“In just a few months, Ms. Aviles, 30, has gone from being a food-loving Guelph mother of two with dreams of some day running a restaurant to being the linchpin of a new gourmet-street-food movement in Toronto.”

OBOC One Book, One Community of Waterloo Region, Ontario is pleased to announce that the 2011 book selection is Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny!From Louise’s website:“As Quebec City shivers in the grip of winter, its ancient stone walls cracking in the cold, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache plunges into the most unusual case of his celebrated career. A man has been brutally murdered in one of the city’s oldest buildings – a library where the English citizens of Quebec safeguard their history. And the death opens a door into the past, exposing a mystery that has lain dormant for centuries…a mystery Gamache must solve if he’s to apprehend a present-day killer.”Explore our website for more information on Louise, the book and upcoming events. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for live tweets from events, contests and discussion.Congratulations to Louise! Stay tuned as we update our website with all the 2011 book and author information.Bury Your Dead

via And the 2011 book is… « One Book, One Community.

“Bookstores help create community for people in the places where they live. People may think they can live online, but in reality they live in real towns and cities, and physical bookstores help to enrich those places.”

— Suzanna Hermans, a bookstore owner.

(from Quote Vadis)

It has been a long time since I picked up the small thick volume entitled A Pattern Language written over the course of seven years by architect Christopher Alexander (and a long string of other architects). It was one of those books that many a reader can identify as the one that changed the course of things and it did it, for me, with small type, tiny pencil drawings and the rare black and white photograph.
I’ll write further on it later, but when I came across this profile in the site PPS Project for Public Spaces it brought to mind that feeling of heady expansiveness – imagine, designing homes, streetscapes and towns (community) that people, who live in them and use them, can help to design themselves. Alexander has spent his life pursuing his passion for creating meaning and community through a built environment.