Exploration

“One of the key things about Blyton, as about any great writer, is to provide you with what in its broadest sense could be termed a secular worldview – that is, a sense of the coexistence of diversity, and of the many forms of life and livelihood and living, and of cultures and ways of thinking and being that are very distant from your own, and overarching them all the feeling that many of these things are exciting and worth exploring and worth absorbing as some part of your own identity.”

-Rukun Advani, writer

Slow Lane

“Reading books is an antidote to urgency and chaos because it cannot be rushed. Every book has its own rhythm and a physical intimacy that E-mail and similar instant information can never achieve. Media glut often confuses information with understanding. Just when you seem to be most pressed, books miraculously expand time for reflection, cogitation, and mental rest.”

– Richard E. Cytowic, The Man Who Tasted Shapes.

Sow's Ear into a Purse

Any city that turns a bank into a bookstore can't be all bad.

Will Ferguson, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

Finer Things

The best tobacconist in Canada. The best chocolate shop. The finest bookstore. All three located in Victoria, all within a single block.

This is leisure as an expression of status: arcane and elitist and deeply personal, all at the same time.

Will Ferguson, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw

The Power of the Written Word

"At first glance, reading is a waste of time, turning us all into versions of Don Quixote, too befuddled by our imaginations to tell windmills from giants. We would be better off spending the time mating and farming."

D.T. Max