Are you a closet book wonk with bibliomaniacal tendencies? Score! Nicholas Basbanes is coming to town to give a free lecture at the Vancouver Planetarium on October 29th from 7:30pm to 8:30pm. This is the fellow who wrote A Gentle Madness, a must-read for anyone with a passion for books and ephemera that detailed the weird and incurable sickness that is Bibiophilia. Even if (especially if) you’re a disinterested illiterate with problems sleeping, this might do you some good.

The Nicholas Basbanes Lectures
Free Lecture
Vancouver Planetarium, 1100 Chestnut Street, Auditorium
Wednesday, October 29th, 7:30 – 8:30 pm
Topic: The continuing importance of the book and reading in society: “Stirring the World: The Enduring Power of the Printed Word.”

From his bio:

Well known for writing about books, bibliophiles, and various aspects of book culture, Nicholas Basbanes has worked as an award-winning investigative reporter, a literary editor, a lecturer, and a nationally syndicated columnist. His first book, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction for 1995, and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It is now in its twentieth printing, with more than 120,000 copies in print.

Of his second book,Patience & Fortitude, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian David McCullough wrote that “Nicholas Basbanes has become our leading authority of books about books.” Of his fifth, Matthew Price wrote in the Los Angeles Times that “Every Book Its Reader reminds us that books, in all their myriad forms, are necessary equipment for living.”

Basbanes’ sixth book, Editions & Impressions.—a collection of his literary journalism over the past twenty years—was recently published by Fine Books Press, a division of Fine Books & Collections magazine. His seventh, A World of Letters: Yale University Press, 1908-2008, will be published by Yale University Press this fall. This past December, Basbanes was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in support of a book he is now writing on the history of paper and papermaking, to be published next year by Alfred A. Knopf.

See you there with glasses on, nerd.