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Frankensteining Frankenstein
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Frankensteining Frankenstein

At the When Words Collide festival in 2021, towards the end of a workshop on Altered Books, I mentioned that the next project I was pondering was something to do with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, riffing off the central theme of the story to assemble a copy of the book made up of parts of different editions.

My small but mighty audience was intrigued, and we decided to plan a workshop around that idea for WWC 2022…

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Happy Towel Day 2022!
Bookish Calendar Winston Pei Bookish Calendar Winston Pei

Happy Towel Day 2022!

Last year, for our inaugural Towel Day here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library, it made sense to share the book series from whence came the Towel Day name.

But as much as I love The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to honour Adams this year I thought I’d shout out his lesser known Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and its sequel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

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The Art of the [_____]: A Life in [_____]
Book Life Winston Pei Book Life Winston Pei

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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Loved to pieces
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Loved to pieces

In the digital world, lack of attention is what often gets a website “deaccessioned” or “weeded” from the world wide web. But ironically, in our equally beloved world of physical books, a lack of attention, of a certain kind, is actually better for a book’s longevity…

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A year… five years, and thirty-three years, in the making
Origins Stacey and Winston Origins Stacey and Winston

A year… five years, and thirty-three years, in the making

Back on December 19, 2021, we celebrated a pretty significant anniversary… five years since our Butterfly-in-Chief survived a stroke. Which got us thinking about how much had changed in those five years… and the last two… and this last year, the first year of the Butterflies & Aliens Library of Literary Eccentricities & Rarities…

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