Baker's Books

12/04/2024

Most of the time I like books for their words, but sometimes their covers win me over.

11/26/2024

If you know me you know that I like long walks. To ramble around the countryside around Hope with a friend or by myself is one of the finer pleasures in my life. I am also a night owl and that often means those walks turn into night walks, especially this time of year around Hope when it's night at 5. I have experienced some amazing nights that have made me marvel at the planet but mostly the vastness above us. Sometimes it's good to feel small and insignificant. I am also part of a great organization that promotes these experiences and if you want to feel exposed to that world as well and want to share it with some folks that are passionate about it, join us!

🌕The Cold Moon & her Constellations✨
A night hike to remember: Our final program of 2024!
•
December 14th: It is the time of the year to stow away our paddles and look ahead to the season of snow. Join us in honouring the Stó:lō seasons of the moon under the Xets’ō:westel moon on a night hike up Thacker Mountain in Hope where astrophotographer and cosmos aficionado Eloi Homier, aka “The Moon Guy Next Door,” will share his passion for the night sky and our closest celestial neighbour, the moon!
•Registration is open on our website: https://www.hopemountain.org/programs/public-programs-events
•

09/03/2024

I think I’m going to call this aisle ’the w***o’ so I can say I have books up the w***o.

08/14/2024

WE’RE HIRING a Program Director!

Are you or is someone you know a highly organized,
super engaging, mountain-loving nature nerd? We’d love to hear from you!

This permanent full-time position is a remote hybrid position working from a home office in or near Hope plus out in the field at various locations in and around the Hope region.

The Program Director’s key responsibilities are three-fold:

1) planning and delivery of monthly education-focused beginner and intermediate level outdoor recreation programs to the public;

2) management and support of environmental education school programs and the staff who coordinate and deliver them; and

3) planning and delivery of our Go Grizz wildlife conservation and advocacy program.

Read all the details on the job posting at https://www.hopemountain.org/jobs

Position will begin as soon as the right candidate is found so candidates are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. Please submit your resume along with a cover letter in a single document file no later than September 2, 2024 by email to Kristine Pérez de León at [email protected]

Spread the word!

08/05/2024

Dear Hope I have reached a point in my life where I am looking for a new home. I have found a wonderful bus I would like to live in but now I am looking for somewhere to park it. I have lived in Hope for 15 yeas now and have a deep connection with this land. Do you have a back corner of an acreage you aren't using or a spot of land you would like a caretaker on? I don't need any hookups, but if they are available they might make life a little easier. Somewhere in the woods is where I would prefer to be! I am a decent human being that likes reading ( I own the local bookstore), disc golf, music, and being in the woods. I know that Hope is feeling the pressure of population growth and this is a shot in the dark but I am putting my request out there anyways. Hopefully I can find a mutually beneficial situation where my presence can help you! Thanks for your time. Peace, Nat

07/02/2024

It's been interesting sitting in this chair over the years and watching folks come and go. It can be like a slow drip on my forehead wearing down my spirit. It can also be hugely rewarding watching faces get ignited and curiosity being explored. There was a significant period in my life when I was quite depressed being here. I have always had a good amount of foot traffic, especially in the summer but when there isn't much sales it can wear you down. Someone would come in the door and I would greet them and they will walk around and I would think, oh boy, gonna sell some books. They would walk right out the door and I would think, shoot what am I even doing this for? Those days still creep up on me from time to time but I have for the most part let them go. Now I just enjoy myself here; I will put some good music on and get lost in the shelves myself, I will get some food and watch some tennis, sit out front with a friend and chat and watch Ogilvie loose the evening sun. Life is good. I still welcome others to enjoy my space but I don't measure the success on the transactional business of finance. I don't need to measure my success with how much money is in my till at the end of the day. I tried that and it's a depressing way to live, especially if you own a bookstore in the 21'st century. I measure my success much differently now, what does my day look like. Did I engage with it- or did I let myself slip into drudgery. There is a fascinating world to explore, even inside these four walls of the store. I get to explore it on a regular basis. Oh what a lucky man I am.

