that kind of bookshop you’d see in a movie about a little bookshop. It is also dangerously close to Ed’s Scoop and Honey’s Ice Cream.

Acadia Art & Rare Books (est. 1931)
232 Queen Street
This place is a weird and rare gem on a really hardscrabble stretch of Queen Street East in my old neighbourhood. I’ve found some great art books and prints there, but like books, you can’t just keep buying prints without walls to display them on. As a bonus, this shop usually has two or three sleepy and amenable cats sleeping in a chair or on a shelf.

Ben McNally Books
108 Queen Street East
What is it with Queen Street and bookshops? This is another bookshop on Queen that unfortunately has had to move about three times due to condo construction. It’s a really well-curated little store with attractive shelves, but I don’t know how long it can last in its current and odd location.

Swipe Books
401 Richmond
This is one of those types of stores I wouldn’t really mind living in. I would get nothing done flipping through the thousands of design books and playing with all the design gee-gaws and curios, but I would be happy.

Type Books
883 Queen Street West
Type Books is a much-loved shop on a trendy stretch of Queen Street West, that is dangerously close to one of the best paper shops in the country, The Paper Place, and a fine patisserie, Nadège.

Monkey’s Paw
1067 Bloor Street West
From this shop, I’ve bought dozens of musty old Little Blue Books on oddball topics just for the titles printed on the covers. I’ve still never dropped a toonie in their book-o-mat, an automated book vending machine that plops out a random read, but the anticipation of doing so is real. This used book shop is so incredibly and weirdly curated that you can spend a lifetime navigating its wares.

Another Story Bookshop
315 Roncesvalles Avenue
This bookshop in the west end has a big selection of kids’ books, which seems like a sound business model as every good aunt or uncle knows a book is always a great gift. Again, it’s one of those shops with a fantastic jewel-like shop window that glows at dusk and looks like a picture-perfect kind of shop from some Hallmark Christmas movie or something.

She Said Boom! Books and Records
393 Roncesvalles Avenue
Another musty little shop with a classic window display that has always had books and records together. Two archaic, outdated mediums that refuse to die make terrific bedfellows.

There’s even more that I’m still just finding out about, (I still haven't been to Art Metropole) and sadly even more that have closed, like Another Man’s Poison (Design, Graphic Design, Typography, Art) and Nicolas Hoare Books. One of my favourites in the Annex, which sold unsustainably expensive books on art and architecture, Ballenford Books has been replaced in the same location by Book Bar. It’s a sort of dream of a place that not only sells books but coffee, pastries, and in the evening, sells cocktails. Maybe the books are there to create more of an experience than to sell books, which says so much. As if reading or simply being in the presence of books is more of a lifestyle than an activity. Still, I’m not complaining. I’d rather bookstores existed even as a backdrop to an Instagram post than not at all. That’s what it means to love books. Amore librorum.