Lisa Mitchell is the biggest fan of the LA Times Festival of Books in the city. Starting in February, she reminds everyone when the tickets are available even though she usually attends panels via the standby line. Last Monday, she copied me on an e-mail that described her weekend, so I asked her to write about the Festival. Thank you Lisa for sharing your weekend with us!
Kim asked me to write a blog on what is one of my favorite weekends of the year, the LA Times Festival of Books. What better job to give to someone who loves books and talks too much? If you’re reading this, then you are most likely already a book lover. But the festival is so much more and there are many different ways to enjoy it. You could take your pre-school and school aged children and wander around at an outdoor faire. Does it count as a celebrity sighting to see Brooke Shields across the plaza reading to an audience full of young children? I definitely count last year when we saw Julie Andrews, overflowing with grace and charm, answer a question from the audience by saying ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ backwards to prove that she still could.
While many families were content to stay outdoors, the real heart of the festival is attending the author panels indoors. Discussions ranged from the future of publishing and electronic books, to writing as activism, to explorations of the different genres of writing. And always, the recurring questions from both young and mature readers about why certain characters had to die at the end of their favorite book.
Sometimes, the panels themselves can be quite a strange mix of authors loosely grouped around a theme. I attended a panel on fiction occurring during the Victorian era. The panelists’ books included a time-travel novel, a Dracula tale, and a compilation of crime stories. Out of the disparity of literary topics, they found similar ideas and agreed that while time travel exists due to books, none actually want to. The audience concurred.
My favorite quote of the weekend came from Kate DiCamillo. One young reader asked Miss DiCamillo if it bothered her that the movie version of The Tale of Despereaux was different from the book version. She explained that it didn’t because both the book and the movie had the same underlying truth and emotion. Specifically, she said “the moment you put the beautiful vision that’s in your head on paper you are compromising. You have to let it go into the world.”
Unfortunately there were no panels to be had this year on Comics, Anime or Manga. Fans of all ages no doubt felt the black hole in the book festival universe left by that omission. Also, I wish there were a couple of panels geared towards kids and teens. While Kate DiCamillo was truly amazing, the kids in attendance were bored until the Q&A when there were able to speak directly to the author about their interests. The Festival needs more opportunities for young readers, those past the age of enjoying the stage performances, to encourage them and deepen their love for reading and writing.
Back outside, we found a giant wall that asked the question ‘What are you reading?’ People of all ages wrote their favorites. I noticed a large Harry Potter title fairly high up on the wall with Qur’an right beside. That summed it up for me, the diversity of who we are, how wide and vast our reading preferences are, and yet we can still come together to celebrate books on a beautiful day in Southern California.
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off topic, i’m hosting a community virtual book sale & giveaway on my site may 4 – 15! i’d love for you to join in!
we both participated in the bookroom reviews giveaway!
Here’s the info. Please pass it on to other book lovers!
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I wish I could have checked it out, must have this on next year’s calendar! Thanks for the tip and review
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