The legacy of the pandemic shutdown has been surprisingly long-lived. More than a few stores that planned to temporarily shut down never re-opened, and more than a few also discovered that online sales and remote shopping were more lucrative options than they expected.
And then there was Lawrence Books, a local used book store which closed their doors in March of 2020. When the veil began to lift in 2021, Lawrence failed to reopen, but there were no signs that the business had come to an end - signage remained in place, their sunfaded book display continued to decorate their windows, they just weren't open. Like the cat in Shrödinger's famous mind experiment, the fate of the store was unknown.
As always, patience is its own reward. Last week my wife Karli informed me that Lawrence Books had finally collapsed the quantum superposition by reopening*, albeit with a short three-day-a-week schedule, and I was finally able to pay them a visit this weekend.
Located at the corner of Dunbar and 41st, Lawrence Books is very much an old school used book store: a maze of narrow aisles, unexpected nooks and dead ends, front stacked pine shelving**, and the unique smell of old paper in bulk. It was obvious that the inventory had gone untouched for a while - when I found the Science Fiction section and started browsing, a few of the books were lightly stuck together.
I found a few things that were of interest - a few Ace Doubles in acceptable condition, a couple of replacement texts for my collection - but nothing extraordinary, nothing unique, which is really what every used book shopper hopes to stumble across.
However, on my way to the till, I took a quick look at the minimal Fantasy selection and spotted a somewhat worn copy of the 1979 fantasy novel Urshurak, which I instantly added to my handful of purchases. It may not qualify as extraordinary, but it's a book that I've been aware of for a long time without ever having a chance to read it.
Urshurak is one of those books that is famous more because of
its back story than the novel itself. The concept was the brainchild of
legendary genre artists Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, better known as the Brothers
Hildebrandt.
As visual artists, the Brothers Hildebrandt came to Urshurak
with a unique perspective. Heavily influenced by Tolkien, they wanted
to create their own version of Middle Earth, but based their story in
art rather than text, creating a diverse and detailed portfolio
showcasing the characters and key plot moments from their narrative.
When
the project failed to attract any attention (or funding) as a live
action film property, it was briefly promoted as an animated option, but
ultimately ended up as an illustrated novel written in collaboration with author Jerry Nichols, with both coloured plates
and black-and-white sketches of the original concept art integrated into
the text. I'm curious to finally take a look at the result - I don't think of Jerry Nichols as a well-known name in the science fiction and fantasy world, but there are a lot of authors out there, it's not hard to imagine that I could have just missed Mr. Nichols over time.
A final note to potential shoppers: the store's payment terminal was down when I went to pay for my books, which led to a quick game of find the banking machine (my personal pandemic holdover is that I no longer carry cash). In spite of the sales person's information, there is not actually a cash machine at the nearby Save-On-Foods, and the machine at the Shell station across the street from Lawrence's took two attempts to accept my card - plan accordingly.
- Sid
* Well, actually she just told me that they were open again, I don't think Karli viewed it as a quantum physics situation.
** Why is it that so many used bookstores feature unfinished pine bookshelves? Is it purely a case of economy, or is there something about not having lacquer fumes near pulpwood paper that I don't know about?
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