The store was actually the main floor of a 1930s or 1940s era house, stuffed with 8 foot high shelves spaced too closely together to be able to stand far enough back to read the titles on the top shelf or two. Despite not finding The Screwtape Letters, she did find one of the Findley books she was after. I, on the other hand, after not finding any Douglas Coupland came out with Cat's Cradle, and a non-fiction book by Isaac Asimov, who I've only ever read a short story of for a project back in highschool english.
The stop planted a bug, and we decided to hit up another bunch of stores downtown today. The first stop was a disaster, with books spread into sections such that many had one or more overlaps with other sections making it difficult to really find anything. Some sections sorted by author name, others by title, and some apparently not at all, it was impossible to find anything specific, without randomly coming across it. The prices however were cheaper than the uptown stop (a trend that was true of every other stop as well).A couple more stops, without finding good condition copies of the Findley books she was after, or any condition copy of The Screwtape letters, and myself not finding anything by a rather limited list of authors I was after (more or less George Orwell, Chuck Palahniuk or Douglas Coupland) we finally headed home to check out Amazon.ca.
A quick google found one more store in town we had missed, right by the universities. It turned out to be the smallest of any of the 5 stores we ended up at, and really the most bland. But despite its lack of musty bookstore character, it had the best, and cheapest selection.
She ended up with a couple Findley books, and settled for the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in lieu of not finding the other C.S. Lewis work she was after. I, being the geek that I am, finally found a Coupland book (Miss Wyoming), and also came out with two more non-fiction science books (Comet and A Brief History of Time).The moral of this long-winded story? University students will sell off their good books to the store closest to them for beer/rent/tuition money, leaving the stuffy, musty stores to jack up their prices on books with mosquitoes squished in the inside cover.