Reading & Literary

Would you like to learn to make your own comics and graphic novels?

Comic artist, Janice Liu, will guide you through the entire process of creating a one-page comic story, from brainstorming to scriptwriting to artwork. Artists will learn new skills, develop their stories, and finish the series with their very own comic! 

This Comic Making Workshop series is best suited for kids and tweens aged 10-14. For more info, email Kaley at YoungK@nvdpl.ca or Jessie at HawkesJ@nvdpl.ca.

Janice Liu is the owner & instructor at Young Artists' Place. She graduated from the University of Toronto, and has been teaching art since 2013. Janice is the comic artist of Chicken Soup & Goji Berries 中药鸡汤, a bilingual graphic novel published in 2019. She was also one of the contributors to Shuster Award-winning, Wayward Sisters: An Anthology of Monstrous Women.

This meeting will take place on Zoom. What you’ll need: A computer with microphone (or headphones) and webcam for Zoom; or your smartphone/tablet. We will email you the Zoom link in advance of the event. We will be using Zoom Meetings, so your mic and video will be turned off when you enter the event.

There’s so much in this life that is a mystery, but we suspect that reading mystery books is really fun! Join the Armchair Detectives to chat about your recent mystery reads and get suggestions from others about what – or what not – to read next. To miss this meeting would be a crime!

This month, we'll be discussing the novels of Peter James; specifically, the Roy Grace series.

Registration required. Register online or call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175.

This meeting will be held on Zoom. Session will open at 2:45pm for attendees to test their connections and devices.

What you’ll need to attend: a computer with microphone (or headphones) and webcam, or your smartphone/tablet.

Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate!

Join the discussion as we go over Keith Gessen’s A Terrible Country.

Russian-American Andrei moves from Brooklyn to Moscow to care for his ailing grandmother during the height of Putin’s consolidation of power. When he becomes entangled with a group of leftists, Andrei's politics and his allegiances are tested, and he is forced to come to terms with the Russian society he was born into and the American one he has enjoyed since he was a kid. A novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you.

Read the book by the meeting date and register to receive a Zoom link and take part in our virtual book club!

Copies of this book are available to pick-up from Parkgate Library. There are also ebook and e-audiobook versions available online, and copies available through the library catalogue.

This meeting takes place on Zoom. Here’s what you need to know:

• Registration is required in order to receive an invitation to the session.
• You will need a computer with a microphone or headset, and a webcam. You can also choose to use your smartphone/tablet.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!

Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate!

Join the discussion as we go over Anne Griffin’s When All Is Said.

This is the story of Irishman Maurice Hannigan, who, over the course of a Saturday night in June, orders five different drinks at the Rainford House Hotel. With each, he toasts a person vital to him: his doomed older brother, his troubled sister-in-law, his daughter of fifteen minutes, his son far off in America, and his late, lamented wife. And through these people, the ones who left him behind, he tells the story of his own life, with all its regrets and feuds, loves, and triumphs.

Read the book by the meeting date and register to receive a Zoom link and take part in our virtual book club!

Copies of this book are available to pick-up from Parkgate Library. There are also ebook and e-audiobook versions available online, and copies available through the library catalogue.

This meeting takes place on Zoom. Here’s what you need to know:

• Registration is required in order to receive an invitation to the session.
• You will need a computer with a microphone or headset, and a webcam. You can also choose to use your smartphone/tablet.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!

Not your average book club!

Advance Reading Copies are books that haven’t even been published yet. At the Teen Advance Readers’ club, you’ll have the chance to read and review brand new teen books that haven’t even hit the shelves!

You’ll get an exclusive sneak peek at unpublished teen fiction, then choose a book to take home and review. At each meeting, we’ll discuss the books and pick our read for the coming month!

Don’t miss your chance to READ IT FIRST!

ARC Book Club is available for teens grade 7-12.

Registration required. Register online or email Jessie at hawkesj@nvdpl.ca for more information.

We’re hosting this virtual program on Zoom.

What you’ll need to attend: A computer with microphone (or headphones) and webcam, or your smartphone/tablet.

Would you like to learn to make your own comics and graphic novels?

Comic artist, Janice Liu, will guide you through the entire process of creating a one-page comic story, from brainstorming to scriptwriting to artwork. Artists will learn new skills, develop their stories, and finish the series with their very own comic! 

This Comic Making Workshop series is best suited for kids and tweens aged 10-14. For more info, email Kaley at YoungK@nvdpl.ca or Jessie at HawkesJ@nvdpl.ca.

Janice Liu is the owner & instructor at Young Artists' Place. She graduated from the University of Toronto, and has been teaching art since 2013. Janice is the comic artist of Chicken Soup & Goji Berries 中药鸡汤, a bilingual graphic novel published in 2019. She was also one of the contributors to Shuster Award-winning, Wayward Sisters: An Anthology of Monstrous Women.

