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Meet Philip Worré!
BALLER Profiles Winston Pei BALLER Profiles Winston Pei

Meet Philip Worré!

Wednesday is BALLER Profile day, where we get to introduce you to some of the bookish people – authors, publishing professionals, library people, readers, and more – in our neighbourhood.

This week it’s my delight to introduce you to Philip Worré…

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Time Travelling with Rare Print Materials
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Time Travelling with Rare Print Materials

So back in January my fellow student staffer at Bruce Peel Special Collections, Michaela Morrow, and I had the privilege and delight to lead a Peel Workshop of our own design, titled Time Travelling with Rare Print Materials. Basically it was a chance for us to pull an absolute treasure trove of materials from the collection, share them with friends and patrons, and – perhaps the biggest bonus to me – spend some extra time studying them ourselves.

And what a trove it was…

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Ready or not, here I come…
Book Adjacent Winston Pei Book Adjacent Winston Pei

Ready or not, here I come…

Ray Bradbury once said “You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” As a book nerd, student librarian, and global citizen, I think about that quote almost daily.

And as a student librarian, I’m learning that there is yet another tactic – make the books unfindable…

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Journal of a Voyage
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Journal of a Voyage

This week for Fridays at the Peel we take a peek at the Journal of a Voyage to North America, written by Pierre de Charlevoix and published in 1761. But if you’ve been a patron of the Butterflies & Aliens Library for any amount of time, you know I’m much more interested in the voyage taken by the book itself than the voyage it recounts within its pages…

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Arranging Furniture
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Arranging Furniture

Okay, yes I’m posting this on a Saturday, but the important point here is that Fridays at the Peel are back!

To share today, a book called Arranging Furniture, created by Jason Dewinetz at his fine press “small publishing concern” based in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada, Greenboathouse Press…

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No avatar, just an original
Rando Selections Winston Pei Rando Selections Winston Pei

No avatar, just an original

So just wanted to share a quick post about a new acquisition up here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library North, and a bit of an associated mystery, a real literary eccentricity and rarity. The book is Avatar Inc: A Sci-Fi Anthology edited by Ann VanderMeer and published March 13, 2020, by the XPRIZE Foundation.

Yeah, that XPRIZE Foundation…

Now with an update!

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A Faustian bargain… but the good kind
Book Life Stacey Kondla Book Life Stacey Kondla

A Faustian bargain… but the good kind

Reading The Picture of Dorian Gray in my teen years was a gateway drug to reading other classics and it made sense that Faust by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe quickly appeared on my radar. I mean, a book about selling your soul to the devil in return for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures – how can you resist?…

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A year… five years, and thirty-three years, in the making
Origins Stacey and Winston Origins Stacey and Winston

A year… five years, and thirty-three years, in the making

Back on December 19, 2021, we celebrated a pretty significant anniversary… five years since our Butterfly-in-Chief survived a stroke. Which got us thinking about how much had changed in those five years… and the last two… and this last year, the first year of the Butterflies & Aliens Library of Literary Eccentricities & Rarities

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Art From The Unknown
Bulletin Board, The Book as Performance Winston Pei Bulletin Board, The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Art From The Unknown

Welcome to any visitors who are arriving here from the Art from the Unknown virtual exhibit!

And if you ended up here first, I encourage you to go check out the Art of the Unknown, a virtual gallery sponsored by Rachel Notley and the NDP Caucus here in Alberta, in which I have the privilege and pleasure of being included for my dystopian altered book series.

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