It would appear that Saint Catherine, as well as having a thing about wheels, was a shopaholic, because Rue Sainte-Catherine is crammed full of opportunities for retail therapy. Helpfully much of it is underground, allowing the serious shopper to continue to browse whatever the weather.
Fortunately for my bank balance, my suitcases are very full, so aside from a few gifts for friends I haven’t bought anything. And it probably isn’t a good idea to buy clothes if you have been over-eating all weekend. But I did look for a bookstore. There are not many. I found two, only one of which was still in business. It sold mainly French-language books, and from that I learned that if we want to be a hit with the locals the people we need to get to attend Worldcon are Trudi Canavan and Fiona McIntosh.
My feet are not desperately in need of some relaxation, so I think I’ll go in search of a nice, friendly taxi.
I’m named, not for the victim with the wheels but the woman who told popes what to do (from Sienna), I wonder which one was the shopaholic!
Yay for the Aussie writers!
While you can find some elsewhere, used bookstore are concentrated in two locations between Atwater and Peel on Ste-Catherine (or within a block or so north of Ste-Cat) are the English bookstores.
Between Sherbrooke and Mont-Royal and along Mont-Royal are the French bookstores.
New booksellers can also be found there, but they tend to be spread out more evenly, and like their used counterparts either have a majority of French or English books though will usually have a section in the other language
Rene:
Thanks. It looks like I didn’t quite walk far enough along Ste.-Catherine. You should put that info on the con web site as there will be quite a few attendees wanting to find used bookstores.
Mm, and for those who go far afield, I found my first edition paperback (since passed on to a friend) of Tiptree’s “Warm Worlds and Otherwise” as well as a very signed copy of Tesseracts 8 at Encore, on Sherbrooke (5670 Sherbrooke W according to the intertubes) about a year ago.