Book / magazine stores, Toronto

Pages is another great alternative to the mega bookstore chains. It has a funky decor and an amazing selection of interesting books.

What to buy: Pages carries lots of books you won't find at stores like Chapters/Indigo/Coles - topics such as LGBT lit, feminism, activism and such. Also many more high-brow books than you will find there. Whenever I go in I always get engrossed in a book on some topic or other.

These days when I go into a mega bookstore like Chapters/Indigo or Barnes and Noble I find myself getting bored pretty quickly. While the stores are big, the selection is usually limited to the top sellers.

To counteract this I love to shop at independent bookstores like Nicholas Hoare. This store has a wonderful ambiance with gorgeous wooden shelves. Although the shop is on the small side, it carries a tremendous selection of stimulating books on all kinds of topics.

At the centre of the store are nice comfy chairs.

This store is just what the name says, a whole store devoted to cookbooks. They have a huge selection and often import cookbooks that aren't normally available in Canada.

They frequently have celebrity appearances at the store, so keep an eye out and maybe you can meet one of your favourite chefs.

This shop sells nothing but books on tape or CD. It is a veritable emporium of audiobooks, carrying titles on virtually any subject. There's all kinds of fiction and comedy titles, plus more obscure ones on all sorts of subjects. Why not stop in and pick up something for the trip home?

Closed Sundays.

Another Man's Poison is a bookstore devoted exclusively to design books. It carries a huge array of books covering all disciplines of design -- interior design, architecture, graphic design, industrial design and so forth.

What to buy: Design books, of course.

Nicholas Hoare is perhaps my favourite bookstore in Toronto. Located in a lovely 19th century building, the bookstore is decorated with high wooden shelves, big fluffy couches and fireplaces. This is actually what a bookstore should look like instead of a shopping market or bowling alley full of books. Nicholas Hoare is well known for its large availablility of British titles, biographies, travel books and children books. Above all, Nicholas Hoare has a superb collection of art books that are hard to find in other bookstores. The staff here is very knowledgable if a little snobby.

The World's Biggest Bookstore is part of the Chapter's/Indigo. It may have been the largest bookstore in the world when it was founded in 1980 but this claim is now made by a Barnes and Noble outlet in New York. Still it is probably the largest bookstore in Canada.
The store has a very wide selection of books that is much broader than other stores in the Chapter's/Indigo chain. However if it is atmosphere that you are looking for, then you will not find it here. The books are displayed on a orange steel shelves and there is rarely helpful staff to assist you nearby.

What to buy: The store has a wonderful history/politics section which is why I still come here. The magazine section is unrivaled in Toronto.

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In spite of its name, I wasn't entirely sure whether the World's Biggest Bookstore actually was the world's biggest, either now or at any time in its past. It's certainly VERY big and I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to find that it was the world's biggest.

My subsequent research suggests that it was the world's biggest bookstore when it opened in 1980, but has since been surpassed by a larger bookstore in New York. However, controversy remains and this bookstore is still considered by some to be the world's biggest....depending on how you define "biggest"!

Anyway, needless to say, this is a huge bookstore with just about every type of book that you could imagine.

I headed for the enormous "Travel" section (itself bigger than the average bookstore) and spend the best part of an hour browsing the titles of weird and wonderful travel guides for every country imaginable. I could easily have spent a whole day in there! In the end, I bought myself a Toronto guidebook from the section dedicated to "Canadian Travel".

As well as books on every conceivable topic, the bookstore sells a vast selection of magazines and newspapers. It proved to be a great place to escape a cold January afternoon for a little while!

You can read more about the bookstore at Wikipedia

What to buy: Pretty much any book you can think of! Lots of magazines and newspapers to choose from too.