Beautiful Books: Enjoy It While It Hurts by JonArno Lawson

Recently released from Wolsak & Wynn in Hamilton, Enjoy It While It Hurts by JonArno Lawson is an illustrated collection of poetry that is both fun to read and beautiful to display.

The poetry is whimsical, featuring "quarrelsome quips, holiday oddities, benevolent advice, curious throughts and comically apocalyptic melancholia" and carries on the traditions of Edward Gorey and Shel Silverstein. 

The book itself features illustrations by Lawson on almost every page, a cover with hand-drawn lettering, red endpapers for a pop of colour, and paper that makes you want to hold the book in your hands.

If you’re looking for more Lawson, he’s also published books with The Porcupine’s Quill, A Voweller’s Bestiary and Down in the Bottom of the Bottom of the Box, and with Pedlar Press, There, Devil, Eat That, The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Mask, and Black Stars in a White Night Sky.

Check out OpenBook: Toronto for Ten Questions with JonArno Lawson and watch a video of Lawson’s talk at UBC where he discusses his writing and reads from some of his books.

But now to the really good stuff… a sneak peek inside Enjoy It While it Hurts to give you a taste of what to expect from the multitalented JonArno Lawson.

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Quarrelsome Quips. Excerpt page 23 and 36.

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Curious Thoughts. Excerpt page 63 and 68.

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Thank you to Wolsak & Wynn for giving us a look inside Enjoy It While It Hurts.

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog