Monday, February 27, 2012

Adventure in the Barrens talk at Chat Noir Books




Date: Friday March 2nd, 2012
Time: 6 p.m. to 8p.m.
Place: Chat Noir Books, New Liskeard

Come out this Friday and see local authors Murray Muir and Nico Roger, as they recount their grand adventures of four intrepid explorers on a 2011 journey from Yellowknife, NWT to Baker Lake, Nunavut.

Murray Muir

Murray began writing about places to explore for newspapers at the age of sixteen. When twenty, he hiked across B.C., through the bush and on trails, for three months. For the past quarter century Murray and Vicky Muir have been exploring, blazing and documenting hiking trails and out-of-the-way canoe routes throughout the Temagami/Temiskaming area. The new revised edition of Discovering Wild Temiskaming, One Day Adventures and Beyond is the culmination of their lifes work on the trail.

Nico Rogers

Nico Rogers is a storyteller and performance artist, and has appeared at writing and folk festivals across the country, as well as on TV and radio. He has taught writing and literature in post-secondary institutions in Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Edmonton and now lives in Toronto, where he is working on a novel which will be a thematic continuation of "The Fetch".




Also Recommend reading:

Late Nights on Air
by Elizabeth Hay

Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined.

Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric, utterly loveable characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, form the centre. One summer, on a canoe trip four of them make into the Arctic wilderness (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who, along with his small party, starved to death in the barrens in 1927), they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, which threatens to displace Native people from their land.

Trails and Tribulations: Confessions of a Wilderness Pathfinder
by Hap Wilson | Ingrid Zschogner

In an age when "survival" shows permeate the media, noted northern traveller Hap Wilson shares accounts of his lifelong involvement with wilderness living within the Canadian Shield. Wilson knows better than most how to live in the woods. As park ranger, canoe guide, outfitter, trail builder, and environmental activist, he learned from firsthand experience that nature can neither be beaten or tamed. Trails and Tribulations takes the reader on a journey with the author through natural settings ranging from austere to mysterious and breathtaking. Contents include animal attacks, bush fires, the threat of hypothermia, and vision-quest sites, to name but a few.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Canada Reads 2012

Have you been following Canada Reads 2012 on CBC radio? If you have missed out and are looking for copies we have all the books here in the store!!



The Game
Author: Ken Dryden

The Game by Ken Dryden is being championed by Alan Thicke for Canada Reads 2012.

Widely acknowledged as the best hockey book ever written and lauded by Sports Illustrated as one of the Top 10 Sports Books of All Time, The Game is a reflective and thought-provoking look at a life in hockey. Intelligent and insightful, former Montreal Canadiens goalie and former President of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Ken Dryden captures the essence of the sport and what it means to all hockey fans. He gives us vivid and affectionate portraits of the characters — Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson, Guy Lapointe, Serge Savard, and coach Scotty Bowman among them — that made the Canadiens of the 1970s one of the greatest hockey teams in history. But beyond that, Dryden reflects on life on the road, in the spotlight, and on the ice, offering up a rare inside look at the game of hockey and an incredible personal memoir. This commemorative edition marks the 20th anniversary of The Game's original publication. It includes black and white photography from the Hockey Hall of Fame and a new chapter from the author. Take a journey to the heart and soul of the game with this timeless hockey classic.



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On a Cold Road: Tales of Adventure in Canadian Rock
Author: Dave Bidini
On a Cold Road by Dave Bidini is being championed by Stacey McKenzie for Canada Reads 2012.

David Bidini, rhythm guitarist with the Rheostatics, knows all too well what the life of a rock band in Canada involves: storied arenas one tour and bars wallpapered with photos of forgotten bands the next. Zit-speckled fans begging for a guitar pick and angry drunks chucking twenty-sixers and pint glasses. Opulent tour buses riding through apocalyptic snowstorms and cramped vans that reek of dope and beer. Brilliant performances and heart-sinking break-ups.

