Rather than attend the Harry Potter midnight release last night, I went down to the World’s Biggest Bookstore this afternoon to get it. I took the chance to walk down Yonge Street on the way, passing by several used bookstores.

The first place I stopped was Book City. It’s an independent bookstore with several locations in Toronto. The Yonge Street location is pretty tiny, and I didn’t see anything I wanted (at least, nothing I wanted to pay full price for.) The great thing about Book City is the number of remaindered/discount books they sell, but nothing caught my eye.

ABC Books is quite a nice little store, narrow but fairly deep, as many stores on Yonge Street are. It has a great selection of fiction and lit, with some of the best prices in town. It also has large SFF and mystery sections, mostly mass market paperbacks, at the back of the store. I found four books there, all under $5:

1. Chapterhouse Dune by Frank Herbert, in the trade paperback edition matching the copy of God Emperor of Dune that I bought yesterday.
2. Independent People by Halldor Laxness, in trade paperback, which was on my wish list.
3. The second book in Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo trilogy, Palace of Desire. In the matching trade paperback to Palace Walk, of course.
4. Look for Me, Edeet Ravel’s second novel.

A few blocks south of ABC is Eliot’s, an old-fashioned used bookstore houses in a creaky three-story building. It has an extensive fiction and lit collection, and lots of mystery and SFF mass market paperbacks. Unfortunately, their prices are quite steep, so I didn’t get anything.

South of Eliot’s, there used to be a place called Orion Books, which has recently closed. Luckily, it was my least favourite bookstore in the city: tiny, with poor selection, and looking rather seedy. A block or two farther south in NDJ Books, a little place that I visit primarily when looking for SFF books, particularly Terry Pratchett novels. Today they let me down, not having The Colour of Magic, which I’d hoped to find there.

Half a dozen blocks further south, I came to Edward Street, home of my favourite BMV location, as well as the World’s Biggest Bookstore. BMV is cozy without being cramped, and very well-lit. It has a top-notch ficton and lit section, lots of SFF mass markets, a good selection of mysteries and contemporary fiction, and tons of great remaindered books. I found four books:

1. The Camel of Destruction, a Mamur Zapt mystery by Michael Pearce. His books have been reprinted in trade paperback and are ridiculously expensive, so it was nice to find one of the old mass market editions (which were quite nice) going cheaply.
2. Ahdaf Soueif’s short story collection, I Think of You: Stories, which was on my wish list.
3. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, which I’ve heard is good and which I desperately wanted to own because the cover is so beautiful.
4. A Great Deliverance, the first in Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley series, which I’ve been wanting to try.

Then I had to stop into the World’s Biggest Bookstore for my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Indigo (which owns the WBB) happens to be having a buy-3-get-1-free sale on all pocket books under $14, so I took the chance to get some things I haven’t managed to find used and would like to read soon:

1. Tanya Huff’s Vicki Nelson novels, in three omnibus editions (all signed by the author): The Blood Books, Volume 1: Blood Price and Blood Trail,
2. The Blood Books, Volume 2: Blood Lines and Blood Pact, and
3. The Blood Books, Volume 3: Blood Debt and Blood Bank.
4. The last two novels in the spinoff series to the Vicki Nelson series: Smoke and Mirrors and
5. Smoke and Ashes.
6. Carnival by Elizabeth Bear. I’m eager to read something by her, since a collaboration between her and Sarah Monette is coming out later this year.
7. Dan Simmons’s Hyperion, which I’ve heard so much about and am very excited to read. I just hope it lives up to my expectations!
8. The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason, the first in the Gardella Vampire Chronicles. Again, something I’ve heard a lot about and am excited to read.

So that’s that. I’m all booked out, I’ve had my book shopping spree for the next three years. It was fun while it lasted. Aside from presents, book mooches, and some things I’ve already ordered online, no more big book buys! Except for textbooks, of course.

My next big purchase? More bookshelves so these new acquisitions have somewhere to live. Think I’m kidding? If only.