Manitoba Book Week... and other stuff

Manitoba Book Week will be celebrated across the province from April 22 to 28. During this week, the focus is on celebrating Manitoba's locally published books. We will have our display of books out on the shelf in the next day or two, so be sure to drop in to check out a sampling of the quality books that are published in our province. Visit the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers website for more information.

For our part, we will be hosting an encore reading of "To the Grave" by the author, Mike McIntyre.

To the Grave is, undoubtedly, one of the hottest selling local-interest books of the past season. I know that we sold out repeatedly!

Now that many of you have read this book, I'm sure that you have questions you would like answered. Or, perhaps, you want to get your copy signed by the author. Maybe you don't even care about the signature, but you just want to meet Mike.

Mike will be at Pennywise Books on April 27 and will begin his reading at 7 PM. Let us know if you have any questions.

On another note, remember that on Sunday, April 22 at 7:00pm, Crocus Plains High School will host Mr. Stephen Lewis for a Community Evening in the Gymnasium.

All of Brandon 's citizens are invited to hear Mr. Lewis's passionate message and call to action against the devastating consequences of Africa's HIV/AIDS pandemic. Mr. Lewis will also be the keynote speaker for the student conference on Africa on April 23. The conference will be the highlight of the school's year - long focus on local and global awareness and citizenship.

Tickets are $10.00 and are available in the Front Office of Crocus Plains Regional Secondary School. For further information please contact Katie Bonk at bonk.katie@brandonsd.mb.ca.

If you would like to read Mr. Lewis' book "Race Against Time" prior to hearing him speak, we have plenty of copies in stock and will also be selling copies at the event.

Andrea Nair - March 29

On March 29 at 7:30 PM, former Brandonian and BU alumna Andrea Nair will be here at Pennywise Books to read from, discuss and answer questions about her book "Stripped Down Running" - a novel about Hannah, a young woman with a painful childhood that threatens to destroy her adult life.

Andrea, after teaching teenagers for a decade, has been studying the effects and recovery of traumatic experiences in childhood. She is passionate about helping children foster a love of learning, heal early wounds and regain self-esteem. She also guides parents to overcome their own challenges, therefore becoming more connected with themselves and their children.

If you have any questions about this event, please don't hesitate to call us.

Glenn Hopfner - January 25

Welcome to 2007! After a small break during the holidays, we are now back with a new year of what I hope will be a year filled with fascinating authors signing wonderful books.

The first signing of the year goes to Glenn Hopfner. A resident of Ste. Rose, Glenn is pleased to be coming to Brandon to read, discuss and sign copies of What Happened, his second book.

Glenn Hopfner is a natural born story-teller a delight to listen to at any time. For those of you who don't have the chance to meet him in person, reading the story of his life is the next best thing. It's pretty much like sitting around the kitchen table with a hot cup of coffee while an interesting person speaks entertainingly about interesting things. Glenn is an ordinary man who is living an extraordinary life. He's had plenty of close encounters with death, and more adventures than most people will ever know. He loves work and play, music and nature and animals and machines and people or all sorts. Most of all, he loves his family. Glenn is a spirited individual whose inspiring story will leave you asking for an encore.

His first book, Tales from the Tundra, is a compilation of stories Glenn has gathered while working for the Tundra Buggy company as a guide, interpreter, trouble-shooter, mechanic, and entertainer in Churchill during bear season.

On Thursday, January 25 at 7 PM, come on down to Pennywise Books at 1031 Rosser Ave to listen to Glenn's stories and meet this area author in person.

Book Launch - December 14

We here at Pennywise Books are pleased to be hosting the launch of "Dancing Winds" by James C. McCrae. On December 14 at 7:00 PM, Mr. McCrae will be reading from and signing copies of his first published novel.

Dancing Winds is the story of the forbidden love between a Jewish boy and the daughter of an SS officer in Hitler's Germany. A story of love, war, murder and forgiveness, this is a book that spans the years and the range of human emotions.

For more information about this book or the event on Dec. 14, please feel free to contact us here at Pennywise at (204) 728-2665.

Events - November 27 & 29

As we close in on the holidays, we begin to wind down our events at Pennywise Books for the year (with one more in December - stay tuned). We will be closing out November with two different authors and two very different books...

November 27

Laurie Block, local poet and storyteller, will be reading and signing copies of his book "Time Out of Mind."

In the foreword to this moving, honest and luminous collection of poems, Laurie Block inscribes the last coherent words his mother said to him: I used to be quite fond of you. Shortly after that, she lost what remained of her senses and sank into the vegetative state in which she spent her last years. Lights Out, the first section of Time Out of Mind, is the poet’s journey into a darkness that is only in part his mother’s. He writes to touch the borders of consciousness and emerges with a map of the mind and body in extremis. Many of these poems are rooted in disorientation, displacement and loss of equilibrium, the friction between what happens outside the skin and what may be taking place on the inside. The poet believes that we value consciousness as somehow more concrete, enduring and linked to assumptions about identity than our bodies. He therefore asks the question: Is the self first a face or a soul?

For more information about Laurie and his work, please visit www.laurieblock.ca.


November 29

Get to know Manitoba with the stories of over 500 names, ranging from the humorous to the historic. Communities included are particularly rich with an array of whimsical, descriptive, historical and aboriginal names. Perhaps because of our frontier heritage, towns and cities in North America come named after all manner of unlikely people, places and things, and they come in dozens of languages, all of which add interest and color to the stories behind the names.

Manitoba's names stand with the best. From a town named after a baking powder can to the village of Dropmore, whose town fathers couldn't decide on a name until they'd had "a drop more" from a shared bottle; towns in Manitoba have been named after everything from bacon to ducks. One village was named after a local species of tree by local residents who only discovered later that they had been mistaken about just what kind of tree they had growing in the town. Other Manitoba communities have been named after early residents, prominent people, local incidents, former homes in other places and Indian legends. No matter if you're from Manitoba or someplace far away the stories behind the names on Manitoba's map make for stories that seem hilariously unbelievable, but that really are true. They also help illuminate the history and culture of Western Canada.

Ted Stone, author of The Story Behind Manitoba Names, will be on hand to sign copies of this book on November 29 at 1:30 PM.


For more information on either of these events, please call Keith at Pennywise at (204) 728-2665.