Bidini has played all across the country many times, in venues as far flung and unalike as Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto and the Royal Albert Hotel in Winnipeg. In 1996, when the Rheostatics opened for the Tragically Hip on their Trouble at the Henhouse tour, Bidini kept a diary. In On a Cold Road he weaves his colourful tales about that tour with revealing and hilarious anecdotes from the pioneers of Canadian rock - including BTO, Goddo, the Stampeders, Max Webster, Crowbar, the Guess Who, Triumph, Trooper, Bruce Cockburn, Gale Garnett, and Tommy Chong - whom Bidini later interviewed in an effort to compare their experiences with his. The result is an original, vivid, and unforgettable picture of what it has meant, for the last forty years, to be a rock musician in Canada.



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Prisoner Of Tehran
Author: Marina Nemat
Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat is being championed by Arlene Dickinson for Canada Reads 2012.

In 1982, 16-year-old Marina Nemat was arrested on false charges by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and tortured in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. At a time when most Western teenaged girls are choosing their prom dresses, Nemat was having her feet beaten by men with cables and listening to gunshots as her friends were being executed. She survived only because one of the guards fell in love with her and threatened to harm her family if she refused to marry him. Soon after her forced conversion to Islam and marriage, her husband was assassinated by rival factions. Nemat was returned to prison but, ironically, it was her captor's family who eventually secured her release. An extraordinary tale of faith and survival, Prisoner of Tehran is a testament to the power of love in the face of evil and injustice.



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Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter
Author: Carmen Aguirre
Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre is being championed by Shad for Canada Reads 2012.


A Canada Reads 2012: True Stories Contender and long-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. New in paperback, a gripping, darkly comic memoir of a young underground revolutionary during the Pinochet dictatorship in 1980s Chile. This dramatic, darkly funny narrative, which covers the decade from 1979 to 1989, takes the reader inside war-ridden Peru, dictatorship-run Bolivia, post-Malvinas Argentina and Pinochet's Chile. Writing with passion and deep personal insight, Carmen Aguirre captures her constant struggle to reconcile her commitment to the resistance movement with the desires of her youth and her budding sexuality. Something Fierce is a gripping story of love, war and resistance and a rare first-hand account of revolutionary life.



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The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
Author: John Vaillant
The Tiger by John Vaillant is being championed by Anne-France Goldwater for Canada Reads 2012.

It's December 1997 and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia's Far East. To the horrified astonishment of a team of hunters, it emerges that the attacks are not random: the tiger is engaged in a vendetta.Injured and starving, it must be found before it strikes again, and the story becomes a battle for survival between two main characters: Yuri Trush, the lead tracker, and the tiger itself.Culminating in a showdown deep in the Siberian forest, The Tiger is a haunting, spellbinding tale of a hunt to the death; of man and nature in collision; of the ancient relationship between predators and prey; and an intimate portrait of a remarkable animal and its increasingly threatened world.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Watch It Played! - Small World

Our good friend and avid board gamer Sean Demarce just introduced us to a great Youtube Channel called Watch It Played!
Watch It Played is a video series designed to take you turn by turn through an exciting board game adventure. Learn to play the game, follow along with the story, and help decide what happens next!

As we are quickly expanded into more and more board games here at Chat Noir Books we are hoping "Watch It Played!" is going to be a great resource for us and you our customers!

One of the new games we have brough into the store this year is call Small World which I had the great pleasure of playing at our last Game Night. In Small World, players vie for conquest and control of a world that is simply too small to accommodate them all. It is sort of like Risk, but not...how do I explain it...hmm well look at this Watch It Played! has posted a great video on how to play Small World - Introduction And Rules. Let's check it out!

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Now Testing Google ebooks

We're now testing out Google ebooks. The waiting is finally over and we have an ebook option to try. So - if you got yourself an ereader and you'd like to support your local community bookseller do check this option out! ;)



Saturday, December 17, 2011

Mmmmmm Cookies! in an Ugly Doll Cookie Jar!

Another great gift idea, but it is going fast as we only have one more left in the store! Ugly Doll Cookie Jars!