Arts and Entertainment

Readers’ Choice owner shares approach to stocking shelves with over 50,000 books

October 15, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

There is a week called Banned Books Week in the U.S. that is a protest against the banning of books.

Canada protects readership with “Freedom to Read Week.” It is Canada’s official annual event celebrating intellectual freedom and challenging censorship, held during the last week of February.

Interested in seeing what it takes to provide a wide range of books to everyone, Veronica Cvet, owner of Readers’ Choice bookstore on Broadway, joined the Citizen for an interview to talk about the challenges and joy of running her second-hand bookstore for about 20 years.

“I have well over 50,000 books in the shop,” she said. 

Impressive information, and the question was what makes it work so well. Variety tops the list of how to keep people coming back. After so many years at the business, she has an instinct for keeping the balance between what goes quickly and what is also good reading but can hang around for a while. 

Romance attracts a lot of readers, adventure and the classics — Austen, Dickens, Bronté,

Shelly, Wolfe, Orwell are always on the shelves.

A lifelong avid reader herself, owning a bookstore was a perfect fit when she came to it. What Veronica loves to read is part of the collection on the shelves. When she noted that reading a play is as good as a novel, she learned that her customers agree.

“Even poetry sells well,” she said. 

At the top of her best sellers are Louise Penny and Steven King, commenting , “I can’t keep them on my shelf.”

Divergent, based on the novels by Veronica Roth, is popular as it was made into a series. Young people ask for it, demonstrating that people can make trends.

She does not carry much about politics except for biographies, saying, “For Canadian history, there is a lot interest in Indigenous history, their spirituality and connection with nature.”

She notes that there is a surprising number of young people interested in the Second World War and there are always books about it coming out.

For Veronica, the 1800s are fascinating. There were so many changes, especially socially, and she has great admiration for the women of the 1800s for the changes they influenced up to and particularly during World War II.

Among them, Nellie McCung is a favourite. Born in 1873, McCung was an author, politician and social activist. She was credited as one of Canada’s most prominent suffragists, beginning her career by writing the 1908 book, Sowing Seeds in Danny.

However, McCung’s true accomplishment, along with four other women, was being part of the Famous 5 who made Canadian history.

On October 18, 1929, a landmark legal decision for Canadian women was made when women were legally recognized as “persons” under British common law. This achievement was made possible by confronting the wording on the British North America Act, which governed Canada at the time.

The battle for clarity on that document took the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada and entered a debate with those who wanted to keep women from being appointed as judges and senators because women weren’t recognized as “persons” under the law.

Undaunted, the ladies took the case to the Privy Council of Great Britain, which, in those days, was Canada’s highest court. The Privy Council ruled “that the exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours”.

The wonderful diversity and choices within Veronica’s 50,000 books and more come from her constant attention to what people want to read or might enjoy discovering, her systematic shopping, and the broad scope of her own tastes. This includes dictionaries and travel books. 

For Veronica, the true thrill of owning her own shop was the opportunity of owning her own business.

“I was just waitressing,” she related. “When I had the offer to buy my share of the store from my business partner, I said yes without thinking what that meant. I love books, and I’m independent, the sole owner with the responsibilities.

“It is all on me and it is not that hard.”

With her enthusiasm about the freedom women have earned through the efforts of the suffragists from the mid-1800s into the mid-20th century, this is Canada, where freedom of speech is still revered, and a bookshop can thrive.

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