Winston Pei 2021-10-24 Winston Pei 2021-10-24

Know Your Weird: The Organization of Information

As you may have noticed from our past posts, we here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library of Literary Eccentricities & Rarities aren’t just about reading books, but a much broader curiosity about all things bookish and even book adjacent…

In the spirit of that curiosity, I thought I’d share a quick photo or two of one of my current active reads, The Organization of Information…

Winston Pei 2021-08-14 Winston Pei 2021-08-14

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…

Stacey and Winston 2021-08-09 Stacey and Winston 2021-08-09

Book Lovers Day 2021

Now, really, every day is Book Lovers Day at the Butterflies & Aliens Library of Literary Eccentricities & Rareties, but since the all-knowing interwebs say this is a with-capital-letters Day day… albeit with an origin story lost to the mists of time… we did feel we had to post a little something.

Winston Pei 2021-06-20 Winston Pei 2021-06-20

A Bookish Memento Mori

So I've started referring to one particular shelf here at Butterflies & Aliens North as my memento mori in books. Sounds better than "I have this growing collection of funny books about death that started with this one book of cartoons about unpleasant ways to die that still makes me laugh out loud every time I read it"...

But, really, there is much truth in both those statements.

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 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…

Stacey Kondla 2021-01-07 Stacey Kondla 2021-01-07

What book to read next?

How do you decide what book you are going to read next?…