The New Westminster Library, (best library evar?)
It got up to 8 degrees today, which to this former-Albertan is still pretty amazing in early February. It's the first of a few days off for Jamie, so we decided to go uptown for a coffee. We tend to take a pretty similar route every time, so we pass the library quite often on our way to Tim Hortons or wherever. For some reason this time, Jamie said "hey, wanna get a library card?" and I said "why the heck not?" Jamie's had a card for a while and he occasionally stops on his way home from work so that hasn't been much call for me having my own card yet.
We get me my card, and I didn't really intend to borrow anything right away, but I really dig libraries (I even worked in the library at my high school for work placement credit) and so couldn't resist just wandering around a bit at least. We puttered around in fiction for a bit, and stumbled upon a whole section full of MANGA and GRAPHIC NOVELS! That might not seem odd or special to anybody else, but I've never been in a library that carried either of those things before. I picked up an Oh! My Goddess trade edition (I have a few issues but they're mostly all back in Alberta still), Sandman 1 Preludes and Nocturnes, and The Dark Knight Returns, which was so huge when it came out there was a waiting list at the one comic store in town, and I never did end up getting to so much as read somebody else's copy.
We also picked up Roverandum, a collection of short stories by Tolkien written for his children about a little toy dog they lost at the beach, and the very very best and most EPIC awesome find of all, an English translation of the Japanese novel Parasite Eve!
Yes folks, the Playstation game was based on a NOVEL, more specifically it was a sequel to a film that was based off the novel. I was a big fan of PE back in the day and one of the reasons I tried to teach myself Japanese was so that I could read the book it was based on one day. I'd still love to be able to read it in the original Japanese one day, but at least now I can get the original story in something very close to it's original form.
It seems it was only published in English in 2005 too, so it's pretty recent. I'm positively thrilled to bits. ^_^
They also had one of the better arts and crafts sections I've ever come across. No snobbery about subject matter at all, the books on drawing and writing comics were right next to things like pottery and watercolor painting etc. It was all very diverse and quite up to date. If they allow you to drink coffee in something like a travel mug I'm so hanging out there all the time.
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