How great would it be to spend an afternoon chatting books with a whole group of book lovers? That’s exactly what the Montreal Book Bloggers did a few weeks ago in their first ever meeting. Tina from Bookshipper, has provided a wonderful recap about the group and the event (thanks Tina!):
There is no disputing the fact that Montreal is synonymous with hockey royalty AND divine food. Unfortunately, Montreal is NOT always readily associated with all things “book”. The good news? If the Montreal Book Bloggers have their way – this is about to change.
Over the course of the last two months, Montreal Book Bloggers have united to create the Montreal Book Bloggers group. We have a simple mission – turn the Montreal book world on its ear!
For all of us, it started with a love of reading, which turned into a desire to share about the wonderful books we read and, before long, we found ourselves logging onto the Net and creating our own book blogs.
Many of us have been blogging for some time and were, for the most part, unaware of one another – until we decided to seek each other out. So far, 15 bloggers from Montreal have come together and, on Saturday, July 23rd, 2011, 13 of us decided to meet for the very first time.
Happily, keeping with our love of Montreal – we decided to combine our hockey obsession with our food obsession and chose a restaurant that served amazing Italian food and was located in the “Old Forum” – arguably THE most well known hockey shrine in the world (yes, the Forum is still there and yes, if you are very quiet, you can still hear the hockey gods whispering…..).
So, with some wonderful company, some great food, which included every type of Italian homemade pasta you can think of, covered with amazing tomato sauce and topped with fattening and gooey cheeses, the Montreal Book Blogger group talked books, blogging, authors, and publishers in between delicious bites of food. The table was stacked with piles and piles of books which we traded with each other and, thanks to the generosity of HarperCollins Canada and other Canadian publishers, we also had some amazing swag and giveaways to “auction” off. As you can imagine – this was a big hit with everyone.
In fact, we even managed to impress our very cool (and very, very patient) waiter who asked one of us how long it takes us to read 1 book (he obviously underestimated our abilities!).
We have discovered that while we all have our own individual personalities, we also share one of the biggest gifts we can ever receive – our absolute love of reading.
What a wonderful time we all had and while we certainly did a lot of eating, book exchanging and even a little flirting with the waiter, we also managed to get through our written Agenda and have come up with some great ideas to make sure that Montreal has a stronger presence in the book world.
We invite you to join us on our Facebook Page at Montreal Book Lovers.
– Tina
From Bookshipper
Follow Tina on twitter
For a list of the Montreal Book Bloggers (& links to their blogs) click here, or see below:
Cat – Beyond Books – http://beyondbooks.ca
Cindy B. – Tynga’s Reviews – http://www.tyngasreviews.com
Cindy S. – Cindy’s Love of Books – http://cindysloveofbooks.blogspot.com
Tina – Bookshipper – http://www.bookshipper.blogspot.com
Laura -Library of Clean Reads – http://libraryofcleanreads.blogspot.com
Avis – she reads and reads – http://shereadsandreads.blogspot.com
Lucy – Moonlight Gleam’s Bookshelf – http://moonlightgleam.blogspot.com
Melissa – YA Book Shelf http://www.yabookshelf.com/
Donna – Bookbound – http://www.yabookshelf.com/
Emilie - A Beautiful Madness - http://abeautifulmadness.blogspot.com
Lisa – starmetal oak book blog – http://starmetaloak.blogspot.com/
Amanda – Tales & Treats – http://talesandtreats.blogspot.com/
PK – Aisle B – http://aisleb.tumblr.com
Jennifer Q. – Mrs. Q – Book Addict – http://www.mrsqbookaddict.net