Books and ice cream: the addresses
Daily Hive suggests six of the best used bookstores in town – I didn’t think Argo was a used book place, didn’t used to be, but I haven’t been there in awhile. While looking at this I found they also have an item on the best ice cream places. Either or both of these may be useful for your weekend.
Michael Black 15:57 on 2020-08-14 Permalink
Usually when they have a list of “local independent bookstores”, it’s used bookstores, plus Argo.
So what changed this time is the title.
I’ve actually only been in Argo once, about 45 years ago. My impressiin was they had some used books, but it was just a snall selection. But in recent years, the store has changed hands a few times so who knows what changed.
Sim 16:31 on 2020-08-14 Permalink
No Kem Coba?
jeather 16:37 on 2020-08-14 Permalink
Kem Coba is so overrated I am delighted to see a list without it. Though La Diperie is not better.
I was in Argo not long before the lockdown but I do not remember if there are used books or not.
Ian 16:57 on 2020-08-14 Permalink
As long as Biueboy and Ripples are on that list I’m good with it 😀 Second on Kem Coba being overrated. They are also not great on the COVID-19 hygiene.
Ephraim 18:24 on 2020-08-14 Permalink
Blueboy? They were a bad rip-off of Menchie’s last time I went and the girl didn’t understand why she violated the (tare) law when she tried to measure two cups at the same time. Has it changed?
Ian 00:40 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
Mileage may vary. I like Welch’s better but these lists always put the Word first, what can I tell you.
Alex 07:57 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
For ice cream, there are two on Laurier Street between the park and Papineau, one is way better than the other, the Patio on Mt Royal is also great
jeather 10:29 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
I agree, Patio is amazing, as is Ripples. I had a free sample at Blueboy last summer and found it disappointing.
DeWolf 11:50 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
Ice cream is one of those surprisingly controversial topics. I love Havre aux Glaces, as does my wife and a couple of friends, but there are other friends who really don’t like it.
I like ice cream that has clear flavours but isn’t too sweet. That means I usually lean towards gelato rather than American-style ice cream. But what I really love is a good soft serve. And while I don’t really like the regular ice cream at Kem Coba and Les Givrés, both have really interesting rotating soft serve flavours.
My ultimate go-to spot is Noble Café on Laurier, which isn’t usually considered an ice cream parlour. They only have two flavours of soft serve, vanilla and coffee, but they use Chagnon milk and the texture and sweetness is just perfect for me. It’s also not expensive and they make a killer “flotteur cold brew” which is a contemporary take on an affogato.
Has anyone been to Iconoglace, a new spot on Bélanger just east of Christophe-Colomb? It has had huge lineups since it opened in May.
Ephraim 12:27 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
Haven’t been there this year, but we always liked Meu-Meu on St-Denis, near Mont-Royal. And there is the place on St-Denis near Roy, Unicone which has interesting flavours from time to time. Last summer they had mastic (tears of Chios) flavoured ice cream. It’s soft serve, but they change the flavours out weekly. I’m a bit different, in that I’m perfectly happy with a good vanilla, but not artificial vanilla. And I’m not a great fan of chocolate, so if they don’t have enough non-chocolate flavours, I often just walk out with vanilla.
PatrickC 12:58 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
Whether it qualifies among the “best” bookstores I don’t know, but Iet me add a plug for Les Bons Débarras on Wellington. It’s been a while since I was there, but I found their English selection to be good for popular and mystery fiction–and who doesn’t need more escapist reading these days?–but there were good literary finds on the French shelves. Prices seemed reasonable.They had a lot of vinyl records too, but that’s not my interest so I can’t judge.
Michael Black 13:22 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
That’s a point, these lists generally have the same handful of stores. There are always others, sometimes presenting a different slant (forty years ago a lot of used book stores were crammed with paperback bestsellers, now the ones on the list are about “quality” books at a higher price) or just simply nearby. I’vegone to St Anne’s a few times in recent years, a trio, I can get some ice cream, and Nova has a bookstore. It’s not a great selection, so not worth the trip for most, but for people closer it becomes more appealing than going downtown.
