Browsing “Vancouver Book Club”

	Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most.
	. Sarah Evans is a freelance graphic designer and E.S.L. tutor. Originally from a small town in the Cariboo, she came to Vancouver after she had read all the books worth reading in her town’s public library. She was too impatient to wait for inter-library loans to arrive.

What are you currently reading? Your thoughts on it?

Right now I have two books on the go: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller and My Seductive Cuba by Chen Lizra, which I first read about on the Vancouver is Awesome Holiday Lit List in December. I love the pace of Heller’s story. I’m a bit of a post-apocalypse junkie when it comes to fiction and movies. The Cuba book has me wanting to book a flight and take off right now.

Favourite Vancouver/Lower Mainland writer?

I know people usually pick fiction writers, but I love Stanley Coren’s books. I remember reading Why We Love The Dogs We Do and so much made sense. I think I’ve read most of the books he’s written about dogs and each one gives me a better understanding of all the dogs I know.

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

Pretty much every way, although I haven’t listened to any audibooks for a while. I love the tactile nature of books, so obviously the actual object is preferable, especially if it a reference book or a photography or design book. I love my tablet for reading while travelling but I always have a backup paper book for all those times you can’t use your electronic reader. I frequent libraries a lot more than bookstores. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Incredible news today! BC publisher, Heritage House, has acquired all of the assets of Greystone Books, an imprint of D&M Publishers. A couple of months ago D&M filed for creditor protection and to say the company is in dire straits would be an understatement. I personally mourned for days after hearing the news that the company as I know it was no more, and the fact that one of their imprints is being salvaged is the greatest of great news. Below is the full release from them, look forward to seeing more reviews of Greystone Books from us in the future!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JANUARY 31, 2013
GREYSTONE BOOKS LIVES ON

Rodger Touchie, President of B.C.-based Heritage House Publishing, and Rob Sanders, Founding Publisher of Greystone Books, today announced that Heritage has acquired all assets of the Greystone Books publishing imprint from D&M Publishers Inc. The asset purchase was approved by the BC court last week. These assets will become the backlist and ongoing publishing program for a separate company, Greystone Books Ltd., where Sanders will become a significant shareholder. The new company will be based in Vancouver, Canada.

The asset purchase was initiated by Touchie and has been assisted by long-time Greystone business partners, including the Perseus Books Group from New York. Publishers Group West, the California-based division of Perseus will continue to distribute Greystone titles in the United States. PGW distribution of Greystone will be extended to include all territories around the world except Canada; Canadian distribution to the book trade will continue to be handled by Harper Collins Canada. Heritage House affiliate Heritage Group distribution will provide broad exposure of Greystone titles to rural accounts in Western Canada.

Sanders immediately resumes his role as Publisher, a position he held from 1993 until a year ago. Nancy Flight returns as Associate Publisher, reigniting the relationship she and Sanders enjoyed from the beginning of Greystone. During that time, Greystone published a strong list of Canadian authors, including David Suzuki, Candace Savage, Charlotte Gill and Andrew Nikiforuk. Greystone will announce a list of new 2013 books in the next few weeks.

Of the acquisition and new company, Rodger Touchie said, “In the past 20 years Greystone Books built a significant legacy in Canadian publishing. I have long admired their program and have great respect for both Rob and Nancy. They will add immensely to our Heritage Group team, and together we will make sure Greystone is around for a long time to come.”

Sanders commented that “Rodger Touchie’s phone call initiated the rebirth of Greystone Books; it is good for the authors, for those of us involved in the ongoing publishing program, and for independent publishing in Canada. It is a good news story in an industry where good news is badly needed right now.”

The Heritage Group consists of Heritage House Publishing, Touchwood Editions and Rocky Mountain Books. Rodger and Pat Touchie acquired Heritage from Art Downs, who formed the company in 1969. The companies will now have offices in Victoria, Vancouver and Calgary; the administration offices are at Heritage Group distribution in Surrey, British Columbia.

Greystone Books was started in 1993 by Rob Sanders as an imprint and publishing division of what was then Douglas & McIntyre Ltd. The Greystone imprint included the assets of Western Producer Prairie Books, a Saskatoon-based regional publisher at which Sanders was the publisher between 1975 and 1987. D&M Publishers Inc. is based in Vancouver, Canada.

	Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most.
	.
	Lindsay Glauser Kwan is a writer and lover of books, fashion, and art. She has worked in the fashion industry as a buyer and inventory manager for several local fashion companies. Currently enrolled in The Writers Studio, SFU’s creative writing program, she spends her free time cooking, going to concerts and reading. Lindsay is also a past editor of the Vancouver Book Club.

What are you currently reading?  

Slouching through Bethlehem by Joan Didion and Escape to Gold Mountain by David H.T. Wong

How do you like your books served up best?

I love physical books. I like wearing them in until their pages flip easily, when you can slice through the pages, and they fall open and flat.  I stuff in my day’s mementos:  bus tickets, street pamphlets, postcards, receipts. I like to write in books. I like to underline words, sentences, sometimes whole paragraphs. I dog ear pages to keep my place but I curse when I rip a page.

