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Read All Over -- BookThug Edition

Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most.

BookThug is a Canadian publisher whose editorial vision is "to enrich and advance the tradition of experimental literature." They represent writers from all over Canadian and tomorrow night the Real Vancouver Writers' Series presents an evening with five local, almost local, and newly local writers who have been published by BookThug: George Bowering, John Francis Hughes, Jake Kennedy, Andrew McEwan, and current VPL Writer-in-Residence Meredith Quartermain.

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Three of tomorrow's readers have submitted themselves to the Read All Over process below, which will give you a little taste of what to expect. You can read Meredith's February RAO here.

Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most.
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Andrew McEwan is a writer and graduate student. His first book, repeater, was published in the spring of 2012 by BookThug and uses the forms of computer coding as a formal system for writing poetry. He is new to Vancouver (3 weeks!) and beginning an MA at the English Department at UBC, which will be focused on postmodern Canadian poetry.

Jake Kennedy: Here is a short paragraph about who I was and what I was doing. I was Jack Kennedy. I like Joy Division, but did not write the title as Joy Division and the Jack Kennedy book of Joy Division’s unknown pleasures. I don't like horror movies, therefore is a feeling that I am not a jiekekennidi, United Kingdom manufacturer of horror films. Although BookThug.

John Hughes: In short, I’m a journalist, a writer and a traveler who tends to see most of life’s scenarios as adventures. At least that’s way things generally turn out. In that spirit, the last few years have been exciting, if rocky ones: I drove to Louisiana in early 2010 once my immigration papers came through, heading to the American South for a marriage that was not to work out. But during my time there I ran a tour boat on a bayou full of alligators, completed a master’s degree, worked in public radio, and published my first book, Nobody Rides for Free: A Drifter in the Americas (BookThug, 2012). When it became apparent that my time in Louisiana would soon end, I dedicated my final paycheque from the radio station I worked at to the purchase of a barely functional 1995 Ford Explorer. Following smoke-billowing engine trouble in Kansas, and breakdowns in Wyoming and Washington State, the rattletrap barely crossed the line into British Columbia on August 6, 2012. Home never looked so beautiful! Of course, mapping out life’s next chapter has been a muddy process thus far. I’m looking to shake the unemployment blues with a gig that will make all those years in university seem worthwhile; meantime I spend my days writing or digging ditches and slinging gravel for a little cash.

Andrew McEwan, Jake Kennedy, John Hughes' book

What are you currently reading? Your thoughts on it?

Andrew: At the moment I’m reading a few very different books. For non-academic reading, I’m making my way through Ed Dorn’s Gunslinger – an incredible book-length poem using Western motifs in an often knowing and silly way, but ultimately doing something genuine. I’m also reading Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter for a course I’m TA-ing on the subject of non-fiction literature and popular culture, as well as various works of Romantic philosophy.

Jake: Anne Fleming · Gay Dwarves of America, and I'm currently reading their eyes and ears to the muundumisi book is dazzling. I thought of this book is AF more wisely and more interesting and more daring, all the same.

John: I am currently reading Iris Murdoch’s Nuns and Soldiers. About 75 pages in, the themes are devotion, family and Poland. So far the writing is sharp, the characters mostly believable, and the philosophical overtones solidify the novel’s backdrop.

How do you like your books served up best – audio books, graphic novels, used paperbacks, library loaner, e-reader…? 

Andrew: I almost always read paperbacks. I like used books best because of a sense of community and interaction between multiple people and the same book, but for some obscure texts it’s easier to find them new. I also really enjoy audiobooks when I’m on public transit or driving. The books I choose to listen are very different from what I would be reading – usually I listen to sci-fi and humour, such as Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett.

Jake: I like my old paperback books, audio books, graphic novels, library and replacement projects eReader books. I also like the book, Kevin McPherson Eckhoff thing to do, because they almost never see unless I wait a few seconds, and then, if they prove to be big and ferocious, and the magic books, and funny and talented.

John: As for the way in which I prefer my books “served up,” I’m all for the inexpensive treasures found in a used bookstore. Of course, new and obscure titles are best purchased from independent bookshops.

What books have changed your life?

Andrew: When I was in high school I read Kerouac, which, as for many young people before me, changed how I saw myself in the world and made me want to engage with life in a new way. The initial enthusiasm of On the Road and its effect on me at that time of my life is something I wish I could re-experience. Later, working in a bookstore in Sarnia, Ontario, I came into contact with the poetry of Jack Spicer, who immediately drew me in with his blend of sentiment and formal rigor. More recently, I’ve had a similar experience reading the work of Louis Zukofsky.

Jake: I think Ms. Kathy Acker and Blood and Guts in High School, open your eyes, guts and René Char and Mr McPherson Eckhoff itself, pain, and Don Gause k. love all and Lisa Robertson.

John: Books that have changed my life: Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Bhagavad Gita, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

Favourite Vancouver/Lower Mainland writer?

Andrew: I’ve always admired Vancouver and B.C. as a place where many of the writers I admire originate from. Lisa Robertson would be my choice of a writer who is/has been associated with Vancouver, but I could easily add many associated with Tish and the Kootenay school to that.

Where is your favourite place to crack open a book in Vancouver?

Andrew: Right now it is anywhere I haven’t been before. Going out for a coffee and a reading session is one way I’m exploring the city. I choose somewhere relatively far away, bike there, do my readings at a café, then bike back. This way I get to see the city while still feeling productive.

John: My favourite place to crack open a book in Vancouver is in any of the wonderful coffee shops on Commercial Drive. The smells and the bustle of people add welcome dimensions to reading a good book.

If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

Jake: John Fast is my mentor.

John: If I could choose a writer as a mentor, Ernest Hemingway would get the gig. Learning the secrets of his pitch-perfect syntax, existentialism and sense of tragedy are gifts any writer could use.

The one book you always recommend is…

Andrew: I’ll cheat a bit and give two. For fiction, I always recommend Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, which is one of my favourite novels ever. In poetry, I recommend the collected poetry of Jack Spicer, titled My Vocabulary Did This To Me.

Jake: always recommend Meester Corpus Christi iRobot.

John: The one book I always recommend is Voltaire’s Candide.

What’s next on your reading list?

Andrew: Next on my list is Louis Zukofsky’s hefty work of criticism/poetics titled Bottom.

John: Next on my reading list is to finish the Mahabharata. Even the condensed version I own runs something like 900 pages. I’m about halfway through John Smith’s 2009 translation; the density and intensity of the work forced me to put it down about six months ago. But epics and the Indian mythological tradition fascinate me, so I plan to finish it shortly.

Your life story is published tomorrow. What’s the title?

Andrew: Whim. From the Emerson quote "I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim." Not for any particularly significant reason.

Jake: ... Always a day too late ...

John: If my life story were to be published tomorrow, it would be called “Back Road Blues.”

Tomorrow night's Real Vancouver BookThug starts at 7 pm at the W2 Media Café, 111 W. Hastings St. Admission is $5, with no one turned away for lack of funds.