This Tuesday, we will once again celebrate the exploits of Leopold Bloom, a middle-class Dublin Jew, who on June 16th, 1904, experienced the epic struggles of Odysseus scaled to human size and contained within the modest framework of his everyday in James Joyce’s monumental stream-of-consciousness opus Ulysses. The Consulate-General of Ireland marks Bloomsday in Vancouver with a giveaway of James Joyce’s works: our poetry vending machine will be stocked with Joyce’s Pomes Penyeach, twenty of which (extremely good odds!!) contain a lucky ticket entitling the holder to a free copy of Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Ulysses. One special Pome is actually a 100-letter Thunderword, which can be redeemed for the trickster’s choice: a copy of Finnegans Wake!And from 1:30 on, poet Kevin Spenst will lead a casual sidewalk reading of Ulysses at our storefront. Bring your own copy or purchase one in the shop, and ReadJoyce!

A major sporting event looms. Our special promotion: if the giant inflatable soccer ball over our entrance comes unmoored from its webbing and brains the client as they enter the premises, an immediate 20% discount will be applied to their purchase.

A little proof of life from your increasingly cyber-reticent Hounds - though since nothing in this image was published in the past quarter century, it is hardly the equivalent of holding up today’s newspaper for the ransomer’s photograph. You’ll just have to take our word for it, and so in the interest of full up-to-the-minute window display transparency, please note that the Farsi edition of Tintin sold in the interval between snapping this pic and posting it here, and has since been replaced with a 1970s bilingual souvenir programme of Habs goaltenders. The books may be old but at least you can leave your suspicions of AI-authorship at the door, oui?

And a special offering this year for our colleagues in the indie bookselling trenches: the first five booksellers to DM us with their shop mailing address will receive one of five exclusive "The price is in pencil on the first page" temporary tattoos, which can be applied to neck, forehead, knuckles, left buttock....whatever anatomical surface is most "customer-facing" in your retail milieu. We ship worldwide!

Does your “Book Haul” require two flippers upraised to convey it over the threshold? Is your “TBR” pile so vertiginous that it obstructs your view and has you sometimes walking off the edge of an Antarctic ice shelf? Do you crack open your charming 1931 copy of Dear Doggie only to find that it faintly wafts an aroma of lanternfish? You might be the ornamental King Penguin greeting customers at the till at The Paper Hound.

***An update: This was an April Fool’s joke that wildly exceeded its modest goals. I have neither a neck tattoo nor a sister. Happy to have raised awareness about used bookshop pricing conventions! But leave my imaginary uptight sister alone!***

The fascinating contradictions of the public's attitude towards second-hand bookshops, here charmingly summarized by perennial Paper Hound favourite Edward Ardizzone.

Happy International Women’s Day from us and this treasured Marina Tsvetaeva-quoting bookmark, printed by the Quartermains at the Keefer St Press, 2002.

Most of the principles of business administration continue to elude us, but we have finally grasped the concept of vertical integration. That’s when you put a few good titles on the very top shelf and make the customer climb.

Family Day. One of those open-ended stat holidays where you could basically do whatever, so why not amble down to your local bookstore and dip into their oft-overlooked drawer of cabinet cards to build yourself an ersatz ancestral portrait gallery? If you would like to establish a bespectacled fake family lineage (bookish!), we’ve helpfully isolated all the photographs where the subjects wear glasses.

The grammatical arc described by our Valentine postcard pendulum finishes at one extreme with gingerly conditional consent and at another with an icky biological imperative. In our opinion, there’s really nothing to squelch a woo like deploying the verb “to mate” unless maybe the wooer is a Giant Panda or northern curlew. Fortunately between these remote poles lies a vast spectrum of romance and charm, not pictured here because we like to save the really good stuff for the hardy folk who brave the damp to have that old fashioned real life shopping experience. Browsers, we call 'em. Forgive the precociousness of this post, but it seemed wise to let the long-distance lovers get their cards in the mail well before the mid-Feb deadline.

The arrival of Bleak Midwinter was signalled to this bookseller by a disquieting squirrel who maintained direct eye contact while gnawing through a strand of fairy lights on the magnolia bush last week. That they were unplugged at the time was to the squirrel’s advantage. So now that we have plunged fully into the gloomy mire of January, with our festive garlands defeated by Nature’s nibbling antagonists, a lot of you are seeking books with narratives that are cheerful and uplifting. Unfortunately we do not sell those. However, we do have a drawer full of “books” (technically) that are full of “light” (literal not figurative) and they are also cheap and portable and offer a diverting history of the motel, restaurant, and cabaret culture of yesteryear. That’s right, our January staff pick is that you take up cigarette smoking! We will revisit this recommendation once the handful of vitamin D gel caps we tossed in our evening martini (“sunshine boba”) kick in.

Your Hounds, Kim and Rod.

This will be our final communication until New Year’s Eve, as our vocabulary recedes to the cavemanlike syllables of “ho ho ho” and “fa la la”, so before the lexicon, er, lags, let us wish you very happy holidays!

Attempts to crop out the newly-installed security camera were unsuccessful, but isn't Christmas actually all about an omniscient unblinking eye that captures all our deeds, both naughty AND nice? Perennial thanks to our friend Kate from Weekend Flowers for the wreath and also a fresh thanks, perhaps to be repeated in years to come, to our neighbour Simone from Estratto Coffee for holding the ladder as I decked the hound in his seasonal finery. In conclusion: be good for goodness sake. Specifically, we're addressing the faceless antagonist who shoplifted a very expensive grimoire from us in August. May you be marinating in a viscous brine of remorse. If you decide to return it (no questions asked) we will commend you to that karmic arbiter of behaviour and perhaps you will receive something more than a sockful of moldy potatoes this Christmas.

To correct her historical exclusion from the Yule narrative (viz.: “not even a mouse”), we’ve offered our bright-eyed resident a role in decorating the bookshop for the festive season. Her nimble-fingered handiwork can be viewed in the window display at any hour, but if you want to come in for a browse we are here daily from 10 to 6.

Women and children, are you worried that your priority boarding pass on the lifeboat may not be honoured? At this historical moment, your concerns are not unfounded. Fortunately, we have this book.