Spoliling book-lovers for choice with 80,000 second-hand tomes

Talk of the town: The store has a family of pet plastic rats which expands each year thanks to donations by grateful customers.

A mainstay of Vancouver's book scene, this friendly neighborhood store has been hunting down rarities and trading with customers for more than 10 years. With an ever-changing stock, plus an efficient ordering system that claims to obtain any book within 5-7 days and at a discount, there isn't a title in the world that these guys can't lay their hands on.

Customers are encouraged to bring in their own used books as the store will often do swaps or buy them from you - great for offloading those big vacation reads and clearing room in the suitcase for all the shopping you just did on Robson Street.