A bookshop that argues back

We read everything we sell

Odd Volumes opened in a former hardware store in 2011 with about four hundred titles, most of them ours. Fifteen years later the shelves hold roughly nine thousand, and the rule has not changed: nothing goes on the front table unless a bookseller here has read it and can tell you exactly who it is for.

That makes us slow at bestsellers and unusually good at the book you did not know existed. If you tell us the last three things you loved, we will find the fourth — in the shop, by phone, or by email if you would rather not talk to anyone, which is a completely reasonable thing to want from a bookshop.

The point of a small shop is not selection. It is judgment.

What we are good at

• Translated fiction, especially from small presses
• Poetry that people actually finish
• Children’s picture books chosen for the adult reading them aloud
• Special orders — usually two to four days