Celebrating Books and Reading
April 25, 2010

My feet, knees, shoulders, and back are officially sore, but my soul is happy. Yesterday, I went to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books where I happily spent most of the day wandering amid crowds of happy bibliophiles, readers, booklovers, authors, booksellers, publishers, and families happy to have an exciting free event to attend.

This book festival is one of the top literary fairs if not the premier one in the nation. Every year, during the last weekend in April, the Los Angeles Times and its partners host two days of fun and frolic in a literary atmosphere. It’s difficult to imagine how much work goes into it: thousands of hours and hundreds of staff and volunteers. And it shows in the remarkable and remarkably well-run festival.

The only day I attended was Saturday. It was beautiful: the weather was perfect (as compared to 2008, when temperatures soared to 100 degrees). I left a drizzly, gray day in Santa Barbara at 7:00 am and arrived at UCLA two hours later. The university, located in west Los Angeles, is surrounded by the most stunning neighborhoods in the city so as you exit the freeway and drive on traffic-clogged Sunset Blvd. toward the campus you encounter glimpses of majestic classic homes and greenery on quiet streets. They provide a strong sense of quiet, old-world serenity on one side while the cool, green lawns and well-kept trees of UCLA on the other side of the road give the impression of a bucolic backdrop Los Angeles is not famous for. I silently envy the residents not necessarily for their homes but for the elegance of the setting. (Only later, as I am getting on the freeway to return home and see the spray-painted on-ramp sign am I reminded that the price for living within those gorgeous streets is having to travel outside them.)

The festival doesn’t officially open until 10:00, but the excitement starts early. Thankfully, there are not yet any lines for the parking lots  but the number of cars indicates plenty of people have already arrived. Many of those are trying to obtain tickets to events they could not get online. Others are already wandering the walkways. One family with three children, one in a stroller, passed me, and I smiled at the repeated, “Daddy, daddy, are we going to buy books?”  question from the oldest boy.

It was the perfect opening to my day because it was a reminder that for all the doomsday predictions I hear about books (and publishing) the love of reading books is far from death’s door. Consider that book festivals across the country number nearly 150, and that books continue to pour out of commercial houses, large and small, university presses, and niche publishers. Books to fill every reading preference many times over.

But book festivals are not about publishers or publishing. They are about readers. And on this weekend and in this television-and-movie obsessed city, the readers take over.

As I strolled through the children’s area—a large square block of cool grass and trees, the white tents framing two stages where entertainment promoting children’s book characters and reading had already engaged a swarming crowd—my eye was caught by one child in particular. She was five or six, I’d guess, and dressed in shorts, tee shirt and a sweater. Standing next to her mother, she appeared to be torn between the desire to join the other children dancing below the stage in mimic of the performers and fear at public attention. Something about her eyes arrested mine. Did she remind me of me? I’m not sure, but I plopped down on a grassy slope where I could watch for a while without intimidating them. The dancers ended their performance a few minutes later. She had not joined them, but within a couple of minutes her father returned holding a bag which he held out to her. Her eyes widened. The new entertainment had started, but she ignored it as she excitedly pulled open the bag and pulled out two new books. I wasn’t close enough to see the titles. But what I did see was the grin that nearly covered her face and the bear hug she gave the books and her dad (in that order). She sat down on the grass. Putting one book to her side, she opened the other. I watched her hands as she turned the initial pages until she found the beginning of the story at which point she began reading aloud. Her head was down so I couldn’t tell if her eyes were shining but I would bet they were.

It was like that everywhere I turned. People of all ages—retired couples and teen couples, groups of friends, families, single people—were strolling the aisles, stopping to talk to vendors, buying books, reading books while lounging on the grass or sitting on stone steps. Several people stopped in front of an empty booth at the same time I did so we all had a good laugh at the Good Men Project that was, apparently, missing good men.

At 11:00 I scurried over to the USC booth where Mr. Los Angeles (at least the man who should be known as such), Stan Chambers was signing. Chambers has been the rational face and voice of the news for sixty years with generations growing up with him. My friend, Lynn Price of Behler Publications, wrested his manuscript out from under one of the major houses, and it has been a match made in, well, heaven. She and I stood off to the side, chatting while a never-ending line of visitors waited to talk to him and buy his book. Maybe it’s being eighty and wise, maybe it comes from a lifetime spent in front of the public, maybe it’s the courtesy of another generation, but whatever the reason the man’s gracious and humble attitude and his deep appreciation for his fans caused the line of people waiting to talk to him to last hours. I am always pleased to celebrate success so the looks and sounds of thrilled amazement on so many faces, including Lynn’s, pleased me.

We stopped for lunch and to give our aching feet a rest. There are not nearly enough tables for everyone so sharing is inevitable. And this is often the best part. Lynn, Fred, and I ended up with a lovely couple, both writers. He is a novelist, she a television and movie writer. The stories on every side poured out.

After lunch I began to wander the aisles again. The main walkway, the Quad, was so jammed that at times it simply stopped moving, somewhat like Los Angeles rush hour traffic. Part of the festival lies on the lower part of the campus, accessed by the infamous 89 stairs. But even though I was already shifting my book bag from shoulder to shoulder in vain attempts to somehow lighten it going down the stairs was worth it. For it was in the bottom level that I bought one of the few books I took home that day. (Budget concerns kept me from pursuing my usual hundreds-of-dollars level of purchasing at the festival.) Entertaining: From an Ethnic Indian Kitchen proved to be self-published, a genuine surprise to me given the extraordinary quality of the book. I wasn’t the only one taken with it; three other buyers snapped it up in the five minutes I was at her booth. It was worth not only the price but the effort of lugging the now extra-heavy book bag back up the stairs.

