Celebrate Reading! Book Lover's Ball Celebrates 10 Years

The Book Lover's Ball is celebrating its tenth year raising funds for Toronto libraries and they're doing it in grand gala style with an exciting event to be held at the Toronto Reference Library on February 5, 2015. This big book event will feature nearly 60 Canadian authors and entertainment from the acclaimed music and literary hybrid experience Jason Collett’s Basement Revue. To top the evening off, the Book Lover's Ball will be holding the first ever After Dark party where guests can mix and mingle with authors. I'm eager to be attending both events and anticipate a wonderful crowd of authors and hundreds of book lovers.

Four Books Every Child Should Own

At last year's BLB I had the opportunity to catch up with my client friend Anthony De Sa and chat with Linwood Barclay who graciously signed my copy of "Trust Your Eyes." It was also a treat to finally meet Bookalicious Book Club Twitter chat guest authors Claire Cameron and Reva Seth in person. This year I had the opportunity to interview three of the authors who will be attending this year's Book Lover's Ball. I asked Alison Pick, Lynn Thomson, and Michael Redhill to share their library memories and insights on their recent novels. Check out their responses below and read on to find out more about The Book Lover's Ball and enter a giveaway with a pair of tickets to the Book Lover's Ball After Dark party!

About The Book Lover's Ball

Presented by Toronto Public Library Foundation and TD Bank Group, The Book Lover’s Ball and After Dark take place on February 5, 2015. After Dark will also include special surprise performances, dancing, specialty cocktails and canapés, and interactive, literary-inspired activities – such as a short game of Scrabble against an author. After Dark kicks off at 9 p.m. and separate tickets are available for $100. Visit bookloversball.ca for more details.

At the Ball, hundreds of literary enthusiasts will mingle with nearly 60 of Canada’s top authors over a cocktail reception featuring hors d’oeuvres designed by Toronto chef Jamie Kennedy, followed by a fine dining experience with an author at each table. Author guests will include Maureen Jennings (Murdoch Mysteries), 2014 Writer’s Trust Award winner Miriam Toews (A Complicated Kindness), Claire Cameron (The Bear), Michael Winter (Minister Without Portfolio), Andrew Pyper (The Killing Circle; The Demonologist), musician Carl Dixon (Strange Way to Live), and Guy Gavriel Kay (Under Heaven).

The Book Lover’s Ball will transport guests to a world of romance, mystery, science fiction, and fantasy as they encounter favourite fictional characters like Harry Potter, Romeo and Juliet, Sherlock Holmes and Watson, Rapunzel and Alice in Wonderland, all portrayed by local Toronto actors.

The evening’s silent auction will offer one-of-a-kind opportunities including several book club experiences with an author and a group of friends, travel packages and a chance to Adopt a Branch.

Since its inception, The Book Lover’s Ball has raised over $3.6 million in support exemplary collections; ground breaking programs and services; and innovative community spaces. The Library’s 100th branch will open its doors in Spring 2015.

“The overwhelming support from Book Lover’s Ball attendees over the past decade has enabled the Toronto Public Library Foundation to help Toronto’s Library thrive by ensuring Torontonians have access to the best programs, services and resources possible,” said Heather Rumball, President of Toronto Public Library Foundation. “We’re thrilled to be offering our guests a 10th Anniversary Book Lover’s Ball celebration like never before.”

Over 72 per cent of Toronto’s adult population uses the Library, one of the busiest urban public library systems in the world. A survey conducted by the Martin Prosperity Institute of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto shows that Toronto Public Library creates over $1 billion in total economic impact for the City of Toronto. And every $1 invested in the Library generates $5.63 in value for Torontonians.

Read our slides for interviews with three featured authors

About The Toronto Public Library Foundation

The Toronto Public Library Foundation raises financial support from individuals and corporations to provide essential resources for the enhancement of Toronto Public Library and to allocate funds to priority needs not supported by municipal funding. To learn more about the Toronto Public Library Foundation, visit tplfoundation.ca.

About The Toronto Public Library

The Toronto Public Library is one of the world's busiest urban public library. Every year, there are 18.5 million branch visits in neighbourhoods across the city and 32 million items are borrowed. To learn more about Toronto Public Library, visit the website at torontopubliclibrary.ca or call Answerline at 416-393-7131 or 416-393-7131. Follow @torontolibrary, @TPL_Foundation, and the Book Lover's Ball hashtag #BLB2015 on Twitter.

BOOKALICIOUS AFTER DARK GIVEAWAY

A lucky Bookalicious reader will win a PAIR of tickets to the Book Lover's Ball AFTER DARK party! The AFTER DARK prize includes 2 tickets valued at $200. and the event runs from 9:00 pm – midnight on February 5th, 2015. The winner is responsible for transportation to and from the AFTER DARK event at the Toronto Reference Library located at 789 Yonge Street in Toronto, Ontario. To enter the Bookalicious After Dark Giveaway all you have to do is leave a comment in the "Click Here To Spill It" bubble below. You have until noon ET on February 4th, 2015 to enter the Bookalicious After Dark Giveaway. You must be a YMC member, and please be sure you've registered your email address in our commenting system so we can contact you if you win.

YMC Rules and Regulations

You must be a YummyMummyClub.ca member to win. Click here to sign up. It's free and filled with perks. One comment per member. Entries accepted until noon ET on February 4th, 2015. Contest open to residents of Toronto and the GTA. Winners will be picked using www.random.org. See full contest rules.

Relish reading,

Wanda Lynne Young

@BookaliciousCA

The Book Lover's Ball is an important fundraising event for the Toronto Public Library. What are your favourite library memories and thoughts on literacy?

Hands down my favourite library memory is of the Book Mobile that used to come to our neighbourhood in Kitchener when I was a kid. I remember the strangeness of the space, and the thrill—every time—at entering into what looked like a bus and finding myself surrounded by books on all sides.

Can you tell us about your recent book and share what you're working on now?

My recent book, Between Gods, tells the story of reclaiming my family’s lost Judaism. I grew up not knowing that my father was Jewish, and that many of my relatives had perished in Auschwitz. When I began to research Far to Go in 2007, I felt an incredibly strong pull toward Judaism and decided to convert. Between Gods describes that journey, as well as my struggle with depression and my path towards parenthood.

As for what I’m working on now, it’s still a secret! I can say that I’m off to Israel this week for research purposes. I hope to come back with a more fully formed outline, and when I do I promise to let you know.

The Book Lover's Ball is an important fundraising event for the Toronto Public Library. What are your favourite library memories and thoughts on literacy?

My first job was in a library (volunteer, grade 3) and now, nearly 50 year later, I’m a bookseller at an independent shop. Rooms filled with books are my lifeblood and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. Libraries are our civic treasures. That sentence deserves an exclamation point. Libraries are our civic treasures! Let’s celebrate them!

When my son, Yeats, was small we went to story time most weeks at our public library, the Riverdale branch. After the program, we’d choose some books to bring home to read. Yeats always wanted poetry and one book in particular. I think we checked out Jack Prelutsky’s Ride a Purple Pelican 50 times. We still sometimes amuse one another by trying to recite those little poems. I remember the first time I took him into the grown-up section of that library. It was to find a complete Sherlock Holmes, which was a wonderful, huge book bound in fake leather and weighing a hundred pounds. He sat on the floor between towering shelves of books and looked up: this little guy, in a cavern of books, a great big grin on his face. His bedroom is like that now. Well, our whole house is like that, stuffed with books, feeling like a library.

We have customers in the bookshop who buy boxes and boxes of books and ship them to schools in parts of Canada where there are no libraries, or scanty ones. These are northern communities, or towns without the resources to fund a great library system like the TPL. We receive stories back from teachers and librarians, and sometimes photos of children opening theses boxes and pulling the treasures out. I can’t think of a better way to offer the world to anyone than by handing them a book.

Can you tell us about your recent book and share what you're working on now?

My book, Birding with Yeats is a memoir of the birding trips my son and I took while he was in high school. I write about Yeats as a small child, too, and tell stories about my family, so that readers can understand why a teenaged boy might want to spend hours alone in the forest with his mother, looking for birds. A second thread of the book is my job as a bookseller, because the month Yeats began high school, September 2007, was the month my husband opened his bookshop, Ben McNally Books. I have worked there part time right from the start, as have my step-children. So bird watching and book selling are intertwined in the story. A third thread of the book involves the desires we have to hold on to things – our children, our marriages, the ideas we have of who we are. During the course of writing the book, I was faced with a health problem that gave me the opportunity to re-evaluate my life and its direction, and I write about that in the book, too.

When Yeats was in high school and we stepped out the door to go birding, we left all the other parts of life behind us. It was our unspoken pact. No mention of school, or homework, or the bookshop. He always said he liked bird watching with me because I could stay quiet. I didn’t need to talk and he didn’t want to. It was our sacred, quiet time together, kind of like being in the library.

The Book Lover's Ball is an important fundraising event for the Toronto Public Library. What are your favourite library memories and thoughts on literacy?

I grew up in a part of Toronto that used to be called Willowdale and my local branch was the one at Bayview Village. We also went to Orchard View and what's now the North York Central TPL. My favorite memory is from that branch: I'd come home from France (where I then lived) to do readings of Consolation for One Book readings. It was February 2008 and it was howling with wind and snow the night of my reading at NY Central. I barely made it to the reading, primed to do an event that might be a bit intimate, but the place was packed, and it was a beautiful night.

Can you tell us about your recent book and share what you're working on now?

My most recent book is Saving Houdini, a novel for young adults. It's the first thing I've written for kids and the reception has been crazy and fun. It's been nominated for a Silver Birch Award, which involves kids doing projects on the nominated books, writing about them, and just generally enjoying them! Coming next: in 2016, w M&S, the fourth Hazel Micallef mystery, as Inger Ash Wolfe, and later that year, as myself, Bellevue Square, with Doubleday Canada.