This month, a rare books Instagram shop called Bellwoods Books, which has gained quite a following for its collection of antique and vintage books, has opened its first brick-and-mortar location — in the basement in another book shop that is quite new to Toronto. Flying Books also began as a pop-up of its own, a “travelling bookstore” that would open in various local businesses in the city and bring owner Martha Sharpe’s collection of books to different neighbourhoods. In 2021, Flying Books found a permanent home, and now it’s providing the same opportunity for Bellwoods Books.
Flying Books
Before Martha Sharpe opened the Flying Books publishing house, writing school and retail store on College Street, she was the publisher of House of Anansi Press, and later the editorial director of Simon & Schuster Canada.
In 2015, she started selling her own curation of books from a shelf in the now defunct Queen street gift stop Weekend Variety owned by her friend Katharine Mulherin. She aptly titled her micro pop-up “Flying Books,” and evolved it into a traveling shelf that operated temporarily out of various local businesses.
Two years later, Flying Books expanded to include a transportable writing school and a mentorship program led by writer Rudrapriya Rathore. The school offers a series of classes, some one-offs and others weeks-long, under the program direction of award-winning writer and teacher Amy Jones.
Always a publisher at heart, Sharpe began discussions with editor Emily Keeler to develop her own publishing house, and together they launched Flying Books Publishing in 2019. Sharpe’s retail selection was still mobile at the time, and the two women operated the publishing business remotely, acquiring their first two manuscripts — Marlowe Granado’s Happy Hour and Anna Fitzpatrick’s Good Girl.
In December of 2021, she signed a lease in the former Paintlounge space on College Street, erecting Flying Books’ first storefront. “It was really a bookstore that was developed in order to seed the publishing program,” she says. They added a third Toronto author to their publishing roster with Tomas Hachard’s City in Flames.
Sharpe gave the space a fresh look, lining the now white walls with new books from indie and big press houses alike, as well as new editions of classic works. Only the basement, which she reserved for storage up until recently, maintained the paint splatters of the former social painting business.
Bellwoods Books
Julie Malian has a full-time career in social work, but she’s long maintained a personal interest in collecting rare and vintage books. In 2019, she started to sell some of her books on Instagram to pare down her collection and found that there was a demand. Soon after she started selling from a booth at markets like the Sunday Antique Market, Parkdale Flea and Trinity Bellwoods Flea. When the pandemic started, she continued to sell from her Instagram and transitioned to offering free local delivery to customers.
At the time she also made a purchase from Flying Books, and reached out to Sharpe on Instagram to glean insight about her previous retail model as a traveling pop-up. They met in person for the first time, when Sharpe hosted a pre-renovation holiday pop-up right after signing the lease on her official brick and mortar location.
Malian became pregnant in 2022 and stopped doing book deliveries. After welcoming her first child, Sharpe reached out to her on Instagram and asked if she would be interested in occupying Flying Books’ basement space. Still on maternity leave from her full-time job, Malian felt it was the right timing.
“I think we both knew that we have a lot of overlapping customers,” Malian says. “Most of my customers who collect rare and vintage books also regularly collect new books, and are reading the latest that comes out.”
She officially opened the first brick and mortar location of Bellwoods Books in the lower level of Flying Books this month.
The floors are still splattered with paint, and Malian has decided to keep it that way. Her collection includes literature from the 1960 to 1990s, as well as antiquarian books published in the late 1800s, and very rare selections from the early 2000s. Malian also enjoys collecting vintage etiquette books from the 1970s, which Sharpe calls “hilariously quirky.”
A one-stop bookshop
Together, the businesses benefit from the contrast of old and new. Sharpe points out that you can find several new editions of Mrs. Dalloway upstairs, while you can find cool vintage editions downstairs.
Both are curated carefully by their owners, in addition to a team of booksellers in the case of Flying Books, though both owners agree that they share appreciation for many of the same authors, including Doris Lessing, Bell Hooks, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath.
“I’m thrilled to have Bellwoods Books in the downstairs space here,” Sharpe says. “Julie is wonderful and her taste is exquisite. I started Flying Books inside the Weekend Variety, which was a very special store owned by my friend Katharine Mulherin. If it weren’t for Katharine, there would be no Flying Books, and I hope, similarly, that this arrangement creates an opportunity for Julie to grow her business.”
While Flying Books is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. nearly everyday (excluding Sunday when it closes at 5 p.m.), Bellwoods will operate exclusively on the weekend and by appointment during the week.
