Hello all,
I’m Finn Toebes, proprietor of the new bookstore Finntasy Books, located at the entrance to Newtown, opposite the hospital.
As the (clever) name implies, the bookshop specializes in Fantasy and Sci-fi, but I still keep a broad selection of “regular” books. I also stock some TTRPG (tabletop Role-playing game) manuals and accessories.
If asked to describe what you think a guy who runs a fantasy/sci-fi speciality store would be like, I imagine you’d end up describing me pretty accurately: I play video, board, and table-top games, like a crappy pun/inside joke and enjoy a good cocktail (the Fantasy genre of drinks). I do also suffer from Anxiety, so running a business is quite a large and scary step, but honestly, I think it will be good for me, and being surrounded by books is very soothing.
As for I ended up in the bookselling game, well, I kind of stumbled into it.
A friend of my mother’s had mentioned to her that the Another Chapter bookstore in Newtown was being sold, and if she would like to buy it to have something to do in her retirement. She didn’t, but she thought it might interest me, as I had been trying to figure out what to do with myself. I hadn’t ever really considered opening a bookstore, but once I had, it felt like something I never knew I always wanted to do.
So here I am, equipped with only a cloak of Anxiety (cursed item) and a decent knowledge of Fantasy and Sci-fi books, on a quest to master the dragon known as selling books.
Find out more here.
Browse the website here.
Fantasy/sci-fi book recommendations:
1) For people who aren’t really that into Fantasy/sci-fi/anyone really: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, a beautiful romance book about two magician’s apprentices finding each other at a mystical circus. also Exhalation/Stories of your Life and Others both by Ted Chiang. Two sci-fi short story collections that have a remarkably good level of quality across all the stories, also if you liked the movie Arrival, this is where the story is from.
2) Older Fantasy/Sci-fi: The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake, first book: Titus Groan. Few books have the poetically evocative prose that Mervyn employes in bring the mouldering gothic castle of Gormenghast to life. It isn’t really that old (1977) but Gateway by Frederik Pohl is a good liitle read with a great premise: a kind of gold rush/russian roulette style discovery in space
3)Obscure Shout-outs: The Kencyrath series by P. C Hodgall, first book: God Stalk. Such a weird, imaginative series full of armoured carnivorous unicorns and floating, hiccuping villains. It’s sad that no one really knows about it.
4) Hard Sci-fi: Firefall by Peter Watts (omnibus edition containing Blindsight and Echopraxia). A lot of hard neurological talk that I didn’t understand most of the time, but damn it’s still a great read
5) Best series: Malazan by Steven Erikson, first book: Gardens of the Moon. 10 book series. This is my favorite series ever, but it is a little bit of a hard sell as they are about a very vast and dense world. Also the first book is not a great introduction as I think he was yet to find his footing as an author.