S1 Ep. 4: Stephen Fowler, The Monkey's Paw (Toronto, Canada)

You will not go inside the Monkey's Paw to find a book, but a book you never knew existed will find you. This Toronto bookshop is home to the beautiful, the arcane, and the absurd. Bread sculpture, outer space humour, wild-animal celebrities, useful drugs and guides on how to hate Toronto are all things you can find inside the pages of Monkey's Paw's books, all dated before 1980. And the cherry on top is a custom-made BiblioMat, a vending machine that spits out a randomly selected vintage volume in exchange for a token. Owner Stephen Fowler, our guest today, originally thought the BiblioMat could just be a refrigerator box where a skinny assistant would drop books out when people put a coin in - we are happy with how things turned out though. Stephen learned the tricks of the trade from a high-end antiquarian in San Francisco, collected inspiration and acquired a nose for the finer oddities from old bookshops and in 2007, poured it all into the Monkey's Paw. We are delighted to have him today on Got Books? and discuss the Monkey's Paw dreamscape.