Thursday, October 21, 2010

A Bookish Saturday


This past Saturday I had the good fortune to attend the Twin Cities Book Festival with my mother, which turned out to be a great event. We got there around 9:15, leaving us a few minutes before the festival actually began. This left us a chance to get coffee and explore a little bit before the event began.

I will be honest and say that attending the festival was actually my mother’s idea, because we had heard that Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, among many other books, would be there, so meeting him was our first priority. We gradually made our way to the area where he would be signing and each bought a book. My mom mentioned that I’d been to Scotland and I elaborated that my brother and I drove around on the back country roads which were beautiful but eventually made me carsick (I have no idea what I was thinking in sharing this story, so let’s blame a lack of caffeine). Alexander said he hoped that this didn’t affect me view of his country too negatively (in retrospect, it hasn’t--I love Scotland!).

After that I wandered around a bit and eventually wound up ogling several books at the Flux table, where I ran into Alea of Pop Culture Junkie. I quickly picked up Other by Karen Kincy and A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler, because a panel called The Changing World of Publishing was about to start. The panelists, one of whom was Sheila from Book Journey, were all engaging and presented a variety of perspectives. About an hour after the panel I wound up going to lunch with my mother, Sheila, Ash of English Major's Junk Food, Joanne from Jo Jo Loves to Read, Reagan from Miss Remmers Review and Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness. We had lots of fun discussing books, blogging and our looming TBR piles.

Instead of returning to the festival after lunch, my mother and I set off an entirely different adventure: to get tickets to see Prairie Home Companion Live, because Alexander McCall Smith was going to be part of the show. The show is held at the Fitzgerald Theater, so we wandered over to the box office to be told that they were sold out. However, two minutes later we were being chased down the street by the box office employee telling us that two tickets had become available, and that they were actually great seats.

When it came to the show, Alexander played the role of someone who wanted to start writing noir novels. There were a lot of jokes about how every time something is about to happen in one of his novels, someone has a cup of tea or a biscuit. In addition to a famous author being on the show, it was really enjoyable to watch it live and see how all of the sound effects are done live.

Overall, it was a great weekend for literature. I had so much fun getting a book signed and meeting lots of other awesome bloggers. I hope there are more literary festivals in my future!

3 comments:

  1. What a fun event! Thank you for sharing! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. This sounds like such a good time!! I'm jealous!

    ReplyDelete

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