The Monkey's Paw (bookstore)
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The Monkey's Paw (bookstore)
The Monkey's Paw is an independent used bookstore in Toronto, Ontario, Canada known for its eclectic, arcane, and absurd books, and for the Biblio-Mat, a random book vending machine. Owner Stephen Fowler founded The Monkey's Paw in 2006, four years after he moved to Toronto from San Francisco, where he worked in numerous bookstores. Fowler opened The Monkey's Paw in order to support his family with another income source. The inspiration and book selection methods of the store is based on his work in a previous San Francisco bookstore that placed books that were too unique, specific, or unusual for a single-subject category under a miscellaneous section "Floop". Many, including the owner, consider the store itself a showcase and homage to the printed book, which they believe to be dying medium. Due to the notoriety and uniqueness of the bookstore, Fowler was invited to join the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers. The New York Times Style Magazine ''T: The New York ...
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Bookselling
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of libraries in c.300 BC stimulated the energies of the Athens, Athenian booksellers. History In Ancient Rome, Rome, toward the end of the Roman Republic, republic, it became the fashion to have a library, and Roman booksellers carried on a flourishing trade. The spread of Christianity naturally created a great demand for copies of the Gospels, other sacred books, and later on for missals and other devotional volumes for both church and private use. The modern system of bookselling dates from soon after the introduction of printing. In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries the Low Countries for a time became the chief centre of the bookselling world. Modern book selling has changed dramatically with the advent of the Internet. Major websites s ...
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Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,765,188 people (as of 2021) surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario, while the Greater Toronto Area proper had a 2021 population of 6,712,341. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, sports and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world. Indigenous peoples have travelled through and inhabited the Toronto area, located on a broad sloping plateau interspersed with rivers, deep ravines, and urban forest, for more than 10,000 years. After the broadly disputed Toronto Purchase, when the Mississauga surrendered the area to the British Crown, the British established the town of York in 1793 and later designat ...
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Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Canada, it is Canada's most populous province, with 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province by total area (after Quebec). Ontario is Canada's fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is Ontario's provincial capital. Ontario is bordered by the province of Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay to the north, and Quebec to the east and northeast, and to the south by the U.S. states of (from west to east) Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Almost all of Ontario's border with the United States f ...
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Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Its southern and western border with the United States, stretching , is the world's longest binational land border. Canada's capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Indigenous peoples have continuously inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years. Beginning in the 16th century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled along the Atlantic coast. As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces an ...
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Biblio-Mat
__NOTOC__ The Biblio-Mat is a random antiquarian book vending machine located at The Monkey's Paw bookstore in Toronto, Canada designed by visual artist Craig Small. History Origin Stephen Fowler, owner of The Monkey's Paw, and his friend Craig Small conceived of the Biblio-Mat in 2012. Fowler, looking for ways to attract customers to his shop’s booth at an upcoming street fair, shared with Small his idea of painting a large cardboard box to look like a vending machine, inside of which an assistant would drop an old random book out of a slot in exchange for a coin. Small loved the idea, but proposed creating a real mechanized vending machine instead. The Biblio-Mat was installed at The Monkey’s Paw in November of 2012. The original price to vend a book was CDN$2. In 2022, the price was increased to $5. Design The Biblio-Mat was inspired by vending machines from the 1940s and 50s and was designed to complement the existing aesthetic of The Monkey's Paw bookshop. The machi ...
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The Biblio-Mat (cropped)
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a ...
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San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of California cities by population, fourth most populous in California and List of United States cities by population, 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the County statistics of the United States, fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and '' ...
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Book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is '' codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a ...
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Medium (communication)
In mass communication, media are the communication outlets or tools used to store and deliver information or data. The term refers to components of the mass media communications industry, such as print media, publishing, the news media, photography, cinema, broadcasting (radio and television), digital media, and advertising. The development of early writing and paper enabling longer-distance communication systems such as mail, including in the Persian Empire (Chapar Khaneh and Angarium) and Roman Empire, can be interpreted as early forms of media. Writers such as Howard Rheingold have framed early forms of human communication, such as the Lascaux cave paintings and early writing, as early forms of media. Another framing of the history of media starts with the Chauvet Cave paintings and continues with other ways to carry human communication beyond the short range of voice: smoke signals, trail markers, and sculpture. The Term ''media'' in its modern application relating to commu ...
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International League Of Antiquarian Booksellers
The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers is a non-profit umbrella organization of bookseller associations, with its legal location in Geneva, Switzerland. It federates 22 National Associations of Antiquarian Booksellers, representing nearly 2000 dealers in 32 countries. Antiquarian booksellers affiliated to the League adhere to the ILAB Code of Ethics, and the League aims to server as a global network for the rare book trade. History The idea of forming an international organization of antiquarian booksellers that would beneficially link national associations of antiquarian booksellers was originally conceived by the former president of the Dutch Association, Menno Hertzberger. As a Jew, he had spent part of the Second World War hiding from the Nazis. To quote him: "Five long years (of war) had put up … barriers between nations. There was no communication. This enforced extra chauvinism - worse, hatred. Was there a possibility to do something about inter-human relat ...
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The New York Times Style Magazine
''T: The New York Times Style Magazine'' is a perfect-bound magazine publication of ''The New York Times'' newspaper dedicated to fashion, living, beauty, holiday, travel, and design coverage. It was launched in August 2004. It was published 13 times per year between 2013 and 2016, and since January 2017 has been published 11 times per year. It is distributed with the Sunday edition of the newspaper. Janet Froelich was creative director until 2009. ''T'' is not a supplement of ''The New York Times Magazine'', but a distinct publication with its own staff. Since December 2007, an international edition has been distributed with the weekend edition of ''The New York Times International Edition'' (or ''International New York Times'', formerly the ''International Herald Tribune''). In 2010, its first country-specific edition, ''T Qatar'' was launched by Ravi Raman. It was followed by T China, T Japan, T Singapore and T Spain the first licensed edition in the European market. Editor ...
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Independent Bookstores Of Canada
Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independents (Oporto artist group), a Portuguese artist group historically linked to abstract art and to Fernando Lanhas, the central figure of Portuguese abstractionism Music Groups, labels, and genres * Independent music, a number of genres associated with independent labels * Independent record label, a record label not associated with a major label * Independent Albums, American albums chart Albums * ''Independent'' (Ai album), 2012 * ''Independent'' (Faze album), 2006 * ''Independent'' (Sacred Reich album), 1993 Songs * "Independent" (song), a 2007 song by Webbie * "Independent", a 2002 song by Ayumi Hamasaki from '' H'' News and media organizations * ''The Independent'', a British online newspaper. * ''The Malta Independent'', a Malt ...
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