Making A Ruckus

You want to know one of the best things about reading? (Whether you do or not, indulge us for a minute.) That feeling that you get when you read a particularly gripping passage, the kind of phrase that flicks fingers across the switchboard of your brain. That perfect stanza that wraps a calloused fist around your heart and squeezes like a longshoreman until you catch yourself whispering the words below your breath on the train, just to hear them again.

There’s something about that feeling, that rattlesnake-tongue’s flicker of your synapses that seems too good to keep to yourself. Most of the time, that ecstatic inspiration probably just lingers on the edge of your mind, nagging at you to poke your neighbour on the subway and bid them to ogle at the passage that just blew your mind. We are tired of sitting across from other readers in cafes and libraries and the back corners of bookstores, trading shy glances over dust jackets and dying to ask them what they’re digging in to. We are tired of reading alone. 

Enter: The Ruckus Reading Series. 

The Ruckus Reading Series is the rowdy love-child of our lonely imaginations. We believe that words are better set free, read aloud to a moderately intoxicated audience prepared to make noise. We believe that applause shouldn't only be reserved for rockstars. Here’s what we’re proposing: Let’s get together. All of us. Us, you, your cousins, that cute boy (or girl) you saw reading Being and Time at the pub last friday night: anybody into books who is looking to have a good time. And for the bibliophiles, the bookworms, the nose-always-in-novels types: this isn't high school. This is a party and you're invited. Let’s get together to share in a mutual enjoyment of finely crafted words. Let’s be loud about it. Let’s have fun. Let’s let the authors know that we love what they’re doing. Let’s drink beer and listen to fresh voices and maybe even throw in a little live music, while we’re at it, because hey, aren't lyrics are just poems with grooooooove?

If you’re buying what we're selling (and you might as well, it’s free), then we’ll see you there:

Saturday, June 15th. 7 pm. 

The Only Cafe, on the Danforth just west of Donlands. 

As the weeks wear on, we’re going to be revealing some of the authors who'll be there, and tossing around some of our favourite literary flotsam ― verses and verbs that we are oh-so-fond of. So nail that dial in place, True Believer (and I mean that in a Stan Lee way, not a creepy robes-and-chanting way). We’ll see you here again real soon.