Read All Over - Aaron Leaf - Vancouver Is Awesome

Aaron Leaf is a journalist, photographer, social media enthusiast, and nomad from Vancouver BC (by way of Indonesia and San Francisco). His work with Journalists for Human Rights the last few years took him to Zambia and Liberia, where he frequently consummated his love for the continent through local culinary indulgence and road trips. He is now en route to the Big Apple to see and write about what's what. When home, Aaron can usually be found voraciously devouring a bowl of hot noodles or whole sections of his local library.

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

What's on your nightstand right now?

War by Sebastien Junger

Little Liberia by Johnny Steinberg

Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold by Tim Hetherington

Macho books about men and violence. Actually that's a coincidence: my tastes are pretty diverse. Little Liberia might be the best book written about Liberia ever and I've read many. I actually had the VPL's entire section on Liberia out of the library for the last couple months. It's only about a dozen books, which is sad, and sadder still that nobody else wants to borrow them. Even after Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won the Nobel Peace Prize there weren't any holds on her autobiography.

Is this the genre you prefer (fiction/non-fiction/mystery etc.) and why?

I prefer fiction but I never read it for some reason. I'm always reading non-fiction on a subject I'm obsessed about. The last fiction books I read were because I lived in Liberia and literally couldn't get anything else. They were, An Artist in a Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, both highly recommended, especially the Ishiguro.

What's next on your list?

I'm suddenly part of two book clubs. In one, we read books that have been made into movies. For that we're doing The Last Picture Show [by Larry McMurty]. In the other we're doing Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion. [If you haven't moved to New York this month you have no excuse to not join our very own Vancouver Book Club. Do it now! It's free!]

Photo by Jennifer Kim

What magazines/journals can you not live without?

I buy used Grantas. They're really cheap and always amazing. I like the Paris Review and N+1 (I think you introduced me to them). I don't usually read Lapham's Quarterly, but their food issue this summer was the best thing ever. Oh, and The New Yorker obviously. To be honest, that's really the only thing I read in print anymore, The New Yorker. And if I could find a way of getting it, I'd read Kwani? which is a great literary magazine out of Nairobi.

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

In summer I like Memorial Park at 41st and Windsor. This fall I discovered the window/fireplace seat at the Mount Pleasant library.

What books have changed your life?

I'm embarrassed to admit it but as a teen, someone, I think my mom, got me Christopher Hitchens' Letters to a Young Contrarian which led me to his book about why Orwell matters, Why Orwell Matters, which led me naturally to Orwell.

Kids, read Orwell. All the Orwell, especially his non-fiction.

What book makes you feel like a kid again?

There's an illustrated anthology of poetry for kids called Talking to the Sun which my dad used to read to me before bed. Reading that now reminds me of being preliterate, in a good way.