Literary Lifeguard

As many university students majoring in English literature do, I worked in bookstores for a number of years, first at the chains and later in an exceptional and still-thriving independent shop in Burlington, Ontario. Despite the fact that David Mason, one of Canada’s foremost antiquarian booksellers and now author of The Pope’s Bookbinder: A Memoir, has declared that “antiquarian booksellers do not really consider new booksellers to be booksellers at all,” but rather “only retailers selling whatever the publishers provide,” my experiences in the new book business put me in contact with many an eccentric bookseller, collector and reader of the kind Mason describes vividly and in abundance in his thoroughly enjoyable memoir. “Bookmen,” as Mason calls them, are a distinct breed with a noble imperative: “I have come to believe that, more important than my or my colleague’s petty concerns or our personal ambitions, the true significance of our work is social, and our main...