The K Experience

The Festival of Books

Present - Here and Now

Sunday, 04 May 2008

Last weekend, April 26th and 27th, UCLA opened up its grounds to the public for one of its biggest events of the year, The Festival of Books. It boasted, 140,000 attendees, 450+ authors, 300+ exhibitors, 900+ volunteers, 100+ author panels and for that weekend, temperatures reaching 91 degrees Fahrenheit (about 32 degrees celcius)...

I'm not hugely into books myself, funnily enough, and being forced to read about 2 books a week for my social science PhD coursework kinda takes whatever fun I had out of it. But I just couldn't resist going. With all those books and authors, anyone would be hard-pressed to not find something of interest to them.

There was stall upon stall of publishers and bookstore stands which pretty much covered the whole of the UCLA campus. You could find Chronicle books, a Borders stand (actually a few Borders) and many many others. There were rare books, popular books, religious books, picture books, travel books, everything you could think of could pretty much be found. And it was so nice to see the UCLA campus filled with so many people with their families and friends and pets.

The stalls were mostly grouped by sections, and the section that caught my attention the most was the Comix Strip, the animation/alternative section, and apparently, this was the first year that it had been showcased. You could find Japanese Manga and graphic novels. The Animation Magazine had their own stand too. Along with these, were some other quite interesting and bizarre showcases, like some random guy who wore this blue spandex type workout suit and a fake beard. And also the Nerdy Mcfly stall, which belonged to a group of ~~UCLA~~ University of Arizona students who had written a book about how to get through college (university) with high grades (nerdy) but still be social, and have fun (Mcfly).

I spent quite a lot of my time at the LA Times stage which, at the time, had the journalist that did the motoring column "800 Words", Dan Neil. He talked about the industry, the best and worst cars around and what to expect from the future of motoring. He also gave quite a heartfelt speech about the importance of the printed paper, and how it is currently going through a interesting and difficult transition with the current use of digital media.

As well as the LA Times stage, you could find many other stages where the authors would give recital, and there was also a children's stage where some random guy (I'm sure he was quite important) was doing the Macarena with two ladies. But I didn't stay long at any of those as I didn't really know any of the authors. One person I did know of however, was Lela Lee the creator of Angry Little Girls. She had her own stall, and was selling T-shirts, bags and CD's too. She didn't seem angy at all. In fact she seemed quite sweet.

Well that pretty much summed up my Festival of Books experience. Lots of books, lots of people, lots of heat, and lots of fun. However, I can't end without showing at least a few pictures of a books. So I will leave you with these two: Food Play, by Saxton Freyman and Joost Elfers, and How to tell if your boyfriend is the Antichrist, (and if he is, should you break up with him?) by Patricia Carlin.