Idyll Books

Happy Canadian Independent Bookstore Day! 📚🤸 It’s been such a joy welcoming everyone to the bookshop so far, thank you for loving books!!! 💌

To celebrate, we’re participating in the local Indie Bookstore Crawl, I’ve got the Paperback Pillar rolling, the new County Room is filled with local authors and rural living tales, we’ve got an in store Book Joy Basket giveaway with treats from Green Gables & free audiobooks from and so many cozy corners to explore!!!

Whether it’s today, or any day soon, we’re so thrilled the community loves books & reading as much as we do, have fun book-crawlin’💞

And from the bottom of my little bookseller’s heart on my first indie bookshop day, I express a bubbling fountain of thank yous!!!! To everyone who has bought a book, gave a book, toured the shop or invited someone to visit, I’m so grateful for the book joy we’re brewing at this beautiful second floor bookshop 💘

The Correspondent has landed! The book everyone is buzzing about - have you read it?! Do you want to read it?! Swing by Idyll Books for a copy and enjoy a beautiful story 💌

About the book:

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE, THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL, AND THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Elle, She Reads

“Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.

Sharing book joy! 🤸Can you tell books bring me happiness?!? Here’s some of the titles hitting the shelves this week:

NEW IN THE FRESH READS ROOM

Fiction & Literature
📚All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
📚The Strangers by Katherena Vermette
📚Prairie Edge by Conor Kerr
📚Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park
📚Companion Piece by Ali Smith
📚Five Wives by Joan Thomas

Memoir & Contemporary Non-Fiction
📖Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler
📖The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
📖A Line Above the Sky by Helen Mort

NEW IN THE GREAT READS ROOM

Classic Literature
📘The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
📘Silas Marner by George Eliot
📘Germinal by Émile Zola
📘The Pursuit of Love and Other Novels by Nancy Mitford
📘The Story of a Modern Woman by Ella Hepworth Dixon

Mystery, Thriller & True Crime
📕Blackwater Bluff and The Sevens by S. M. Hurley
📕The Murder of Mary Russell by Laurie R. King
📕Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito
📕The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill
📕Red Notice by Bill Browder

Creative Nonfiction
📗Exuberance: The Passion for Life by Kay Jamison
📗On Our Best Behavior by Elise Loehnen
📗The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad

History & Biography
📚The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft by Claire Tomalin
📚Hedy’s Folly by Richard Rhodes

Country Living
📖Homesteads by Margaret McBurney and Mary Byers
📖Dessert Cookbook by Ladies Aid of Lachute, Quebec
📖Deaf Smith Country Cookbook
📖Treasury of County Crafts and Foods by Better Homes and Gardens
📖Harrowsmith County Life Reader

Art & Creativity
📘Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
📘Salle Exhibition Catalog

NEW IN THE KIDS & SCIENCE CORNER
📕Our Corner Grocery Store by Joanne Schwartz
📕Alphabet of Girls by Leland B. Jacobs
📕The Reptiles by Time Life

Plus some lovely vintage postcards and bookmarks for you to explore!

📍 Find us: 286 Bloomfield Main St. (2nd Floor, Green Gables)
⏰ Open: 10am - 5pm | Closed Tuesdays

Come say hi & browse the shelves in Bloomfield to find your next great read!

Sharing some reading inspiration, author quotes & good bookish vibes with you all! 📚✨This new chapter of Idyll Books has filled my heart with so much joy. All the late nights, oodles of boxes, and shelf shuffling have melted into a charming, cozy world here, filled with daily ‘pinch me’ moments, and I promise so much more to come!

Lots of love and gratitude to everyone who has supported the bookshop along the way! Thanks to all who have stopped by our new Bloomfield location to browse the shelves or share some books. It means the world to see this dreamy space filled with a community of wise & whimsical book lovers and I’m thrilled so many of you have found a great read to take home 💛

We’re only just getting started so keep an eye out for all the fun coming up next. Happy reading!!!