Years ago, before it closed, World’s Biggest in downtown Toronto was my shrine. Munro’s Books in Victoria is a lovely place to spend a few hours on a rainy afternoon. I remember stumbling across an amazing little bookshop in Glastonbury that made me want to move there.
Today, I have to put Fanfare Books of Stratford, Ontario in the spotlight. For one thing, they’re carrying Endemic. That’s evidence of great taste, obviously. They’ve carried my novels before, but there’s more to it than that.
Recently, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I took a couple of days off to escape to Stratford. It’s a sweet little town known worldwide for theater. It’s a small town, yes, but maybe you’ll look up, momentarily startled, to find Colm Feore passing you on the sidewalk.
Stratford has many quaint shops and restaurants along the main drag. It’s the sort of town where shops should be spelled shoppes.
What makes Fanfare different from other bookstores?
When I was a book rep for sixteen publishers in Toronto, chain stores often gave me the feeling that the book buyers’ tastes were miles wide and a centimeter deep. Fanfare is not a large store, but the curation is excellent. Lots of theatre books, of course, but you’ll find stuff that would be difficult to discover elsewhere. For its excellent stock, it’s the biggest little bookstore I’ve had the pleasure of browsing.
My latest buys from Fanfare: Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton, History’s Weirdest Deaths by James Proud, and Taste by Stanley Tucci.
Your next buy from Fanfare: Endemic!