Overwhelming and underwhelming: that’s the phrase that some bloggers and I settled upon to describe this massive event. It’s overwhelming in the sense that it is truly massive (as any big industry trade show must be), with endless rows and rows of booths where publishers big, small, (and self-) hawk their wares. There is a seemingly endless spray of people flowing into the giant exhibition floor from all entry points, and you are jostled constantly as you thread through the crowds. On top of this there are wacky promotions going on at nearly every juncture – an author dressed up like an Elizabethan princess, dancing dogs and grannies wearing matching outfits, a balloon animal sculptor – along with lots of promotional freebies being thrust at passersby who must also avoid the snaking lines of people waiting to see some personality or another signing books at a publisher booth. The independent row felt like a safe haven – much less crowded and populated by less frenzied folks. But it was underwhelming too in that the interactions I have with some of these folks over email already are far more valuable than the hurried face to face meetings that end up happening at this event. While the Expo itself is an exercise in endurance, the parties that came after – including the LBC affair – were much more fun and relaxed. But more on that later, I need to get downtown to dive in again. I’ll wrap things up with a more detailed report – including my finally meeting so many great bloggers whose blogs I read daily – by the end of the weekend.
Book Expo Dispatch: Overwhelming and Underwhelming
The Love Carousel: Literary Speed Dating at Housing Works in SoHo
Book Expo Dispatch: A Quick Rant
Book Expo is a massive event. The floor is crowded with publishers hawking their wares. There’s acres and acres of books. It’s quite an operation really. But whether intentionally or by design, the folks behind the Expo are making it pretty tough to cover this event, especially if you’re a blogger. As Sarah and Ed have mentioned, there is almost no Internet access. Supposedly you can pay $5 an hour for wireless access, or the incredible price of $50 for the day. Everyone is subject to this charge, even those who have press passes. There is a press room (which is where I am right now), but there’s no wireless access there either. Instead there’s three computers with signs posted above them that say “Please limit your time to 15 minutes when others are waiting.” It makes it hard to blog, is all.
Sonya Chung Reading at Long Island University
I’ll be reading at Long Island University in Brooklyn on Monday, April 4th at 12 noon, with Gary Shteyngart. I have no idea what I’ll be reading – possibly something new, or something very old.
Laurie visits the Decatur Book Festival
Longtime Millions reader Laurie sends in an account of her visit to the first annual Decatur Book Festival (with photos!) Sounds like a great event. The first annual Decatur Book Festival, held over Labor Day weekend, exceeded its organizers expectations. I know, because by Saturday afternoon they and the volunteers were grinning a lot and commenting to anyone who would listen how surprised they were. Bill Starr, director of the Georgia Center for the Book which hosted a bunch of speakers, never seemed to lose his smile. I was excited, because this was the first really large, general-interest book festival Atlanta has ever had. Crowds increased throughout each day and people continuously entered ongoing author talks (unless they were too packed), adding to the feeling that you were at an event of public interest as important as a town meeting or a political rally (except everyone was in a better mood). You had to squeeze through clumps of strollers winding past the dealer tents. Ron Rash (The World Made Straight) started with about 45 listeners at about 10:30 a.m. in the 200-something seat auditorium in the Decatur Library, and ended with over 60. At about 4 p.m., the Atlanta Journal Constitution panel filled the same auditorium. At the local Holiday Inn, there were long lines for signings by both pop-lit writers like Diana Gabaldon (Outlander) and Pulitzer-winners like Robert Olen Butler (pictured above) (A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain).The city of Decatur (pronounced De-KAY-tur) is basically part of Atlanta. As of the year 2000 the city-within-a-city’s population density was 4,343 people per square mile, 65% white, 31% black, with a median household income of $47k. It has a great little downtown area with a public library and courthouse and a Holiday Inn conference center a few blocks from each other. That and the restaurants and funky shops make for nice strolling, but going back and forth to get from one author event to another at these places turned into a real workout. From about 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day I ran, literally, to get to author appearances.The kickoff event, advertised as a “parade” led by the Cat in the Hat, consisted of a few costumed volunteers followed by a horde of kids down a city street to a small park. There, the mayor of Decatur and another volunteer read/enacted Green Eggs and Ham in an open-air tent too small to hold the overflow crowd. (pictured at right) No one complained, though — either because it was free or because the reading was pretty lively.The biggest problem (besides distance between venues) seemed to be too small spaces for the most popular