Welcome to Halifax’s new library!

The brand-spanking new Halifax Central Library opened its doors to the public for the first time this morning. This building has been about five years (and 57 million dollars) in the making. I’m so excited that it’s finally here! And so were the many, many people (hundreds? thousands?) who turned out for the grand opening this morning.

You may recognize this library from such features as CNN’s 10 buildings to pay attention to in 2014, and now you can see just how awesome it is in real life.

The doors finally opened at 10 a.m. after music, speeches, and a community ribbon-cutting (with 300 pairs of safety scissors). There were also jugglers, balloon-twirlers, and hot fresh donuts leading up to this moment.

Look how many people there are! Nope, that’s not a mall on the second-to-last Saturday before Christmas — it’s our new library. Apparently it was busy all day long.

Honestly, it was so busy and I was so focused on taking in the big picture — 129,000 square feet, five storeys, a 300-seat auditorium, two cafés, umpteen meeting rooms and multimedia spaces and kids’ areas and spots to curl up with a book, plus a rooftop patio and green space — that I forgot to take any pictures of the books.

However! I know I’ll be back to the new library in the next few days, and I’ll post more pictures then.

Us Conductors: A Novel by Sean Michaels (2014)

Photo via the Globe and Mail

This book won the Giller Prize! Which is pretty much the biggest award for fiction in Canada. I had already read (and reviewed) All My Puny Sorrows and I was sure it was going to win. So did a lot of other people, according to this pic (from the Globe and Mail). So an upset is always fun! Plus it bumped Us Conductors to the top of my to-read list.

This is a story about the inventor of the theremin, which is a sort of instrument you play by manipulating the electrical fields created by the antennae. The characters in the book are based on real people, and although parts of the plot really did happen, it’s still a work of fiction. (The notes section states the lack of evidence that our protagonist ever learned kung fu, for instance.) (Do other people actually read the notes sections in books? Or the acknowledgements section? Because I feel like most people don’t and I feel like they’re missing out. Anyway.)

The rest of these books on the list above are on my to-read list as well, except for one that I started and actually gave up on about halfway through, which I almost never do. But I just didn’t care about the characters, so I couldn’t be bothered to find out what happened to them. I’m not going to tell you which book this was, because I don’t want to ruin it for you — that would just be mean and unCanadian. And I’ve heard from a number of other people who really liked it.

Here, a video of Leon Theremin playing his own instrument: