Book Stores

Everywhere we go these days, Laurie and I visit bookstores. We go in with a copy of All Creatures Weird and Dangerous, hoping to convince the shop to carry the book and make a suggestion or two about where it might be shelved. (We also end up leaving with a pile of books, but that’s another story.)

Where to shelve the book is actually a real issue—not only is it about “weird and dangerous” creatures, but it’s kind of a “weird” combination of genres and folks don’t necessarily know where to put it. Is it magic realism? fantasy? fiction? non-fiction? It’s certainly not your standard memoir. When I spoke to a group of 6th graders at Nichols School this spring, one of the kids asked, “Is this real?” another asked his teacher, “Is this guy crazy?”

But we actually found the book on a shelf at City Books in Toronto—next to a book by Nick Offerman and just below the shelf of several volumes of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small!