Happy Birthday, Mom!
November 8, 2009

This Wednesday, November 11, is my mother’s 86th birthday celebration. I plan to be there for it, and this book is going to be my gift to her.

I’m not worried about her seeing this as neither of my parents has ever been online. It’s sad in a way for I wish I could share what is one of the major joys of my life by showing them what it looks like, what the various contributors write, and what it means to our readers. But computers are foreign to them, and trying to see the screen is hard. So I content myself with telling them about it, and I enjoy watching my mother’s face as she listens to my stories.

All of her life my mother has loved gardening. Roses are her favorite flower by far, but all plants bring her joy. She can no longer get down on her knees to weed or plant seeds. She needs help in watering. But her joy in the natural world is no less for not being able to do those things.

So for her birthday I found Botanica Magnifica: Portraits of the World’s Most Extraordinary Flowers and Plants published by the extraordinary Abbeville Press. Yes, it’s expensive but it is worth it. I know what will happen, and I am looking forward to it as one only can when the sense of fragility and finite time presses in. There is so much I want to say. I do say a lot, but somehow I sense I don’t have enough time to say it all however much I do say. So as I wrap the book tomorrow evening in lovely lavender-colored floral paper I will read aloud the dedication I have written to her and run my fingers over the slipcase. I will remember as many of the times as I can when she read to me, and I will try to think of them with  joy for having them rather than regret that they are likely coming to an end. When she unwraps the book, I know her eyes will light up. She will hug it and hug me. Then she will carefully remove it from its slipcase, open it to the dedication page and read that aloud through tears. We will hold hands and hug, and later, after all her gifts are open she and I will sit together and go through the book. We will ooh and ahh over the photographs. And mostly we will share a love and a life that makes me the luckiest girl in the world.   
 
Upcoming Book Festivals:
This week begins the end-of-the year winding down of book festivals. Though there are three more in early December, these upcoming ones are the last largest ones of 2009. So if you live in any of these areas, try to make it out to them. Not only will they provide good gift shopping, but they are a  great way to flee the incessant holiday themes and return to your bibliophile roots.

One of the country’s largest book festivals, the Miami Book Fair International takes place from November 8-15. Southern Florida will be hopping with bookish events for this eight-day fair. Among the events: an astonishing 460 authors will be appearing; the Comix Gallery is expanding with three days of workshops on making comics for kids and teens; a Children’s Alley with two stages of storytelling, theatre, and dance, educational games, and hands-on activities; Twilight Tastings where attendees can partake of  samples of hors d’oeuvres and a complimentary cocktail from some of the city’s famous restaurants as well as a cash bar; Evenings With . . . (readings by celebrities and world-renown authors); workshops from Florida Center for Literary Arts; IberoAmerican authors; Student Literary Encounters; Weekend Author Sessions; and of course the huge and popular three-day Street Fair which includes hundreds of booksellers and exhibitors, book signings, and musical entertainment. 

Next weekend, November 13-15, Boston, Massachusetts, will be hosting one of the nation’s premier antiquarian book shows, the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Hynes Convention Center. Serious money changes hands here, but even if you don’t have the money to buy it is worth attending for the sheer joy of seeing incredible books that would otherwise be behind glass or in hidden rooms in museums. More than 120 rare book dealers from all over the world exhibit, showing rare, collectible, and antiquarian books, manuscripts, autographs, maps, atlases, fine prints, and other ephemera. Friday night (from 5:00 to 9:00 pm) costs $15; the fee also includes the full weekend. Saturday’s hours run from noon to 7:00 pm and Sunday from noon to 5:00 pm. Each day is $8. In addition to exhibitors, there are four special events, two each on Saturday and Sunday—a talk on the first presidential library, a roundtable on collectors, a talk by the author of a book on a rare book thief, and free appraising by experts.

“Nebraska Writers: Cultivating Creativity 2009” is the theme for this year’s Nebraska Book Festival. It will take place in Lincoln, Nebraska on Saturday, November 14 from 9:00 am to 7:30 pm at the State Historical Society Museum. There will be an awards luncheon to honor the winners of the Mildred Bennett, Jane Geske and Nebraska Book Awards. Readings will be offered by the winners and other attending writers, and writers’ workshops and a book discussion with Tersa Lorenson will also be part of the literary events connected with the festival. More than thirty vendors will make this an exciting day.

The First United Methodist Church in Sylva will be the site of the Great Smoky Mountain Book Fair on Saturday, November 14. Among the events are authors (more than fifty), readings, crafts (including making books), musical entertainment, storytelling, poetry readings, free appraisals, and the opportunity to have a poem created for your child’s pet from North Carolina’s Poet Laureate. There will be signings, of course, and twenty percent of all sales goes to support the public library system.

The Connecticut Children’s Book Fair will take place in Storrs on the weekend of November 14-15. From 10:00 am to 5:00 pm on the University of Connecticut campus, there will be presentations and book signings by guest authors and illustrators, storytelling, crafts, holiday shopping, and storybook characters wandering about. Though the Storybook Breakfast with Clifford the Big Red Dog is sold out, you can still ask to be put on a waiting list. There’s still lots for the children so be sure to attend if you are near the city.

The Pub House:
Zenith Press is an imprint of Quayside Publishing, and focuses on military history (modern, Iraq & Gulf, cold war, WWI, WWII, Civil War, nineteenth century, Napoleonic wars, American Revolution, eighteenth century, medieval, ancient, general, special forces, law enforcement, aviation, naval, etc.) and civil aviation. Enthusiasts of military history will love this press. They have more than 1,800 books in the military history section alone as well as DVDs and books on related collectibles. Among their new releases are A Spy’s Journey: A CIA Memoir by Floyd Paseman, who began working for the CIA in the Far East, then in Germany. His experiences span administrations from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush. Last Days of the Luftwaffe: German Luftwaffe Combat Units 1944-1945 by Manfred Griehl that takes a fresh look, using new sources, at the planes, squadrons, fighter-bomber operations, blitzbombers, recruitment of Hitler Youth into gliders schools, and the growing importance of remote-controlled, chemical, and bacteriological arsenals. Hunting Al Qaeda: A Take-No-Prisoners Account of Terror, Adventure, and Disillusionment by Anonymous focuses on the National Guard special forces and their role in Afghanistan, where what they might have achieved was stopped by military forces who believed themselves superior.

Of Interest:
Buying Books on the Internet is an interesting page that lists online sources of foreign-language, out-of-print, and specialized scholarly books. Some of the suggestions are basic to any Internet-experienced researcher, but overall there is a lot of good information.

This Week . . .
Devoted exclusively to reading interests of children and teens, the Young Readers’ Center at the Library of Congress opened on October 23 in the historical Thomas Jefferson Building. Visitors to the Center can choose to read a book from an up-to-date collection of non-circulating titles, browse the web’s kid-friendly sites, or attend programs especially designed for young readers.

The Center also oversees the new website, Read.Gov, which provides reading resources for everyone but especially for children and teens. One of the highlights of the site is the exclusive episodic story called “The Exquisite Corpse Adventure.” A new episode of this beautifully designed and written short story appears other week. Young people in grades 4-12 should also check out “Letters About Literature.”

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren