Join us for the ultimate armchair travel around Europe. The European Book Club is offered in partnership with European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) in Ottawa to promote contemporary European authors and their works. A book title from an EU country is selected for discussion each month.

We will be discussing "Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World" by Irene Vallejo.

IRENE VALLEJO

Irene Vallejo earned her European Doctorate from the Universities of Zaragoza and Florence. Papyrus was awarded the National Essay Prize, the Critical Eye Prize for Narrative and the Bookstore Recommendation Award, and will be published in thirty countries. She is a regular columnist for El País and Heraldo de Aragón, and is the author of two children’s books, two novels, and three collections of essays, articles, and short fiction.

PAPYRUS

Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Emperors and Pharaohs were so determined to possess them that they dispatched emissaries to the edges of the earth to bring them back.

Papyrus, traces the dramatic history of the book and the fight for its survival. This is the story of the book’s journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. And it is a story full of heroic adventures, bloodshed and megalomania – from the battlefields of Alexander the Great and the palaces of Cleopatra to the libraries of war-torn Sarajevo and Oxford.

This club meets on the 2nd Thursday of the month. (Due to March Break, the meeting will be pushed to March 21st.)

Come share the enjoyment of reading books with other kids ages 9-12!

Each meeting we will have a book battle to choose the book we will be reading that month. 

Registration required (up to 8 participants). 

This is a book club, conversation space and community for parents or caregivers of little people who are looking for shared connection on the struggles and joys of parenting. Sleepless nights, big emotions, stepping on a toy car that feels like a shard of glass and surprise jam on your best work shirt, parenting is not always the social media perfect picnic it is cracked up to be. At the same time you love them to bits and are trying to merge the life before them with your current reality while also keeping all the balls in the air and doing your best to raise kind and thoughtful humans amidst a crazy and changing world.

Explore concepts of parenting, identity and the ever present “mom or dad guilt”.

If you don’t have time to read the book, still come! Chill vibes and welcoming space.