Sunday, October 29, 2006

Hot Stuff

The Texas Book Festival is this weekend. FFP volunteered with Badgerdog Publications yesterday but all I did was go with him to an evening event on South Congress (at a little room above the Continental Club) where Mark Binelli did a reading from Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die! and then they had a panel discussion with Mark Z. Danielewski, Heidi Julavits and Cristina Henriquez. I hadn't heard any of these authors but they'd all written about teens so they hung them on a Lolita theme but really the discussion was all over the place. Mark has written some very difficult books which apparently have a cultish following (I never noticed that difficult contains 'cult' before but there you go). It was all a lot of fun. The only author I'd heard of was one who didn't show up (Marisha Pessl who wrote Special Topics in Calamity Physics). I really enjoyed the discussion even though it was really crowded and I had to sit on the floor. I took the photo of the window at Blackmail on the way back to our car. The reading and the discussion made me want to read all these people's books, but of course I'm still behind on my newspapers and busy sorting the rather large collection of books we already have.

1 comment:

Annie in Austin said...

I'm glad you're out having fun and meeting new authors! We used to go to the Book Festival when it was still held in November - the end of October is impossible for us.

BTW, both you and FFP [and the metal musician] looked wonderful in glossy.

Annie