books

For all fans of Dave Egger’s brilliant McSweeny’s empire – we’ve loaded up on books and mags from this amazing San Francisco publisher.

1. Lucky Peach issue 2: this quarterly journal of food and writing is a creation of David Chang, chef/owner of Momofuku, writer Peter Meehan, and Zero Point Zero Production—producers of the Emmy Award–winning Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.

2. McSweeny’s Quarterly: Issue 38 is a real beauty, with stories pulled in from all over the world—a grand tour, in prose, of a dozen places you have perhaps neglected to visit, up to now!

3. Celebration of Curious Characters

4. The Believer: We not only have the 2011 Art issue – but also various back issues too! Mags make great stocking stuffers!

5. The Best American Nonrequired Reading – edited by Dave Eggers

6. Symphony City by Amy Martin

We just got a restock of some of our favourite activity books from the fine folks at Owl Kids. In stock now is: 1. The newest book in the Beastly line: Hilarious Heroes 2. Eat it Up! 3. ARTastic!: 200+ Art Smart Activities 4. My Beastly Book of Monsters. Your kids will love these creative and fun books guaranteed to get them making things!

We are super-excited to have the newest book by Keri Smith now in-stock. Here is the teaser:

What do secret orders, nature explorers, imaginary landmarks, underground publishing, buried treasure and secret disguises have in common? They all feature heavily in “Finish this Book”, the newest title by Keri Smith (creator of Wreck this Journal). Part mystery, part journal, part activity book “Finish This Book” invites the user into a secret world of their own making. The only question is “What will that world look like when you are done?” You have to complete it to find out. This book does not exist without you.

It’s nice to think that spring will soon be on its way. We were encouraged last week when our new shipment of Gayla Trail’s Grow Great Grub came in. Released last year, this book sold out quickly and we’re going to make sure it stays in stock regularly so that everyone has a chance to discover how gratifying and easy it is to grow your own food in the urban environment. We had Gayla come in a few years ago to do an in-store appearance with her first book, You Grow Girl and we’re hoping we can encourage her again to make the trip down the highway to do a workshop this spring. Stay tuned!

Got our next three months of art confirmed for the shop. Pictured to the right is a sampling of work by our featured artist for April. Ahren Liudas Karnas has been coming into the shop now for a few years and we’ve always been intrigued by his mash-up of street art with design. We’ll be displaying his canvases, photos and clothing and Ahren has agreed to do a large art installation on the Cannon side of the building that will be unveiled on the night of the Art Crawl on April 9. The month of May sees the return of Gordon Leverton’s pastels to our walls. Gord’s amazing pastels of urban city scenes graced the walls of the old Mixed Media location a few times and always got a good reception. June sees The Portable Library Project makes its Hamilton debut. What is The Portable Library Project you ask? Well – it’s a mail-art/book-making project involving the creation of small works exploring ideas surrounding archiving, journaling, libraries, ephemera, and incorporating an art practice into everyday life. It’s currently touring cities around Canada and we are very happy to help bring this to Hamilton.

The Globe and Mail recently profiled Tara Books, exploring this independent imprint’s “deeply improbable success” in the midst of the current economic recession. Tara believes that books are literary objects, with the potential to be art as well as contain it. They also strive to make this artwork (whether by tribal Indian artists, American folk singers or Grecian illustrators) accessible for all, both young and old alike. We hope to soon have a few copies in-store – just from what I’ve seen online I can tell you I am very excited to sell these!