Books bookstores Let’s Talk About Our Favorite Used Bookstores Here’s to digging for treasure in the endless shelves of bookstores past and present… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on May 18, 2026 Photo by Glen Noble [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Glen Noble [via Unsplash] In reply to a recent essay, Mayhem said “I can definitely still remember my first few second hand bookstores. Those are indelible.” Moi aussi! I may forget people’s names and faces, or why I am standing in the kitchen, or just where I hung my cane, etc. That is because my brain seethes with memories that actually matter1, memories which involve books, and as a corollary, bookstores2. Don’t believe me? Herewith, some accounts of used bookstores that were very important to teen me. When a young bibliophile, I soon discovered that used books are cheaper than new books3. Given a fixed amount of money to spend (my allowance), it was obvious that I could afford more used books than new books. A few years later, I realized that books go out of print. As I’ve mentioned before, regular bookstores are limited to books that are in print (and for practical reasons, only a subset of those books). Used bookstores offer access to books otherwise impossible to purchase. The first used bookstore I remember is the Book Barn, located at 12 King Street North, Waterloo. Established by Mark Shapiro and later run by Randy and Sylvia Hannigan, the Book Barn was a conveniently short hike, a mere 1.7 km from UWaterloo, where my father taught. The Book Barn got a considerable fraction of my allowance; one particularly memorable purchase was my second Poul Anderson MMPB, There Will Be Time. I was sad to see it go. The Book Barn was the only used bookstore to which I was introduced by my parents. I was quick to generalize. However, I was not quick to see the utility of the Yellow Pages in this matter. I tended to rely on random wandering and dumb luck. One such discovery was the Book Nook, located at 77 Ontario Street South, which, as previously mentioned, I first noticed when I was out on a school excursion4. I regret to say that I cannot remember the name of the woman who owned and operated the Book Nook—I don’t think she ever introduced herself to me—but she tolerated my complete lack of social skills, my weekly perusal of every single paperback in the science fiction and fantasy section, and the small change I presented in exchange for treasures such as a battered copy of the Berkley Medallion edition of Laumer’s Greylorn. I cannot recall how I discovered KW Bookstore, founded in 19755 and still located at 308 King St. West, Kitchener, Ontario. It then held, and still holds, a treasure trove of books and magazines. One’s browsing experience was greatly enhanced by the then-owners’ refusal to engage in such effete practices as arranging books in alphabetical order by author’s surname. Books were sorted purely by genre and the order in which the owners had bought them. Books were also double and tripled stacked. This taught me the value of relentless thoroughness in browsing, as there was otherwise no telling what treasures were hidden at the back of the shelf. Among its many noteworthy qualities is the fact that KW Bookstore is the only Kitchener-Waterloo used bookstore from my teen years that is still in operation6. The purchase I most remember: walking in as cases of books, the proceeds of an estate sale, were being stacked. The owners really didn’t want to go through each box, so offered me the box on the top for five bucks if I’d take it away with me immediately. Inside I found an almost complete run of Travis McGee novels, from The Deep Blue Good-by to The Dreadful Lemon Sky. Score! I discovered Harry Kremer’s Now & Then, which was then located at 103 Queen South, Kitchener, when my family and I walked past it on our way to a movie. I was irked when my parents refused to let me enter and browse on the absurd pretext that the movie we were planning on seeing was going to begin soon. Well, it also helped that the store wasn’t open.7 Because I didn’t think to note the address or look in the Yellow Pages, it took me two years to find the store again. Now & Then at that time was a bit of an odd duck, in that it sold a wider assortment of goods than most used bookstores: books, but also direct sales comics, games, and used records8. For me, Now & Then was about the books, but it’s more likely that if you’ve heard of Now & Then, it is in the context of it being one of Canada’s first direct sales comic stores. It’s no exaggeration to say that Harry and his Now & Then were a Kitchener institution and it was a tragedy when he died in 2002. I can’t remember the first book in the first sack of books I hauled home from Now & Then, but there is a purchase I do remember. I and three other members of WatSFiC, UWaterloo’s SFF club, were buying books for the club’s library9. A diversity of opinion precluded consensus. Even numbers produced deadlocks. We had only two unanimous decisions: everyone agreed we should buy John Bellairs’ The Face in the Frost and we all agreed that we should NOT buy Pel “Lionel Fanthorpe” Torro’s Galaxy 666. Those are the local used bookstores that consumed much of my disposable income half a century ago. Did used bookstores play a similar role for you? Please reminisce about them in comments below.[end-mark] You might think “consciously dating people with the same given name so as to make remembering it easier” is a brilliant hack. It is. Telling one of them that one of their paramount qualities is having the same name as their predecessors and inevitable replacements turns out to be injudicious. ︎I will limit myself to Waterloo Region used bookstores. I’ve been to bookstores in many cities and countries by now, most notably Hay-on-Wye. Reactor does not have enough hard drive space for an in-depth discussion of Hay-on-Wye’s used bookstores.I was tempted to include Bakka despite it being in Toronto, but it deserves an essay of its own. Enjoy! ︎Imagine my fury when in a San Francisco used bookstore I discovered a 35 cent MMPB that was priced at 75 cents. The cheek! ︎We were mapping downtown Kitchener for a school project. ︎Although I am told it was actually a continuation of an earlier used bookstore, founded in the 1950s. ︎Kitchener-Waterloo has other used bookstores, including Old Goat Books and A Second Look Books. These were founded after the period in question. ︎Not as much of an impediment as one might expect. 103 Queen South was an old building with many quirks, one of which was that the mail slot for Now & Then’s unit was big enough that a skinny kid could reach his arm through to unlock the door. Owner Harry Kremer only realized this after he noticed stock was vanishing after closing and parked himself inside in the dark to see if he could discover why.I hasten to add that I was not that skinny kid. I was the person who rented that space after Harry, when I discovered that the modification he made to the lock to prevent repeats of the exploit made it possible for me to lock myself into my own store.If I had a nickel for every time I’d been locked into my own building, I’d have fifteen cents. ︎As I recall, records were in the basement unit, which had Harry’s mother behind the register. ︎Since broken up, thanks to WUSA’s relentless efforts to that end. ︎The post Let’s Talk About Our Favorite Used Bookstores appeared first on Reactor.