It’s been a busy season for Marnie’s Books.
Marnie Andrews explained, “It’s really fun to have a bookstore on Cortes Island. There’s some amazing readers here. I get so many of my titles because friends come in and recommend what they’ve been reading. There’s a lot of regular people, but I think a lot of people came west because of all the wildfires. It’s been a great bookstore season, people are reading like crazy. They want real books.”
A young customer named Devran was perusing the contents of a nearby shelf, “It’s very nice to have a bookstore on the island. I can walk in, look at the books and pick what I want. I also like that I can order books from here.”
Cortes Currents: How long have you been coming here?
Devran: “Since I moved here, which was around ten years ago.”
Another regular, local Naturopath Maureen Williams,* added, “Marnie is a great curator of wonderful books. She has read everything on her shelf, and she always has the perfect recommendation when I’m looking for something special.”
So Cortes Currents asked Marnie, “Can you give us some recommendations on books to read?”
Marnie Andrews: “Okay, a fiction that I just read and absolutely loved is THIS IS HAPPINESS by Niall Williams, an Irish author that I hadn’t read before. Turns out he has quite a few books. It’s just about a small town in Ireland that is just about to get electricity. You’re seeing a way of life that’s gone on for about a thousand years. It’s going to change and the book had me laughing on every single page. It was absolutely hilarious, but it was also a really great story about how our world changes.”
Cortes Currents: And another one?
Marnie Andrews: “I read recently and absolutely loved MY LIFE IN FRANCE by Julia Child. A lot of people have seen a movie about her, but what really amazed me about this book was how you felt like you were living their lives with them in France, and they’re hilarious. It turns out that her husband had a twin in the States, and they wrote to this twin all the time. So the material in this book is coming from those letters that his son found and was able to publish this book. It’s like you’ve got this front row seat to what was going on for them. I absolutely loved it. For people that like memoirs, that like humour, that like cooking, that are interested in Julia: it’s a fabulous book.”
“Another book that too many people have already heard me talk about, probably, but I just love it is called THE WIERDEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD. ‘Wierd’ is an acronym. It stands for Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic. The premise of the book is that all psychological testing to date has been done on weird people. When the folks that work for Joseph Heinrich, the author, took these same psychological tests that we’re all fairly familiar with and did them on people that aren’t weird, people that do not qualify as those five things for even one or more reasons, they got totally different results. When they compared the results from people that weren’t weird, those results all had something in common. Us weirdos are the outliers. So, he went back and he sort of reached back into the early Middle Ages to figure out how did we become so different? What things happened to create all of these things?”
“One of my particular interests is democracy, he really digs into why did that develop? Where was that coming from? It was a book that had a really fresh take on a lot of things, made me think a lot. It’s a bit of a slow go, and I found that I just took it in small bites, but I was eager to get back to it always, because it was recharging my thinking in a way that I really appreciated.”
“After that I looked up Heinrich and he’S also written THE SECRET OF OUR SUCCESS. This one is about our cultural evolution and it’s a different take, but also very interesting. Heinrich was, first of all, a rocket scientist. He went back to school and took a degree in anthropology. Then he went back to school and took a degree in biology. It’s mostly the anthropology that comes to bear on these books, but he’s a real polymath, and that comes through. Both of them are fresh and interesting. Everyone that I’ve talked to that’s read them has come back with that same reaction of, wow, that was a really, really interesting, different read.”
“There’s a new book coming out. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s one of the Gumboot series, GUMBOOTS IN THE STRAITS, edited by Lou Allison. All the first three Gumboot books have all been bestsellers in BC. The first one, GUMBOOT GIRLS, was about women that went to the north coast to Haida Gwaii and Prince Rupert area in the late 60s, early 70s. DANCING IN GUMBOOTS was number two. GUMBOOT GUYS was number three. Each of these books is a collection of stories by the people themselves, and then edited by Lou. This is the fourth one, GUMBOOTS IN THE STRAITS. So this is about guys with boats in Georgia Strait . There’s some representation from Cortes Island. I understand that Hubert Havelaar is among them. I haven’t read it because it’s coming out in a couple days. I’m about to get copies, if anybody wants to have a look.”
Cortes Currents: Are there any books that are selling well and do you want to read, but haven’t been able to yet.
Marnie Andrews: “VOICES FOR THE ISLANDS by Sheila Harrington. The subtitle is Thirty Years of Nature Conservation on the Salish Sea. Christine Robinson told me about it, and it’s got a section on Cortes. It looks like a really nice big one. There’s pictures, so that’s looking like a pretty interesting book.”
“Another one that’s been selling really well, and I do want to read it because I love Wade Davis: BENEATH THE SURFACE OF THINGS. I’ll probably wait untill it’s paperback. It’s still in hardcover, but that’s been hugely popular. I can’t seem to keep enough in, and everyone’s been reporting that they’re really enjoying it.”
“Medicinal Plants of the Pacific Northwest. There’s another book with the same title, which is also good, but this one’s by Natalie Hammerquist, and it’s quite recent. Nicely illustrated, it looks like a good one.”
“We could also talk about audiobooks. A friend of mine, Max Thaysen, told me that he would like me to be able to sell audiobooks. A few other people have told me this too. The McKentys were encouraging me for a while, but I didn’t know how to do it. It seemed a little bit too techy when I’d look into it. Then Max said, ‘I’m going to help you.’ He came and got me to figure it out and get on here.”
“So the site is called Libro.fm. It’s a big international audiobook site, but they support independent bookstores. Sign up for membership with code ‘CHOOSEINDY.’ So Max helped me and I am now an independent bookstore on the Libro audiobook site.”
“So for folks that have come in for years and said ‘I’m sorry I love your titles, but I only listen to audiobooks’ there’s now a way to do that while still supporting independent bookstores: Libro.fm. Come into the bookstore. I’ve got little bookmarks with a QR code that goes right to it, and they’re great.”
Cortes Currents: What are your hours, now that it is fall?
Marnie Andrews: “Right now in September I’m open Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 11 till 3. My hours vary each month depending on how busy I am and whether I’m here or not, but I try to always have the store open on Fridays from 11 till 3. Seems to be the busy time in Manson’s Landing and a good time to be open.”
Cortes Currents: Do you go away at any particular time in the year?
Marnie Andrews: “I’ll be gone from the middle of October to the end of November. I look after my grandson a lot, up north, so I do go away for five weeks at a time, a couple of times of the year, sometimes two or three times a year. It varies a bit. I try to go away when I’m not busy.”
Cortes Currents: How do people contact you?
Marnie Andrews: “You can text me at 250-204-8228 or, my email is marniesbooks@gmail.com.
Image credits: Marnie Andrews speaking at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Marnie’s Books, while Ruth Ozeki looks on. Unless otherwise designated, the illustrations above were either suppied by Marnie andrews or are the front covers of books.
Disclaimer*: Maureen Williams sometimes helps out in the bookstore, as a volunteer, when Marnie is away.
Links of Interest
- 25th Anniversary Celebration of Marnie’s Books (Aug 28, 2023)
- Marnie’s Books – Small Bookstore with big draw on Cortes Island (Sept 2, 2020)
- Shaena Lambert and Canada’s Independent Book Seller Day say thank you to the “best little island book store ever” Marnie’s Books (Sep 2, 2020)
- Shaena Lambert launches her Latest novel – Petra – on Cortes Island (Sep 2, 2020)
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