Book It: The Six Best Literary Events This Week

Now that the horns have stopped tooting and the champagne has been downed and the hangovers treated and the resolutions already broken, re-promised and ready to be broken again, it's time to turn the page. Take your kids to storytime, explore some self-help weight-loss ideas, hear a couple of local poets ready to lift the spirits, and watch a classic film just waiting to be rediscovered, discussed and enjoyed.

Here are the six best literary ways to start 2019 and wake up your brain from its happy but satiated holiday drowse:

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Blue Mountains Library at Flickr

Tattered Tales Storytime at Colfax Avenue
Tuesday, January 1, 10:30 a.m.
Tattered Cover
2526 East Colfax Avenue
Free
Every Tuesday, the Tattered Cover on Colfax hosts a half-hour of stories, activities and snacks, designed for the entertainment of the younger set (and to inspire their love of books and reading). For kids, it’s fun time. For parents, especially on New Year’s Day, it’s a bookish blessing.

Readers Guild Membership Sale
Tuesday, January 1, 10 a.m.
Boulder Book Store
1107 Pearl Street, Boulder
Did you resolve to read more in 2019? If you're a member of the Boulder Book Store's Readers Guild, you're in luck: Everything in the store is 25 percent off to you on January 1. And if you're not a member, shouldn't you consider becoming one?

Happier Hour
Thursday, January 3, 4 to 5 p.m.
BookBar
4280 Tennyson Street
Free
Did you resolve to get out and about more in 2019? Plenty of people did, because the Introverts New Year's Eve at BookBar was a sellout. If you have yet to discover BookBar, resolve to open a new chapter by stopping by this popular spot at the Thursday happier hour, when adults get half off wine and kids' meals (starting at 4 p.m.) and kids get storytime (starting at 4:30), then cookies! Find out more here.

Balboa Press

Lisa M. Gunshore, Enlightenment Pie
Saturday, January 5, 2 p.m.
Tattered Cover LoDo
1628 16th Street
Free
Just in time for that post-holiday weight loss you promised yourself, here comes author Lisa M.Gunshore, bringing her book Enlightenment Pie: Healing Through Spiritual Practice to Tattered Cover LoDo for a reading and signing. The book teaches how physical weight can be an outward reflection of weight carried within, and how to free the spirit, mind and body from that negativity. Gunshore argues that it’s not so much about changing your diet as it is about changing your understanding, and thereby changing your life.

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Center for Literary Publishing

Jonah Bornstein, The Art of Waking, and Emily Pérez, House of Sugar, House of Stone
Saturday, January 5, 5:30 p.m.
BookBar
4280 Tennyson Street
Free
BookBar’s opening First Saturday Poetry Series of 2019 will welcome poet Jonah Bornstein to Denver; he’s the founder and former director of the Ashland Writers Conference and has taught poetry from the East Coast to the West. Denver poet Emily Pérez will also be on hand with her books House of Sugar, House of Stone and Made and Unmade. Happy-hour mingling commences at 4:30; make sure you’re there in time for wine and snacks.

Insomnia Cured Here at Flickr

Tattered Cover Film Series, The Great Dictator
Sunday, January 6, 1 p.m.
Sie FilmCenter
2510 East Colfax Avenue
$1
For the princely sum of one buck, you can see a classic film and support the Denver Film Society at the same time. University of Colorado Denver film professor Howie Movshovitz hosts this series, co-presented by not only Tattered Cover and UCD, but also KUNC 91.5 and the Sie FilmCenter itself. The first film of 2019 is Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 classic The Great Dictator. It was Chaplin’s first full-length talkie, but more important, it was a critique of Hitler and his madness, a year before the United States got into the war. For more information on the series, check the Denver Film website.

Know of an event that belongs here? Email editorial@westword.com.

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