L.A. Times Festival of Books report
I only did one day at the festival, taking the bus early Saturday morning and walking up to the UCLA campus (for the first time in nearly twenty years!).
I attended three panels and Ray Bradbury's talk at the end of the day.
First panel: Publishing, the brass tacks: with Sandra Dijkstra, Kim Dower, Peter Osnos, Donna Seaman and moderator Elizabeth Taylor (not not that Elizabeth Taylor). Interesting, but not much that I didn't already know from reading Miss Snark and other blogs relating to writing/publishing. The most interesting bit was when Peter Osnos asked how many audience members were daily NPR listeners. Nearly everyone raised their hands. A bit later another panelist asked who was writing a book. Again, nearly everyone raised their hands. On that latter question, what intrigued me most was who were the people there who weren't writing a book?
At noon I attended Fiction: Jumping off the Page, with Chris Bohjalian, Peter Orner, Gary Shteyngart and Marianne Wiggins. This was the best panel of the day. I've never read any of their books, and the only name which was familiar was Bohjalian who I knew from Barbara DeMarco Barrett's Writers on Writing radio show/podcast. Here, the highlight was discovering Shteyngart. Some people might think it odd to spend a day around books and authors and only discover one new author, but to me it's a great thing.
I grabbed a quick lunch at the food court, getting some chicken, vegetables and rice in a big bowl. Only after I ate did I discover that right across from the "Chinese" food booth was an organic food booth.
I walked through the exhibitor area (which turned out to only be part of the exhibitor area) but didn't buy anything. It was too crowded and chaotic to do so, although I really wanted to buy $25 worth of Penguins to get the cool tote bag.
My final panel was Fiction: Portraits in Time with Richard Flanagan, Lisa Fugard, Jennifer Gilmore and Susan Vreeland with moderator Betsy Amster. Again, four authors I've never read, although with the exception of wanting to take a bit of a look at how Vreeland writes about paintings, I wasn't that interested in reading any of their works as well. I did notice that in all three of my panels that the panelist sitting second from the left (Donna Seaman, Peter Orner and in this panel Richard Flanagan), was the one who participated the least and in this case seemed as if they would rather be anywhere but at the front of the room.
The end of the day was Ray Bradbury's talk in Royce Hall. I've loved Bradbury since I was a kid when I read R is for Rocket and the Martian Chronicles and the Illustrated Man and Dinosaur Tales and Fahrenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes and I don't even remember what else. It was a bit of a shock to see Bradbury wheeled on stage, but once he started talking it was easy to forget that he's nearly 87 years old. He used love as a jumping off point for an extemporaneous autobiography over the next 65 minutes with numerous applause lines sprinkled throughout. I'd heard him speak in Claremont in the late 80s and he's still every bit the dynamic speaker he was two decades ago.
NP: NPR: Fresh Air for Friday, Apr 27 2007
WC: 48,570, ECD: 16 Aug 2007