authors. Michael Connelly (The Lincoln Lawyer) gave a talk in a courtroom that held less than 150 people, I think, nowhere near the number who were turned away (though they gave patient fans who couldn’t get in the first chance to get books signed when he finished talking). Pulitzer winner Edward P. Jones (The Known World) was put in an auditorium in the Holiday Inn conference center that held at most 110 seats (I counted). Fans filled the aisles and every open space for his talk. They sat quietly enthralled as he read a couple of stories from his latest collection All Aunt Hagar’s Children. Unlike some authors, he adopts the voices of his characters with an actor’s ability, and he had the audience laughing at words which on the page seemed more serious. He and other writers deserved a larger audience; maybe next year the organizers will get nearby Agnes Scott College to provide some larger auditoriums.The Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers held their annual fair in conjunction with the festival. One dealer had a first edition of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee on sale for $12,000, another had a first edition of Live & Let Die by Ian Fleming for $750. There were a lot of cheaper works, but even if you weren’t into first editions, it was fun to walk through and marvel at the beautiful bindings and old children’s books (I saw a bunch I wish I still had).Maybe the festival owes its success to the lack of big book festivals around here, or the higher level of education of the Decatur population (over 60% have college degrees); maybe the summer’s high gas prices made folks more frugal and disinclined to travel (the festival was free); maybe no one wanted to deal with traffic and so stayed close to home. The audiences skewed mostly to families and retired folks — I saw very few late teens/20-somethings, despite the nearby liberal arts college. Does the lack of MTV/GenX/Y readers bode ill for the future of books? Should publishers only aim at the very young or the very anchored?Whatever, I’m just glad that Atlanta finally has a big general interest book festival in a friendly location. It’s near a MARTA station, the city’s bus/rail transit system. There’s a lot of parking if you drive yourself. You can picnic under trees by the courthouse and listen to musicians perform at a gazebo (rocking blues, even!), and Sunday night they had fireworks. There’s restaurants and cafes nearby, and Eddie’s Attic, a longtime acoustic music club where Wesley Stace (Misfortune) and others performed. One of the cafes, the Red Brick Pub, has over 200 kinds of beer including local brews like Athens’ own Terrapin Rye Pale Ale (which we here in Athens are fond and proud of). Plus Jake’s Ice Cream was serving their seasonal honey-fig ice cream. I’ll go again next year.
Notes From The Fringe
When I first began living in Toronto, I used to book off the week of the Film Festival. In those days it seemed much less schmoozy, more communal and low-key. Going from cinema to cinema, seeing multiple films each day, chatting with fellow movie buffs while waiting in lines. It was a treat.But I stopped doing that a few years ago. I still love film, but I’ve come to accept that the festival is a glossier version of the one I used to know. There are still many wonderfully rough edges to be found, unknowns to discover, but the noise surrounding it all has become deafening. Too much to make a solid week out of it.And then there’s the Fringe Festival. This is what I had been missing. Plays and monologues from stage companies worldwide. 150 different plays, each presented at least half-a-dozen times over 12 days in small venues – many of them in and around the leafy University of Toronto. At C$10 a performance, and with half the seats for each show available at the door, the Toronto Fringe is a festival for the people.So this year I booked Fringe week off, and saw 11 plays. With each venue playing host to several different rotating plays each day, stages are often bare or spare, sets kept to a minimum, forcing extra creativity in lighting and staging to create a mood.The high point for me was a 45-minute adaptation of Moliere’s comic love tale, The Sicilian. There was also a great version of Lysistrata, Aristophanes’ tale of women in wartime Ancient Greece banding together to withhold sexual favors from their men as a protest to the war. Still set in Ancient Greece, the 4-woman, bare-stage production from England has been updated and twisted with Cockney accents and modern and extremely bawdy British humor.The same troupe also put on an all-women version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, with octave-dropping performances of fake-mustached Jack and Algie. And there was also a fine, if conventionally-staged, version of George Bernard Shaw’s love-triangle Candida. Among the monologues, transplanted Brit and Fringe-favorite Chris Gibbs presented his latest comic monologue full of his delightful tangents.As many of these productions go from one Fringe Festival to another, you might be able to catch them somewhere down the circuit – at a Fringe Festival near you.
Death and the Poet: Inside the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast
Sonya Chung at McNally Jackson 3/10
Millions Contributor Sonya Chung will read from her just-released novel Long for This World at McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street, NYC, on March 10 at 7pm.