Books and Bricks
A detail from Lego’s 1959 UK patent application for roof bricks.
International LEGO Day marks Peak Winston at the Butterflies and Aliens Library. 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.
My dual loves of LEGO and books led to the accidental creation of a now monthly event known as Books & Bricks. It began in the fall of 2016 when several conversations in the span of a week ended with some variation of either “Oh! There’s a book about that I have to show you!” or “Oh! I have a LEGO set you have to see!” Then came a rare Friday evening free, at home with a book and a glass of wine, so I threw out an open invitation, to anyone with whom I’d had one of those conversations, to come by and see whatever book or LEGO set it was that we had discussed.
No one came that first time. But I got a lot of reading done. And the idea nonetheless stuck.
On November 18, 2016, the first “official" event ran, named Books & Bricks on a whim and twenty years working in marketing and communications. The second didn’t take place until seven months later, but that second night ended with someone saying these fateful words as he left: “So when’s the next one?”
Thus Books & Bricks came to be. And except for an unfortunate, but fortunately brief, hiatus courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic, a contingent of the small but mighty Books & Bricks Irregulars have been meeting monthly ever since, in person or virtually.
Among the things a Books & Bricks attendee would have opportunity to see and explore would be the literal meeting of books & bricks on the shelves. A Venn diagram of LEGO and books lives in the collections for both me and Stacey. Some samples below, in honour of International LEGO Day!
Happy reading and building!
– Winston
A selection of books about Lego from Winston’s bookshelves.
Winston’s copy of Once Upon A Brick, also known as the Lego Pop-Up Book set 21315.
Birch Books, half of the Lego Bookshop set 10270, located on a shelf in Winston’s home library.
