Shelf Life Books

An SHORT interview with karlene nicolajsen

TALI VORON-LEIDERMAN: As described on your website, “Shelf Life Books is an independent bookstore specializing in high-quality literature, Canadian authors, small presses, children’s books, and diverse voices across all genres.” Shelf Life opened its doors in 2010 to fulfill a need for an independent bookstore in downtown Calgary. What would you say is the role of independent bookstores, and how can readers best support independent bookstores in their area?

KARLENE NICOLAJSEN: We are a retail store, but our main purpose is to help get the books we believe
in and love into the hands of the people who love them, too. We’re obsessed with books. Our store owner, JoAnn McCaig, is an author, publisher, and retired English professor and is obsessed with books too. Being an indie bookstore, as opposed to a big box store, our calendar and curation reflect the passion, diversity, and curiosity of the people who shop and gather here. In that sense, our role is to celebrate literature, support small presses, and amplify a multitude of voices and stories. Readers can support indie bookstores by visiting us in person, shopping local, liking or sharing our posts, attending our events, and sending people our way. Readers can also find and shop independent bookstores in or near their area at IndieBookstores.ca.

TVL: In addition to being an impeccable bookstore, stocking titles that are sure to cater to all bookish tastes, Shelf Life also prioritizes community engagement through events. Your events calendar is robust, featuring book launches, signings, trivia nights, open mics, and more on many nights of the month. Can you speak to the role that Shelf Life plays in building Calgary’s literary community? More than that, can you speak to the way that community building impacts the way Shelf Life operates?

KN: To me, indie bookstores exist for and because of their communities: both the literary community of writers, poets, publishers, students and professors, and a rooted community of book lovers, families, neighbours, readers, clubs and groups, schools, and so on. It’s important to us to make our space welcoming, literary, accessible to and reflective of these communities.

TVL: What sets Shelf Life Books apart from other bookstores in the city, and perhaps other bookstores more broadly?

KN: We pride ourselves on excellent and meticulous curation; we have the books that people are looking for, but we also have books that are unexpected, strange, beautiful, overlooked, and special. When someone browses our shelves, we want them to feel surprised by both the content carried and the depth of ground covered. We have been told by our customers that we are a true bibliophile’s bookstore.

TVL: In 2025, Shelf Life will be celebrating fifteen years of operation. Congratulations! Are there any notable industry changes you’ve noticed as a bookseller since Shelf Life opened its doors?

KN: There are always trends—right now there’s a higher demand for romance, romantasy, and cozy mysteries than we’ve seen before, probably attributable to the way readers are engaging and connecting on social media. It’s always encouraging to see a love of books growing in anyone for any reason, especially in younger readers, and we see this in the recent boom of special collector editions being published of books popularized on BookTok. During COVID lockdowns and times of distancing and/or isolating, many people seemed to rediscover their love of reading, staying in, slowing down, doing puzzles, keeping journals, and so on, and we’ve seen a lot of these lifestyle changes reflected and maintained in what we continue to sell well.

TVL: What’s one book that was released this season that you can’t stop recommending, and why?

KN: The best book I read recently was Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami (translated by Asa Yoneda) from Soft Skull Books; it’s a weird, delicate dystopian novel where people are almost extinct, living in splintered-off experimental communities and almost no one seems to know what’s going on. I thought it was sad, beautiful, and understated.