Sarah Ramsey is a long-time bookseller in Toronto and currently works as manager at TYPE Books in Forest Hill Village. When not with a good book, she crafts with her favourite materials: butter, sugar, flour and eggs.

In the heart of Leslieville, Toronto sits Tango Palace Coffee Co., home to lone souls plugged into headphones and coffee klatches alike, the music ranging from slow jams to show tunes. Here, I've enjoyed chatting with Michelle Walker and her husband George Walker of George Walker Books and Art. An industry (and life) matchmaker, Michelle's particular strength is hooking people up with their next great conversation, which is how I tumbled face first into a lively debate with "book fairy" Sarah Ramsey, manager of the Forest Hill TYPE Books. (Michelle captured the accompanying picture of me and Sarah, rosy-cheeked from a fierce debate.)

What follows is what I'd consider a pretty accurate description of what it's like to work among the often under-utilized and under-appreciated ranks of the front line bookseller in an industry that needs the in person handsell just as much as the next online clickthrough.

Julie Wilson: Just before the holidays, Amazon launched an iPhone and Android app that encouraged consumers to go into bricks-and-mortar retail stores, scan a product barcode, then receive $5 off that product if purchased from Amazon. I found the whole thing bizarre, ballsy, and so audacious as to be campy. I also thought it was brilliant. (Which isn't the same thing as liking something.)

What has been your own experience with, and response to, the Amazon app?

Sarah Ramsey: Last week, a consumer came in with the Amazon app and complained that our books wouldn’t scan on their device. I wondered why we (the bricks-and-mortar bookselling community) can’t benefit from what I essentially see the app as: a marketing tool. We should be compensated by Amazon for each person that visits our shops, as we are participating in their marketing strategy: each ISBN provides Amazon with sales data and geographic demand for each title. That data could be just as useful to us to build strong relationships within our literary (and larger) community. It also fosters transparency and accountability throughout the industry.

So, I linked to an article from the TYPE Books' Facebook fan page, a piece written by Farhad Manjoo that appeared on slate.com and argued that buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy and better for the consumer. In his piece, he claims that “bookstores present a frustrating consumer experience” in that they “offer a relatively paltry selection, no customer reviews, no reliable way to find what you’re looking for and a dubious recommendation engine.” My objective in posting this piece was to argue that a thoughtful and intelligent, well-read bookseller is better and more reliable. Booksellers humanize your experience Otherwise, the message in this lasting economic downturn is that the dollar is champion above my care and expertise.

JW: Clearly, you have customer experiences that challenge you as both a reader and a bookseller. What's one of the more passionate disconnects you've encountered of late?

SR: I recently found myself in a debate with a customer who asked me to ban a book, Alexander Maksik’s You Deserve Nothing, a great piece of first fiction published by Europa Editions. It’s the story of an American man, teaching at a private international school in Paris, who embarks on an affair with a 17-year-old student. It was exposed as a “thinly veiled memoir.” The customer asked why I would carry such a book of reprehensible character. I told her I was not in the business of banning books. She continued to argue that the author was a pedophile, had the affair taken place on American soil, he would have been jailed for his actions, and that the author was profiting from the girl’s suffering. Even though the customer had not read the book, she told me she would have no choice but to boycott our shop and any other that would carry the book.

I asked a friend who is a writer for his take and was told that writers write best about their own experiences, something I find true in many ways, consciously or not. Whether you find the subject matter reprehensible (the customer) or morally ambiguous (me), you can’t deny readers access to the material; it demonstrates narrow-minded thinking on the part of the reader, he argued. It prompted an interesting discussion among my co-workers about banned books; we wondered what other books we had on the shelves that might be challenged and the list was an arm’s length or more.

Over the years, I have had frank discussions with customers about sex, religion, politics, art, Ryan Gosling memes, cooking and baking, the simple magic of HervéTullet’s Press Here, gender essentialism, the Holocaust, sewing — and the debate over U.S. vs. Canadian pricing is inexhaustible.
I’ve also had interactions with folks who’ve both applauded and loathed my reading recommendations. Taste, of course, is subjective, but I hope to share my enthusiasm for books and I can’t help but feel a little heartache when someone comes in to tell me they didn't enjoy a book. I encourage dialogue, even after the fact.

JW: Does debate help sales, do you think?

SR: Yes. Any type of engagement can only help sales. Especially if a book’s been enjoyed, someone is more inclined to revisit and ask what else I’ve read, hoping for an equally good recommendation. With a patience to listen, paired with knowledge and intuition, I have clientele who visit specifically to ask for my suggestions. Booksellers are not interchangeable with a drone, say, from The GAP, who couldn’t care less about the chinos they’re selling; I read at least a book a week, and what I don’t read, I know about through reviews and trusted colleagues. Handselling is an art.

JW: You also enjoy food writing. In this tradition, what are the most flavourful books you're read in recent memory?

SR: My head is spinning with possibility.

I first started bookselling ten years ago at The Cookbook Store and my expertise remains food and cooking. Beforehand, I'd worked in kitchens, and I recently finished the Food Writing course at George Brown College. (I write for the Women’s Culinary Network and have been published in Edible Toronto.)

I believe words have flavour — not just the descriptors of food — and I think the tastiest book I’ve read recently was Light Boxes by Shane Jones. He describes one of his protagonists as “the girl who smelled of honey and smoke.” It is such an evocative and warm description. I could taste everything in that book; it left me hungry. When I think of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, I think of a soufflé; soft and light, like the Lisbon girls, teetering on the edge, only to come to a violent end if it collapses in heartbreak.

JW: What about book clubs? I'd argue that many clubs pick titles that they'd be inclined to read (and enjoy) on their own as individuals, but don't necessarily encourage a broader conversation around the book itself. I have a friend who, when it came to pick a book for her group, chose Cloud Atlas precisely because it challenged her both as reader and for what it offered a discussion. It was the summer and she said she'd felt as if she'd ruined everyone's holiday! Is this important to you, that book clubs challenge themselves?

SR: There are quite a few book clubs in Forest Hill. I find that many of the reading lists I’m presented with are, truthfully, cliché, filled with titles that seem easy enough to read, but are not inviting to a lively discussion. Maybe they’re just not to my taste. The things I choose for my book club are intentionally provocative and challenging, but still enjoyable — The Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander or The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano (an interesting selection by the Chatelaine book club, I might add). We always try to expose each other to different ideas/writers and I think that’s the objective of a good book club.

JW: List five Canadian-authored books that you think offer a lot to a book club discussion.

SR: The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, a lovely piece of historical fiction, inspired by a fascinating but little known historical document from 1783 called The Book of Negroes, continues to be popular, but I would risk suggesting Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson, a discussion on the matter of taste through a Céline Dion album, from the amazing 33 1/3 series by Continuum Books; The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker (how we use language — utterly fascinating!); Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan, the engaging record of the drafting of the Versailles Treaty following WWI; Shake Hands with the Devil by Roméo Dallaire, a moving, and troubling, account of Dallaire’s UN mission to Rwanda and the epic failure to prevent the genocide in 1994; and maybe Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley (a thought-provoking modernization of the Biblical Noah and the Ark narrative).

If you aren't already familiar with TYPE Books, one of Toronto's great indie bookstores, you're no doubt quite familiar with a video that's been making the rounds, an after hours stop-motion romp through the stacks called "The Joy of Books."