Roger Collier

I n an age where almost all entertainment is consumed through glowing screens, it does the heart good to see people shopping for books with grocery carts. People who buy more than they can carry are either serious book lovers or seriously lacking in upper-body strength.

One of the highlights of my year is my annual post-Christmas visit to the Book Depot in St. Catharines, a short drive from my in-laws' house, during its boxing week sale. Imagine a warehouse packed with millions of new books that are half the price (at least) than they are anywhere else. Now cut that price in half again. Get me a shopping cart! I'm buying literature by the pound.

I'm talking hardcovers for $4, paperbacks for $2, a 3-kg Peanuts anthology (regular price: $92) for a tenner and change. And these aren't the awful books you find in remainder bins -- the romance novels with shirtless men on their covers, the sci-fi abominations with titles like The Revenge of the Warriors of the House of Zrrlyxx (Part IV), the terrible rip-offs of already terrible bestsellers about religious/secret society/government conspiracies that can only be solved by a clever man and a brilliant (also sexy) woman over the course of 350 pages of Grade 5 prose.

This year, I began my literary splurge with novels, which line the periphery of the Book Depot. I'm a relative newcomer to fiction. For years, I read only popular works of non-fiction, books by writers like Michael Lewis (about football, technology and Wall Street) and Gay Talese (about mobsters, Italian immigrants and the history of The New York Times) and Tracy Kidder (about doctors, computer engineers and schoolchildren).

I used to find novels frustrating. I tried "literary" novels, many of which are written by people so obsessed with churning out "lyrical" prose that they fail to realize their sentences don't add up to a story, or even make sense on their own. ("The gun metal sky burst open in a frothy rage, fervent, relentless, soaking the sun-drenched hills like the amaroidal tears of a thousand repudiated lovers." Now imagine 10,000 more sentences like that. Enjoy!) As Steve Hely put it in his hilarious book How I Became A Famous Novelist, literary fiction covers its sins with a "coat of wordy spackle."

Then I tried a few genre novels. I was once 10 pages into a humourless science fiction book, loaded with nerdy spackle, and, having already encountered philosophy-spouting humans, banal aliens and talking dolphins, decided that there were better ways to spend my time, like rearranging my spice rack according to pungency or punching myself in the face while listening to Justin Bieber in a bathtub full of razor blades and rattle snakes.

Eventually, though, I discovered novels that were both well-written and contained actual plots, by authors like Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen's Union) and Richard Price (Clockers, Lush Life). Interesting stories! Interesting sentences! Both in the same book! I'd throw that in my shopping cart any day.

My fiction expedition completed, I moved on to the rows and rows of shelves that populate the middle of the Book Depot and house all the non-fiction titles. Here I found some of my favourite writers, like Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down, Killing Pablo) and David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do again). I was filling my cart quicker than a football fan in a beer store.

Finally, after three hours, I topped off my book bender with a trip to the comics shelf, grabbing five The Far Side books, the aforementioned Peanuts tome and the only Calvin and Hobbes left in the place. I wheeled my cart to the back of a long line of customers, cracked open the Calvin and Hobbes (Sunday Pages: 1985-1995) and spent a pleasant half-hour waiting to pay. During that wait, a woman, apparently on break from the 2nd Annual Crotchety Bellyacher Convention down the street, entered the warehouse and immediately started to complain about the long lines. I glanced over my right shoulder and, sure enough, the line was even longer than it had been when I entered it. All I could see were heads, all in a row, some intricately coiffed, some bald, some grey-haired, some hat-covered, most bare.

But this was a line of people waiting to buy books. Books! Not iPhones. Not Halo 2. Not Jonas Brothers tickets. Books. Lady, I thought, there is nothing to complain about here.