Winston Pei 2024-03-26 Winston Pei 2024-03-26

Book of the Week: What We Talk About When We Talk About Books

This week’s Book of the Week is a double recommendation, first discovered by our Butterfly-in-Chief who then recommended it to our Head Alien, who has been recommending it widely, and now to you, dear patron…

Winston Pei 2024-01-31 Winston Pei 2024-01-31

Meet Mika Burns!

Welcome to our latest BALLER Profile! Every Wednesday you can look forward to reading interviews with authors, publishing professionals, library people, readers, and more. This week it is my pleasure to introduce you to Mika Burns!

Winston Pei 2024-01-24 Winston Pei 2024-01-24

Meet Jennifer Windsor!

Welcome to our latest BALLER Profile! This week it is my pleasure to introduce you to my friend, designer and writer and all around wonderful human, Jennifer Windsor…

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When Words Collide… 2023 and beyond

For those of who may not be familiar with it, When Words Collide is an annual festival for readers and writers and bookish folks of all kinds.

And for us here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library, it has long been the never-to-be-missed event of the year…

Winston Pei 2022-08-27 Winston Pei 2022-08-27

A state of perpetual wander…

Sharing a post from one of our sibling websites that is more book adjacent than anything, but we thought it might be of interest to our patrons here too. Click to wander over to the Black Riders website…

Winston Pei 2022-08-09 Winston Pei 2022-08-09

Finally, time for some summer reading…

Yeah, it’s been a hot minute, but between work and school and life we here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library may have gotten a bit sidetracked from our (ir)regularly scheduled additions to our digital stacks.

But we have not forgotten you, beloved patrons!

Winston Pei 2022-05-08 Winston Pei 2022-05-08

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 [_____].

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Immersed in book culture…

The present moment has brought an interesting alignment between my personal, professional, and student lives… everything focussed on book culture, print culture, reading culture…

Winston Pei 2021-06-01 Winston Pei 2021-06-01

Alphabetizing your ABCs

So the bookish weirdness that we embrace here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library means that, among other things, Recreational Shelf Organizing borders on a competitive sport. It definitely ranks as a beloved pastime. The who, what, and wherefores of how we sort, store, and display our bookish collections provides much fuel for discussion and debate, as well as hours of entertainment.

Stacey and Winston 2021-04-24 Stacey and Winston 2021-04-24

Canadian Independent Bookstore Day 2021

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Small Press Saturday series this weekend to gush about Canadian Independent Bookstore Day! Initiated by the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association, Canadian Independent Bookstore Day is an annual celebration to promote independent bookstores.

Stacey Kondla 2021-03-21 Stacey Kondla 2021-03-21

Bibliotherapy: The Power of Story

The past couple of weeks have been challenging. Not because work has been particularly hard or because anything bad has happened. Just because I sank into a bit of depression…

So, what helped me recently was completely escaping reality with a book series…

Winston Pei 2021-01-28 Winston Pei 2021-01-28

Books and Bricks

On this day back in 1958, Danish carpenter Godtfred Kirk Christiansen submitted his first patent for the original Lego brick, and children of all ages have rejoiced ever since.