I got home from the L.A. Times Festival of Books very late last night. It was a good, successful event and weekend, helped considerably by my sisters Elisabeth and Brenda, who pointed me to Los Angeles gems I never would have found on my own. The festival itself is huge; mid-Sunday I was still discovering new nooks I hadn't visited. They say 100,000 people attend but it never felt that crowded. Beautiful weather. Lots of good conversations with people who love books.
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| Nice theming throughout. |
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| A representative stretch of the L.A. Times Festival of Books. There were a dozen boulevards like this lined with tents--mostly small publishers or even self-published authors, but also a few big companies. Not a bad showing by comics folks: DC, Marvel, and Oni Press sent small delegations and, again, there were a lot of small-press comics. |
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| The L.A. Times printed a 28-page program that listed speakers, events, schedules, maps. I took up a big chunk of page 16. |
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| The band showed up Sunday morning. Very entertaining. |
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| Weekend highlight: I met writer Cory Doctorow! Cory wrote a really nice review of "Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?" a few years ago, and his love of retro-futurism is right up my alley. I'd planned to attend a talk he was giving Sunday afternoon in hopes of just getting a chance to say "Hi." Instead, I found him doing a spontaneous, unannounced booksigning Sunday morning, and we got to have a real conversation. And then I bought his latest book. |
The panel I was there to do, "Earth, Air, Fire, Water--the Environment in Crisis" (I was "fire"), went great. The other panelists and I got on very well, and I think we hit a good balance of dread and hope. When I scouted out our panel's venue on Saturday, I was worried because it was a long distance from the rest of the festival action. I thought we'd be lucky to draw a dozen people. Instead we got about 150! The booksigning after was fine; they sold all their copies of "A Fire Story," which wasn't many--maybe 15 or 20?--but I was happy with that.
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| The lecture hall where my panel was held. This was early, when people were still trickling in. We got about 150 (that's what I do while other panelists are talking--count heads). |
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| Before we began: our moderator Alan Zarembo of the L.A. Times and panelists, each of whose books represented one quarter of earth, air, fire and water. (NOT Earth, Wind and Fire--they're totally different people.) |
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| All of the panelists' books for sale near the booksigning tent. A lot of the "Fire Story" copies were already gone. |
Probably the best time I've ever had in L.A.! (Anaheim is arguably not L.A.)
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I just finished reading your book, A Fire Story, and so much of it sounds like trying to rebuild one's life after the loss of one's spouse. Nothing is the same after losing a beloved spouse. Many of the feelings you experienced with the loss or your home are similar to the feelings I experienced after the death of my husband from ALS. Just wanted to share that with you. Certainly not the same but lots of the same feelings and loss. TK
ReplyDeleteThat's a parallel experience of loss that hadn't occurred to me. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment.
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