I love library books too. Sometimes you find traces of another reader’s habits.  Sometimes it’s disgusting like a drip of blood.  Sometimes it’s a receipt to a coffee shop, or a bookmark from Banyen Books.

Photo of Lindsay Glauser Kwan by C. Kwan.

What book has changed your life?

20^th Century Poetry and Poetics edited by Gary Geddes.

I grew up in a small town with not much exposure to the arts.  I was surrounded by mill and forestry workers in the days of BCFP.  My mom had a copy of this from her college English Course on her shelf. These were the first poems I ever read that didn’t rhyme.  I remember flipping through and finding Earle Birney’s Vancouver Lights. I didn’t really understand the poetry, but I was more amazed that real writers existed in places as close as Vancouver.  In my mind, writers had a certain mystique; they were foreign and fascinating. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

	Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most.
	.
	Emily Smith is a graphic designer, and the creative director for Vancouver Mini Maker Faire and Maker Foundation. She is an avid maker, hacker, knitter, crafter, writer, and cyclist.

What are you currently reading?

Makers by Cory Doctorow. It’s about the Maker movement and a company called Kodacell, which is like Kodak and Duracell that have merged together because no one is buying film or batteries, and a journalist who reports on makers who make crazy Elmo dolls that drive golf carts, and who find garbage in landfills and make new things from that.

Do you have a favourite Vancouver writer?

Douglas Coupland. I really enjoyed City of Glass. It’s full of photographs and is an interesting guide to Vancouver, with little anecdotes about the city. He talks about how sushi in Japan is like turkey to us, and interesting things like that. It’s like a flip book of Vancouver.

What was your favourite book as a child?

I was super into Anne of Green Gables. Judy Blume. The Phantom Tollbooth was my favourite book when I was a kid. And anything by Roald Dahl.

Are there any books that have had a big influence on your life?

The Rebel Sell, Why the culture can’t be jammed by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.  It’s all about  counter culture and how you can’t jam culture because in doing so you’re just expanding the market place. I read it in university and it made me think differently about a lot of things. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

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

I’m a Professor in the Creative Writing Program at UBC and write fiction and television.  Sussex Drive (Random House Canada), just published this fall, explores what happens when a Canadian Prime Minister’s wife and an African-born Governor General find they can no longer play “Follow the Conservative Leader.” . My television writing credits include the Peabody Award-winning miniseries Human Cargo and Murder Unveiled, both with Brian McKeown (Howe Sound Films) and also Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners and At the End of the Day: The Sue Rodriguez Story. Marine Life (HarperCollinsCanada), a linked fiction collection, has become a Vancouver classic, and the stories have been anthologized in Canadian anthologies as well as O. Henry Prize Stories. I’ve been the recipient of the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe, the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.  I feel very fortunate to teach in the UBC Creative Writing Program and love my students and their passion for craft and story.

What are you currently reading? 

NW by Zadie Smith.  I was a huge fan of White Teeth and I’m enjoying this very much.  I’d had the impression she was tired of fiction but she’s obviously not and she’s back in fine form.  I’m a literary tourist and find entering London from her characters’ point of view really stimulating—in the same way that, oddly, one can find versions of Oslo in Jo Nesbo or Istanbul in Orhan Pamuk.

And the new fall issues of PRISM international and The Fiddlehead.

What book has changed your life?

We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families:  Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1998) made a huge impact.  I’d followed the Rwanda genocide in Canadian news coverage in 1994 and I’d also been researching immigration and refugee issues for a TV project.  Gourevitch’s account–of something so horrific–was beautifully written and felt politically accurate and very human.  This book, and Senator Romeo Dallaire’s experience, inspired my husband and I to move the world of our miniseries Human Cargo to Africa and explore Canada’s involvement in the resource sector.

How do you like your books served up best?

I love bookstores and libraries.  I think most writers do.  I remember the days when packing to go away on a trip meant planning the reading list and whittling down a stack of twelve books to the final three or four choices and throwing out shoes, sweaters, hat, to shove them into the suitcase.  Now I can take Wolf Hall on a Kobo, which I’m hinting at for a birthday (the Kobo).

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Hey, Jackson Davies, Canadian actor and co-author of the new book “Bruno and the Beach“! High five, Jackson Davies!

Jackson sent us this photo of himself relaxing at his home, offering a high five while reading a copy of the aforementioned book which you can learn all about HERE. In a nutshell it’s a fantastic look back on The Beachcombers, the iconic Canadian TV series that was filmed in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast. Written by Jackson and the co-creator of the show, Marc Strange (may he rest in peace), it not only offers a bounty of behind the scenes photos but is also quite candid, pulling no punches when it comes to the real dirt that went on behind the scenes. Oh, and Michael J Fox wrote the foreword!

Pick up Bruno and the Beach – The Beachcombers at 40 at every good book store in the Lower Mainland!