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Starting with our ABCs…

We wrote in a past post about the challenges of alphabetizing our collection of alphabet books, and have since continued to acquire more items. Rather than manually updating the list of books from that post, we decided to experiment with an online cataloguing tool, a project we alluded to in our recent post about The Organization of Information. And how best to start any project? You start with your ABCs…

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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…

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From water does all life begin…

With the release of Denis Villeneuve’s new version of Frank Herbert’s Dune brought to the big screen, it seemed a terrible oversight to not have a post here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library about the original book itself, in many ways a key piece of our origin story…

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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…

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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…

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Yeah, no, we’re still here!

Life has been a bit crazy here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library of Literary Eccentricities & Rarities. But we couldn’t let too much time pass without popping in to our beloved library and saying hi!

So for today, a quick gallery post of some of our recent acquisitions to share with all of you.

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International Coffee Day 2021

We will have nothing further to say until the levels depicted in the picture above are significantly lower…

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Moonshots: Indigenous Comics, Indigenous Voices

On the occasion of the very first Canadian National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, we here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library wondered what we could do to mark this important moment in history.

On the one hand, there is a lot of heavy but important reading and learning to be done. But the thing is, the whole point of the Butterflies & Aliens Library is that books allow us to learn about our fellow humans and the worlds that we all live in.

So in that spirit and in the spirit of reconciliation, we thought we would start by sharing three graphic novels from our collection that we love, that also happen to contain an absolute wealth of stories from Indigenous voices: Moonshot, Volumes 1, 2, and 3.

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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.

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Small Press Saturday: House of Anansi Press

After another stressful week in the world, I’m planning on a weekend of news avoidance and indulging in nothing but books. And a great way to start this bookish weekend of mine is to introduce you to another small press!

While they are no longer super small, they are a lot smaller than Penguin Random House or Harper Collins – so say ‘Hello!’ to House of Anansi Press!

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A giant dose of tiny books…

Today I had a chance to leave the Butterflies & Aliens Library and visit another beloved library, the Bruce Peel Special Collections at the University of Alberta, to attend a workshop on miniature books titled Teeny Wonders…

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International Day of Sign Languages

Proclaimed by the UN General Assembly “in order to raise awareness of the importance of sign language in the full realization of the human rights of people who are deaf,” the International Day of Sign Languages was declared in part to recognize that “early access to sign language and services in sign language, including quality education available in sign language, is vital to the growth and development of the deaf individual and critical to the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals.”