Toronto has a rich literary community with many options for places to read, buy books, or talk about them. Books Around Town is a series that describes some of the city\u2019s most popular places for book nerds to gather and share their love of reading. <\/i><\/p>\n
Bookstores have evolved from being just a place to buy books to cultural hubspots for community events. A Different Booklist<\/a> is a prime example of how a simple bookstore could launch a cultural centre.<\/p>\n A Different Booklist was opened in 1995 by Dr Wesley Crichlow, a professor of Caribbean-Canadian gay and lesbian studies, as a shop for academic books from his field. It was purchased from him in 1998 by Itah Sadu and Miguel San Vincente and expanded what kind of books they\u2019d sell. The shop now includes African and Caribbean fictional and nonfictional literature across all kinds of genres. Since then, they have become a popular venue for film nights, open mics, book launches, and more.<\/p>\n In 2017, they had to move from their original location at 746 Bathurst Street to a temporary location at 777 Bathurst Street due to the Mirvish Village building project. However, they are currently trying to raise funds to relocate to a more permanent location at Bloor St. W and Markham St. If you want to support A Different Booklist\u2019s hopefully final move, you can buy a membership to the People\u2019s Residence. Purchasing a membership<\/a> gives access to discounts on products, nearby restaurants, and rental space at the store, among other perks.<\/p>\n The People\u2019s Residence is a cultural centre that is hosted within A Different Booklist\u2019s space. They host different programming<\/a> including children\u2019s programming, to help teach young kids how to present stories, music, and poetry to children under the age of 14 in a non-competitive environment. There is also the Blackhurst Gallery, which is meant to showcase visual art from African and Caribbean Toronto artists.<\/p>\n A Different Booklist is one of the few independent bookstores in Toronto still thriving, largely in part because of their community efforts. So if you\u2019re looking for books or you\u2019re looking for community, you will find both beyond their doors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Toronto has a rich literary community with many options for places to read, buy books, or talk about them. Books Around Town is a series that describes some of the city\u2019s most popular places for book nerds to gather and share their love of reading. Bookstores have evolved from being just a place to buy […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":10460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[279,160,325,324],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10536"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10537,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10536\/revisions\/10537"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewordonthestreet.ca\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}