This Ain’t the Rosedale Library’s 30th birthday bash at Harbourfront

Authors at Harbourfront Centre will host a 30th birthday tribute to Toronto indie bookstore This Ain’t the Rosedale Library on Sept. 16. Torontonians are invited to celebrate the store’s longevity with readings from bill bissett, Lee Ann Brown, Eileen Myles, Stuart Ross, and Jowi Taylor. Jazz FM’s Jaymz Bee will host the event, and storeowner Charlie Huisken will talk about his three decades of bookselling.

The celebration will kick off at 7:30 p.m. in Harbourfront Centre’s Brigantine Room, and an after party will be held in the bookstore’s new neighbourhood of Kensington Market at Supermarket. (This Ain’t moved from its longstanding location in the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood in May 2008.)

It’s worth noting that the celebration will come only eight days after a more sober 30th birthday celebration: Pages’ send-off bash, Afterword: A Celebration of 30 Years, which will be held at the Gladstone Hotel on Sept. 8.

Pages requests memories for send-off bash

Pages Books & Magazines may be closing its doors for good at the end of August, but not without throwing itself a massive send-off party. Pages staffer and event organizer Chris Reed has sent out a message to members of the This Is Not a Reading Series Facebook group requesting reminiscences, photographs, memorabilia, etc., of the iconic downtown Toronto store’s 30 years in business.

We are collecting material to be presented at “Afterword: A Celebration Of 30 Years,” an event presented by Pages Books & Magazines, Coach House Books, Gladstone Hotel, NOW Magazine, Spacing Magazine, and This is Not A Reading Series, to be held at Gladstone Hotel on Sept 8.

What has Pages Books meant to you over the years? Tell us your tale. Do you have photos? We’d love to see them!

If you have memories or photos you’d like to share, send them to my.pagesbooks.story@gmail.com by August 24.

Flickr photo roundup: Book Camp, Paul Watson, and Other Goose

Here’s a quick roundup of some recent event photos posted in the Q&Q Flickr pool:

Photographer Fleur-Ange Lamothe posted a couple of images from Brantford Book Camp 2007. It was a three-day event in mid-August that brought together young would-be authors and top children’s writers and illustrators. Here, author Sylvia McNicoll reads to the assembled group.

Above, war photographer and journalist Paul Watson signs books at an event at the Library and Archives in Ottawa on August 22, 2007. Watson also spoke at length about his experiences in South Africa, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The Ottawa International Writers Festival has kindly posted over an hour’s worth of audio files of the whole evening here.

Pages Books & Magazines and Groundwood Books hosted “Calypso Night!” in honour of Barbara Wyn Klunder’s new book Other Goose: Recycled Rhymes for Our Fragile Times. The event took place at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel on August 30 and included a calypso reggae band and a DJ.

Have you recently attended a book reading, library event, or author appearance? Have some interesting book-related pictures you want to share? If you’ve got photos of the Canadian book scene, we’d love to see them. Send them to us or sign up through Flickr and submit your images.