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Art & Books Books

Load up on curiosities this weekend

If you’re the sort of person who buys weird old books and papers simply because for some reason you must have them (and also because they’ll look great on the shelf), but you’re not ready to unload more than a few bucks for the dusty old volumes you covet, then we know what you’re doing this weekend.

The Monkey’s Paw, Toronto’s singular antiquarian bookshop, is having its annual-ish garage sale. All of the 2000+ items up for grabs will be priced between $1 and $3.

Shop owner Stephen Fowler does all the buying for the Paw, and says he’ll often pick up fabulously weird or curious books and items that, upon later reflection, aren’t quite right for the shop. Once the stacks of boxes are large enough, it’s garage sale time. The sale is literally in Fowler’s garage — he lives just down the lane from the shop.

Some items for sale this Saturday include Who Wrote That?, a tiny, leather-bound book of literary quotations that is easily a hundred years old. There’s also Scots Home Rule: The Arguments Stated, by J.M. Hogg.

“It’s a charming little thing,” says Fowler of the old Scottish volume — and newly relevant thanks to the recent referendum. There’s also a 1970s coffee table book about the outhouses of eastern Canada, and at least two boxes of mid-century pulps with “lurid cover art.” Yum.

The sale was only recently announced on Facebook, and already has more than 1000 attendees, so get there early. Or, if you’re not fussy about your old books, come late — everything left unsold at the end of Saturday will be given away for free on Sunday.

When:

Garage sale — Saturday, May 30 10:00am – 4:00pm

Leftover giveaway — Sunday May 31 11:00am – 1:00pm

Where: Skey Lane just below Dundas West. (Around the corner from The Monkey’s Paw look for the red barn-like garage.)

website@nowtoronto.com | @liagrainger

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