There’s a book store in St Henri that got publicity when it opened a few years ago, I gather people near it like it . There’s a bookstore in NDG a bit further west than Encore, they moved across the street in July, and changed their name to Phoenix Books. That bookstore has sort of existed since at least 1977 when I first went. It moved around, changed it’s name, then changed ownership. I was always aware it was there, but stopped going in at one point. I was even beginning to doubt there was contunuity, but with the move last month the current owners admitted they’d taken it over. So it’s almost as old as The Word.
Kate 14:06 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
Masson Street used to have Le Puits du Livre, but it closed last year; it still has the Librairie du Vieux Bouc, a good, well organized used books place which I’d visit more often if I read more in French. Ditto for the Librairie Henri-Julien on Villeneuve. But lists like this are not meant to be completist.
PatrickC 14:34 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
I like the Vieux Bouc too, though the installation of their coffee bar made them reduce the book selection quite a bit. On Mont-Royal, the Librairie du Plateau often rivals L’Échange a couple of blocks away for good finds. They have an English section, as well as a good selection of the Folio bilingue series, which prints classic stories by writers like Joyce, Conrad, Fitzgerald, even Stephen King, side-by-side with French translations. They’re designed for French students learning English, and so may not be widely known among Anglo readers, but I’ve found them very useful for working in the opposite direction.
jeather 14:40 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
I liked the one in St-Henri for their children’s books selection, which was interesting and unusual, but I wasn’t as keen on their genre selection.
A bilingual series! I did that for some novels in sec v, though in a DIY way, and I felt like it was cheating then for some reason.
Chris 19:14 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
Ripples is great, very yummy ice cream.
Daisy 20:29 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
Does anyone know of a secondhand bookstore that carries books in languages other than French and English? (other than dictionaries and language textbooks) At the moment I would be interested in German books specifically.
Michael Black 21:13 on 2020-08-15 Permalink
The Goethe Institute has had an annual book sale in the fall over the past few years, I suspect it won’t happen this year.
There’s a German language school, I forget the name, and they’ve had a book sale, thiugh I’m not sure if it’s every year or I miss the notice sometimes.
Maybe some of the used book stores might have a German language section (one time Encore books in NDG landed a selection of Hebrew language books), but I suspect the best bet is places like these that are about German language that might incidentally have some bokks.
There are often groups associated with a language and culture which may be the hub, and they might have pointers. If this was about Danish, I’d point to St. Ansgar Church in NDG, and there is a Finnish church, I think downtown (they have a rummage sale). There’s the Japanese Cultural centre, and so on.
For native languages, there’s tye Native Friendship Centre.
I don’t know if he kept it updated, but Blork has a list of used book stores
walkerp 09:24 on 2020-08-16 Permalink
Argo is not a used bookstore, but it is an excellent little bookstore. I only started buying new books during the lockdown and they delivered them to our home directly. Excellent service, really nice people, nice curation of books in their small store and you can order anything through their website. I recommend them.
The Word is one of those pretentious used bookstores that doesn’t stock any genre fiction (begrudgingly some Raymond Chandler or other names that academics consider “literary”). Useless.
Ian 11:21 on 2020-08-16 Permalink
They actually have a pretty decent albeit smallish selection of detective/mystery but no, not a lot of genre fiction – but they are also one of the few used bookstores that stocks an extensive collection of foreign language books and poetry. Most places that have a lot of science fiction (for instance) tend not to carry a lot of German books.
I don’t see that as pretentious, it’s specialization – I wouldn’t think a sushi restaurant was pretentious for not having hot dogs.
For new books I like D&Q. Last time I went to Argo the guy at the cash apropos of nothing informed me that the author of the book I was buying was overrated. Now THAT is pretentious. I haven’t been back since.
Daisy 05:56 on 2020-08-17 Permalink
Thanks for the ideas, Michael!