The books! The books!

So I did a reading last week at the St. John's College Library, which is quickly becoming my ALL time favourite library.

(That is, after my childhood library, which was small and full of well-thumbed teen romance novels...knowing the Sweet Valley High canon was NOT, unfortunately, any help when it came to St. Vital's social scene in the late eighties.)

I'm enamored of the SJC library because A) it's just down the hall from my University of Manitoba Press office B) it's the Can-lit library on campus C) I can order books from other U of M libraries and they're delivered to SJC AND I can take books out for months and months at a time.

So it was a treat to plan a lunchtime reading at the SJC library with UMP author/librarian Jim Blanchard which included cookies and an urn full of coffee.

I really enjoyed reading against a backdrop of books, of words and sentences and stanzas.

But I REALLY really enjoyed show-and-telling How to Prepare for Flooding (and, as you can see from the photos, other JackPine titles by Jennifer Still and Sharon Caseburg) with new(ish) U of M friends and colleagues.

Yay! Fun!

And thanks to all the SJC library staff for putting on the event, the first of many they'll be having at the library over the months to come.

Thanks too to Polly Washburn, who went from the event to a screening of her feature film Passionflower but still managed to take these pics for me...