The Stacks
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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…
Living on the wrong side of the racks
In this first post to be included under the umbrella of the Comic as Object Project, we want to share a book that is both the most recent to be acquired here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library but also a throwback to the very first comics we ever read as a kid: Archie Digests!
![The Art of the [_____]: A Life in [_____]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe7ef3acaf95b4fe9230724/d4828006-64f9-44fa-8939-27469cf3ef51/Art-of-the-1.jpeg)
The Art of the [_____]: A Life in [_____]
I just finished reading a great book, but I don’t want to tell you what it is.
Or rather, I don’t want to share the full title or the name of the author of it, just yet. I think the full title distracts from what the book is really about, which is the part of the title I am sharing as the title of this post: The Art of the [_____]: A Life in [_____].
Happy World Toilet Day!
There’s a reason why toilet humour is called toilet humour, but humour can often be a way to convey important messages. So in honour of World Toilet Day, we wanted to share a book that seeks to deliver some important health information, with humour, on a very closely related topic…
Happy Sesame Street Day!
Premiering on November 10, 1969, Sesame Street has been a cornerstone of my reading life for my entire life. “C is for Cookie” is one of my earliest alphabet memories and The Monster at the End of This Book helped set me on the path that led to a Master of Arts on the design of books and now has me going back to school again for a Library degree.
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.
A miniature fairy library…
One of the lasting benefits of being a regular at When Words Collide, a readers and writers con held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, is connecting with a community of book nerd artists alongside the “usual” readers and writers and publishing folks. The latest addition to our shelves from this talented crew is this Janice Blaine original, a fairy library to grace the shelves of our human one…
Otto & Victoria, Time Traveling in Style…
One of the challenges of being based in the Great White North is that ordering things from south of the border can be disproportionately expensive… so it was that we here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library didn’t get our hands on this acquisition until just this past week.
But my goodness was it worth it.
Introducing Brian Kesinger’s Time Traveling With Your Octopus…
International Coffee Day 2021
We will have nothing further to say until the levels depicted in the picture above are significantly lower…
Banned Books Week 2021
Banned Books Week is an annual celebration of the freedom to read.
Although it is a more US-based event, we here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library are happy to signal boost and use this week as another opportunity to shout out some items bookish and book-adjacent.
Video: The Book as Object, Sculpture, & Performance
This past weekend, I had the joy and honour of sharing an encore presentation of The Book as Object, Sculpture, & Performance at the When Words Collide festival for readers and writers. I presented this session for the first time back in 2019 in Calgary, Alberta, when the conference was still live. Getting to present it again online, this time as part of the 2021 virtual conference, means I now have a video record… well, of this one performance of it at least!
Books as Wall Art: A Practical Guide
This year is the tenth anniversary of When Words Collide, an annual readers and writers conference based in Calgary, Alberta. Today I had the privilege of delivering an encore presentation of my session on Books as Object, Sculpture, and Performance.
This post is not about that presentation.
But it was sparked by it, and by this photo from my slide deck…
