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, Read the rest of this entry »
Claire
Kim
