On Tuesday night, CBC Radio producer Tom Jokinen (left) launched his new memoir Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker-in-Training (Random House Canada) at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel as part of This Is Not a Reading Series. Above: Jokinen is interviewed by Torontoist’s books editor (and Q&Q contributing editor) James Grainger.

Jokinen, who signed books after the event, told the crowd he wanted to find out what actually goes on at a funeral parlour. It’s a really mysterious process, he said. Somebody dies, they disappear for a couple of days, and then they magically pop up at a funeral in a casket or as a bag of ashes “ and in between is this mysterious Alice’s rabbit hole where nobody knows what goes on.

Event host Marc Glassman, co-artistic director of TINARS and former owner of Toronto’s Pages Books & Magazines, with Grainger. (All photos by Laura Godfrey)