All day I had been looking for a group of friends who I knew were there but, not surprisingly given the crowds, I never found them. However, I knew they had tickets for the James Ellroy/Joseph Wambaugh panel at 3:30. By this time, my feet were screaming and my back and shoulders were aching. But I knew they’d be there, especially our writer friend who favors books and movies that would give me nightmares. Unfortunately, even my press badge wasn’t enough to get me into a room where “every seat has been taken,” according to the staff manning the doors.

So I decided to head home. It was tempting to stay until the end of the festival day—another 2 1/2 hours, but only if I could have had a foot transplant. That being impossible, I slumped my way to the car, slung the bag of books, bookmarks, promotional material, sign-up sheets, CDs, and everything else I had picked up during the day into the trunk. Once again I passed through that glorious haven of LA Heaven, feeling not just personally happy I had come but professionally happy too. I let my mind drift over the crowds I had mingled with, the busy vendors’ booths I had seen and visited, the children and teens who carried books, the families sitting on grass and steps, watching, laughing, eating, and reading. I saw innumerable authors signing books. And I knew that all that meant that books are a long way from being quaint objects of antiquity and reading a long way from being scorned thanks in part to events like the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Thankfully, that sense of professional well-being will continue to stay with me long after my feet have stopped throbbing.

Jacket Copy, the books blog of the Times, kept everyone (who wasn’t there) abreast of the panels and one-on-one conversations as they happened. Also there was Book TV, broadcasting the important social and political panels. If you weren’t able to attend, reading and watching these are superb ways to participate.

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Upcoming Book Festivals:
World literature fans and mystery fans are in for a treat this coming week and weekend. Beginning Monday, April 26 and running through Sunday, May 2, the PEN World Voices Festival in New York City. Sponsored by PEN American Center (the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization. International PEN), the festival showcases the work of more than fifty international authors in conversations, readings, performances, and panels with their American counterparts as they celebrate the written word. It is so extensive that I can list only a few of their highlights: Readings from Around the Globe, Adaptation: From Page to Screen, New European Fiction, The Fourth Annual PEN Cabaret. And Sherman Alexie: The Fifth Annual Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture. But if you are in or near New York, you should not miss any of the 150 writers from forty countries in more than fifty events.

Less a book festival than a fan convention is Malice Domestic in Arlington, Virginia. From April 30 through May 2, fans of the “traditional mystery,” that is mysteries that contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence (think Agatha Christie). Among the attendees this year are Parnell Hall, Rhys, Bowen, and Mary Higgins Clark. Events include a silent auction, panels, an awards banquet, special opening ceremonies, vendors, signings, and the Agatha Tea and Closing Ceremonies. The Comprehensive Registrations are already sold out, but the Basic Registration is still available.

The Pub House:
Timber Press, located in Oregon, specializes in gardening, horticulture, natural history, and the Pacific Northwest. Even if you don’t live in their area, they have excellent books that will work for any passionate gardener. Possibly my favorite is Black Plants, a unique approach to setting up an unusual garden. Imagine—I am!—a pathway lined with Dracula orchids, bat flowers, mouring widows, velvet plants, black mondo grass, and Devil’s tongue providing a natural frame for a striking red rose garden, bushes of chili peppers, or even a green lawn! If black isn’t your idea of a heavenly garden, then maybe The Nonstop Garden—with its ten “fail-safe” design plans (native, scented, gold-colored, wet, vibrant, cool-colored, winter, shade and, interestingly, the hellstrip)—and its step-by-step instructions is.  Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older is an excellent gift idea for Mother’s or Father’s Day. This memoir of how aging impacts a passion for gardening includes practical tips along with an “encouraging road map for accepting and embracing a new simpler way of gardening.”

Win This Book!
This week’s giveaway book is the Vera Wright Trilogy (My Father’s Moon, Cabin Fever, The Georges’ Wife) by the late Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley. Togeter these unconventional novels create a powerful story of a woman who came of age in England during World War II. As Vera moves from wartime nursing to facing an unwanted pregnancy to her exploitation as a teacher, and finally as a maid until she becomes pregnant and moves with the father to Australia in the 1950s. Publishers Weekly called it “a lyrically written, imaginatively observed and emotionally compelling work.” To enter, all you need to do is send us an e-mail with “Win This Book” in the subject line and the title of the book in the body of the e-mail. We will collect names and draw one on Friday, April 30. You may win no more than one book a month, and we apologize to our international readers but postal costs prohibit our mailing books outside the United States.

Imaging Books & Reading:
Books Wanted for Our Men in Camp and “Over There” is the title of this poster dated 1918. While such posters may not be made any more, the need for books for the women and men serving “over there” is as great in 2010 as it was in 1918. If you are interested, you should check out Books for Soldiers or Operation: Paperback.

Of Interest:
Out of Print is a t-shirt store that combines the world’s greatest stories with clothing, but more than that they help bring books to places that need them through their partner, Books for Africa. OOP licenses cover art to create these comfortable matchless shirts for women and men.

This Week . . .
Celebrating 75 Years in 2010 is the highlight of Penguin Books’ website. That big publisher with the small bird so familiar to generations of students and classics readers is going all out this year to include readers in its activities. Would you like to win a library of Penguin’s seventy-five bestselling paperbacks? While here, you can also learn Penguin’s history and its imprints, connect with their authors of book club, and learn about their various books. Or with the help of Douglas Coupland, perhaps you’d enjoy designing a cover of your own using templates (ranging from 1935 to 2010), or browse covers others have made.

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

Lauren