We are, we definitely are. In an incredible display of ingenuity and resourcefulness, local author and publisher, Austin Rowlader will be hand-binding his debut novel, Ordinary Time at the Traverse Area District Library (Woodmere location) on Friday, February 2nd from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. There will also be a 'Meet the Author' event the following afternoon at 2:00 where he will take questions and tell stories in a live interview with Taylor Reed from the Crosshatch Center for Art and Ecology.

Using a series of homemade contraptions and a bottle of Elmer's glue, Mr. Rowlader will take a stack of paper and turn it into a book right before your eyes! "It's like slow motion magic," one person said. "But it's also like every book I've ever read, even the ones I loved, were just cold, lifeless products from a cold and lifeless machine. But this, this is a book. This is a real book. I'm excited to read it."

The book itself, entitled Ordinary Time, reads like an irreverent Midwestern fairy tale about a couple of teenage boys seeking Salvation under a constant bombardment of puberty chemicals and Catholic guilt. It's a hilarious book, a fast and lively read, and you might even cry a little at the end.

So if you, yourself, are interested in book-binding, or if you're an avid reader, or maybe you're just somebody who likes weird homemade contraptions, come down to the Traverse Area District Library (Woodmere location) on February 2nd and 3rd for a peek inside the magnificent and perplexingly simple world of binding books.