Archetype Books
305 Lakeshore Road East L6J 1J3 Oakville, ON, Canada

Look what Santa just brought, on our last operating day no less - thank you Bob Eckstein @theglobeandmail @thatkatetaylor and reporter Victoria Gibson for such a perfect present :)

And now our holiday gift to you, our wonderful and loyal customers: 30% off everything! Happy Holidays, and our very best wishes in 2017 and always :)

We have sad news to share: due to an evolving medical crisis for our husband and co-founder, we will be closing down Archetype Books after December 24th to focus on his diagnosis and care. Valiant behind-the-scenes efforts are taking place to try and keep the store going in a new location, and we will post all updates on our social media accounts as they may arise. We are at least going out with a bang: a present by Bob Eckstein, creator of the wonderful gift book Footnotes f...rom the World's Greatest Bookstores, of this sketch of our little shop, with kind words contributed by author and journalist Kate Taylor. Hearing our story, Bob reached out, in between sketching for The New Yorker magazine and touring for his book, to try and help us during this difficult time. We are indebted to him for lifting our spirits, and to you, all our loyal customers and followers far and wide, for your enthusiastic support of our little indie bookshop. Happy holidays to you all, and best wishes for a most healthy and happy 2017. Natalie Jenner & Rob Leek See more

Our two favourite shop dogs swung by recently to get the holidays started in way-too-cute fashion :)

As we approach our one-year anniversary on December 8th, here is our holiday gift to YOU: a free book tote bag with any purchase of $50.00 or more! It's pictured alongside some yummy complimentary holiday cookies from Pusateri's Fine Foods in Oakville (and, yes, we still sell stuff sometimes too ;)

Our new Christmas window display assembled late last night, and a hard lesson learned: do NOT use spray snow in the dark (if you have, you surely know what we mean :)

A perfect Downtown Oakville Halloween: gorgeous autumn sunshine, Goldstar Cafe latte, a gigantic book of spells and a tiny home-made ghoul :)

We fell in love with this still life by Cory Proulx when we saw it at the Gold Star Café: so we bought it! Cory's work can be found on Instagram @cory_proulx :)

We really love this piece by Nancy Fornasiero on our little shop, featured as an "Oakville Business Story" in Yellow Pages / Pages Jaunes - Canada - you can read all about us and the story of how we launched in only 3 weeks right here: http://www.yellowpages.ca/bio/y/y/y/100792744.html

So chuffed when one of our favourite customers brought us fresh juniper berries today after we mentioned our favourite after-work cocktail - with a home-made tincture of brewed Earl Grey tea and crushed juniper! Here's the recipe, from Gallery Grill on the 2nd floor of the sublime Hart House at our alma mater, the University of Toronto: Simmer 3 cups of water, 3 Earl Grey tea bags, 20 crushed juniper berries, 1 cup of sugar and 5 slices of fresh ginger for one hour, then let sit for 3-4 hours more. Strain into a jar and refrigerate. Add 3 oz of this tincture to a shot of gin, plus 3 oz of grapefruit juice, and stir. Add tonic water, a lime slice, a sprig of mint, and voila :)

Everyone knows that we love a good challenge ;)

A very big thank-you to Jael Richardson, Author for stopping by our little shop today and giving a special reading of her children's book "The Stone Thrower" - she had our smallest customers (and some pretty big ones, too) thoroughly enchanted with her infectious energy and fantastic story-telling :)