This meeting will take place on Zoom. What you’ll need: A computer with microphone (or headphones) and webcam for Zoom; or your smartphone/tablet. We will email you the Zoom link in advance of the event. We will be using Zoom Meetings, so your mic and video will be turned off when you enter the event.

Who says Monday mornings can’t be fun? Are you looking to join a book club but don’t know where to start? Join us for Monday Morning Book Club! Just have the book read before the meeting and drop in! 

This month, we're reading and discussing The Farm by Joanne Ramos. 

Registration is required in order to receive a link to the Zoom meeting.

We’re hosting this virtual program on Zoom.

What you’ll need to attend: A computer with microphone (or headphones) and webcam, or your smartphone/tablet. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!

For more information about Monday Morning Book Club, email David at milnerd@nvdpl.ca.

Join us as we listen to and discuss Wade Davis’ 2009 CBC Massey Lectures series The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World ! Wade Davis will join us for the last session to discuss where we go from here.

In Polynesia, we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true lost civilization, the Peoples of the Anaconda. We then travel to Nepal, where we encounter a wisdom hero, a Bodhisattva, who emerges from forty-five years of Buddhist retreat and solitude. Finally, we settle in Borneo, where the last rainforest nomads struggle to survive.

Understanding the lessons of this journey will be our mission for the next century. For at risk is the human legacy -- a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalogue of the imagination. Rediscovering a new appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit, as expressed by culture, is among the central challenges of our time.

Wade Davis is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker whose work has taken him from the Amazon to Tibet, Africa to Australia, and Polynesia to the Arctic.

Please note that this session will take place over Zoom. You will need a microphone and speakers, or a headset, in order to take part in the session.

Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate!

Join the discussion as we go over Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.

After a shocking breakup, therapist Lori Gottlieb realizes that she, too, could use a therapist. As she tells the story of her visits to a therapist she calls Wendell, she also explains many of the theories behind how therapy actually works, and how it helps people re-write the narratives they tell about themselves.

Read the book by the meeting date and register to receive a Zoom link and take part in our virtual book club!

Copies of this book are available to pick-up from (insert meeting “location”). There are also ebook and e-audiobook versions available online, and copies available through the library catalogue.

This meeting takes place on Zoom. Here’s what you need to know:

• Registration is required in order to receive an invitation to the session.
• You will need a computer with a microphone or headset, and a webcam. You can also choose to use your smartphone/tablet.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!

Join us as we listen to and discuss Wade Davis’ 2009 CBC Massey Lectures series The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World ! Wade Davis will join us for the last session to discuss where we go from here.

In Polynesia, we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true lost civilization, the Peoples of the Anaconda. We then travel to Nepal, where we encounter a wisdom hero, a Bodhisattva, who emerges from forty-five years of Buddhist retreat and solitude. Finally, we settle in Borneo, where the last rainforest nomads struggle to survive.

Understanding the lessons of this journey will be our mission for the next century. For at risk is the human legacy -- a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalogue of the imagination. Rediscovering a new appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit, as expressed by culture, is among the central challenges of our time.

Wade Davis is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker whose work has taken him from the Amazon to Tibet, Africa to Australia, and Polynesia to the Arctic.

Please note that this session will take place over Zoom. You will need a microphone and speakers, or a headset, in order to take part in the session.

There’s so much in this life that is a mystery, but we suspect that reading mystery books is really fun! Join the Armchair Detectives to chat about your recent mystery reads and get suggestions from others about what – or what not – to read next. To miss this meeting would be a crime!

This month, we'll be discussing the novels of Elizabeth George; specifically, the Inspector Lynley mystery series.

Registration required. Register online or call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175.

This meeting will be held on Zoom. Session will open at 2:45pm for attendees to test their connections and devices.

What you’ll need to attend: a computer with microphone (or headphones) and webcam, or your smartphone/tablet.

Do you love to talk about what you’re reading? Join a book club to share your thoughts and hear what others have to say about books that spark discussion, curiosity, and debate!

Join the discussion as we go over Susan Orlean’s The Library Book.

Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the devastating 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times’ bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a never-before-done way. Along the way, you will meet some of the colourful real-life personalities of the LAPL all the way back in the 1880s, including a teenager, an adventurer, and a fruit farmer.

Read the book by the meeting date and register to receive a Zoom link and take part in our virtual book club!

Copies of this book are available to pick-up from Parkgate Library. There are also ebook and e-audiobook versions available online, and copies available through the library catalogue.

This meeting takes place on Zoom. Here’s what you need to know:

• Registration is required in order to receive an invitation to the session.
• You will need a computer with a microphone or headset, and a webcam. You can also choose to use your smartphone/tablet.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!