06/26/2024

Large collection of DVD’s in the store. Please help as I don’t have shelf space for all of it. Lots of nice art films. Buck a pop

06/24/2024

While I am not that well read in this new age movement there are some ideas that I have heard that has significant appeal to me. I have been learning through my life the power that can lie in a single experience. What awareness and attention to a moment can reveal. You can market it as mindfulness, third eye awareness, hot yoga, of swinging some rocks over your body. The marketing is irrelevant. The experience is king. I want to talk about what I mean exactly. My friend would call it sinking fully into a moment and I like the terminology. I started birding several years back and its an amazing experience just simply because it is standing in a forest opening your senses and just being aware of whatever is happening around you. I have found it to be a powerful resource to just pay attention to where you are in time and space at that moment. To become aware of our surroundings, engaging our senses, to realize that all you have in this life is those moments just stacked up on top of one another. To take stock and to stop and realize that can be a wonderfully grounding experience, not to mention I often have moments of transcendence where I feel I am fully alive, engaged in living as a human. Reaping all the benefits that come with just being alive on this planet. Music helps. Books help. Well at least they do for me- they engage me and my mind. There is lots of things that can take me out of the moment. Schedules and responsibilities take you out- as they should. It's all about balance isn't it? If we spend too much time living in the future or the past we forget what its like just to be alive in the moment, and take it for what it is. My daughter was born knowing how to do that and I was at some point too, luckily I have found it again.

06/18/2024

I have always found our relationship with money as odd. Folks say that we need it to survive but I have always found that deceiving. Money is a tool that can get us some services that can make life more comfortable and provide other resources but it will always be a tool. We can't eat it, it doesn't love us, it doesn't keep my feet warm when I play disc golf. Don't get me wrong I can use the money to buy me most of that stuff (the love one is still up for debate) but it itself isn't worth anything. Even more so these days as we don't even have physical money too often and money is just an abstraction on some server. Some code of 1's and 0's that define our 'worth'. I think the distinction between being able to use it versus being able to purchase something we can use is an important one. It seems we have fallen in love with the tool, which is a bizarre concept. It is odd to compare stacks of tools as opposed to being excited about the things you can build with that tool. There is definitely a love with some of the lavish things that this tool can acquire for us but those things often become status symbols for how many tools we have. Boy you must have a lot of tools to be able to buy that car! There is the classic old adage that the best things in life are free, and while I don't agree with that completely; for example I have been enjoying the smooth feeling of raw sushi fish sliding down my gullet lately and that s**t is expensive. I do agree with the adage to a point though, as long as our basic needs are looked after (and I think a large percentage of North Americans have their basic physical needs looked after) the best things in life are free. To love and be loved has to be the greatest experience on this planet, even better then a fresh slab of salmon with just the right amount of soy sauce. Not to mention the joy I found marveling at the natural order of this planet as I watch swallows fly or the sun set from a mountaintop, or watching salmon swim upstream as they head to my local sushi restaurant. That joy is free. I don't have to use the tool of money to get those things. Sure we need money, especially in the time and place we find ourselves, but don't confuse it for the things we get for it. The tool is not the product. Money is for spending. Its literally it's function. It's not and end in itself but a means to an end.

06/12/2024

Hello friends, family, patrons, fellow red-heads and a couple of folks I don't really know. I am still here selling books, I was away for awhile taking a break from this place. A chance to breathe and asses my life from a different perspective. I like change in moderation, sometimes I feel I need it to progress past a stagnant spot I am in but sometimes I just need it because it's good for my brain to rewire different passages. To see my life from a different perspective, to encounter new stimulus that my mind must adapt to. Good for growth and all that crap. I am back in the store though and let me tell ya, it worked- I am a brand new person, well at least I have some new pants. It feels good to be back in the saddle, turning some vinyl and spending hours with piles of books and chatting with random folks. Part of my time off was to try my own hand at writing, to try the craft which I have admired through my life. The ability to use this language to communicate my thoughts, something I have benefitted from when others have done it well. Reading other's thoughts have helped me understand my own, so I hope to be able to share mine in the thought that it will help others with theirs. Or it might just be something to entertain you while you are waiting in the check-out line at the grocery store, or when your date goes to the washroom and you pick up your phone. Either way I am going to do more writing on here, just musings in between customers and inspirations from books I find. Take from it what you will, I am mostly doing it for myself anyways!! I should also say thanks for keeping my humble place going throughout the years- it's been an honor to get books into your hands. I hope they have enriched you life like they have mine. This is a picture of Goya who would use a hat with candles on it so her could see his painting better, I hope I have as much dedication to my craft as he did to his. Cheers, Nat Baker

11/30/2023

A wonderful local history book. A detailed account along with maps and photographs of the floods that have occurred in the Fraser valley. This one costs 50$

07/20/2023