National Book Festival 2010

I never seem to be able to put up a post about the National Book Festival anywhere near the time it actually happens. It's been more than a month now, but at least we're still in the month immediately following the one in which the festival happened. This year's was the tenth National Book Festival, and my third. I went to my first one two years ago, with older son, and it rained. I went to my second one last year, with a friend, and it rained. This year, I went with older son and the friend from last year, and it did not rain. It was, however, unseasonably hot, close to the 90s(F) if not in them. The Washington Post, one of the main sponsors of the event, estimated that there would be 130,000 people at the Festival (compared to the 30,000 at the first one, in 2001). I would not be at all surprised to hear that they were right. This one definitely seemed more crowded than the last two. I'm sure the lack of precipitation helped. One tent at the book festival always serves as the Pavilion of the States. You can get a map that serves as a passport and then circulate among tables representing the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories or other possessions. Each table has various swag--bookmarks, posters, stickers, maps, tourist pamphlets, rulers, toys--to pop into the free festival bag. If you get a stamp/sticker from all the places, there's even a prize, which this year was a memo pad complete with pen. As for all the swag, it's great if you're a teacher or know teachers. I sent mine to my cousin-in-law who homeschools one of her children and whose family members are all very prolific readers.

In terms of speakers, we caught several authors with whom at least one of us was familiar. One of my choices was Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian and The Swan Thieves. One questioner began by telling Kostova that Kostova's grandmother was the librarian who has planted and nourished her love of reading. Kostova noted that the same grandmother had read all of Jane Austen aloud to her by the time she turned 16. One question concerned the writing process Kostova used. In fact, Kostova noted, her writing process was very different for each of her two books. She wrote The Historian as you would read it, in order, with no deviations. She wrote The Swan Thieves, a more psychological novel, in sections, which then took her a year to stitch together.

Older son suggested that we check out Jonathan Safran Foer, whose latest book, Eating Animals, concerns vegetarianism. He wrote the book to try to explain to his children where meat comes from. In this regard, I couldn't help but think of one rental property in which I lived as a grad student. It was a cottage on a farm and the landlord's young daughters eagerly gave me a tour of the farm shortly after I moved in. Upon coming to the rabbit hutches, they eagerly introduced the rabbits by name; the only name I remember was Napoleon, not surprising since their mom was French. I asked if all the rabbits were pets. "Oh no," they assured me, "we eat them!" While I do eat things with faces, I'm not sure I would want to eat something I had named. Finally, among the facts Foer noted was that 18 percent of college students describe themselves as vegetarian, meaning that there are more vegetarians than Catholics on college campuses.

Older son also suggested we hear Peter Straub, an author about whom I knew nothing. I loved hearing Straub describe his "hunger to read" as a small child. He noted that he was really bummed that there was no reading in kindergarten, just cutting out animals with baby scissors. Even in first grade, what reading there was, was Dick and Jane. He said he "spent a lot of time being really angry as a kid" until he discovered the school library, a situation to which I could personally relate. One of the questions asked Straub concerned the two books he had co-authored with Stephen King. The question was whether it was possible to tell who had written what parts. Straub noted that he and King had played tricks such as attempting to write in the style of the other, and that only one person had demonstrated to him a consistent ability to tell which author wrote which passage. I'll put the name of that person--it's another author--at the end of this post in case you want to try to guess who it is.

Finally, as with previous festivals, there were a number of costumed characters. If you're still working on a guess as to the author who could distinguish between Straub's and King's sections of their books, don't start scrolling yet, because I'm putting the answer right after the last of three photos.

Ready for the answer? The one person who can consistently distinguish between Peter Straub's and Stephen King's contributions to their collaborations is Neil Gaiman.

Is there a fourth National Book Festival in my future? Probably! It's an event not to be missed if you're in the area on the right day. I am still amazed that there is no cost with any of the activities. Yes, you can purchase books by the festival authors, but you can also bring your own copies for signing. Or you can just go and enjoy the experience, which is how we did it this year and may very well do it again next year.

National Book Festival 2009

The National Book Festival was last September 26, and the conscientious bloggers (I won't name names) who were there put their posts up the next day. In the "better late than never" vein, here's my post. Last year was my first National Book Festival trip thanks to older son who wanted to hear and have a book signed by Neil Gaiman. This year's trip was with a friend who lives in Northern Virginia, the delightful young lady who walked across the stage at high school graduation immediately in front of older son. There were a number of authors there this year that sounded interesting: David Baldacci, Judy Blume, Ken Burns, Annette Gordon-Reed, John Grisham, Gwen Ifill, John Irving, Steven Kellogg, Sue Monk Kidd, Mark Kurlansky, Lois Lowry, George Pelecanos, Jon Scieszka, and Daniel Silva. As it turns out, I heard only one of the people listed above speak, but discovered several other authors whose books are winging their way to me even as I type or from whose presentation I garnered an idea worth remembering.

After arriving at the festival, we looked in at several tents. John Grisham was standing room only at the Fiction & Fantasy tent. We didn't stop to hear him. Besides the crowd, he lives here in Charlottesville, so it didn't seem all that much of a novelty to hear him speak. We ended up in the Teens & Children tent, listening to Liz Kessler, the author of the middle-grades Emily Windsnap series. Emily is a girl while she is on land but, in the water, turns into a mermaid. The fourth Emily Windsnap book has already come out in Britain (Kessler is English) and will be out here in the States in March. I thought it nice that all the people who asked Kessler questions after her talk were young girls who had read her books. One asked whether Kessler had patterned the Emily character at all after herself. Kessler answered by saying not intentionally but went on to say that Margaret Atwood once noted that "there's always a drop of blood in the cooking." What an interesting way to express that we, without intending to, reflect something of ourselves in everything we write.

We checked out the Borders booktent (if a bookstore is a store that sells book, then a booktent is a tent that does the same), but the line to pay for the book(s) selected was overwhelmingly long. Last year, the booktent was the only place to buy an advance copy of The Graveyard Book (which has now been on the New York Times bestseller list for 52 weeks, which means pie!) The books we would have purchased were already on the market. It honestly looked as though we could have used my friend's iPhone to locate a nearby bookstore, walk there, any buy the books before we could have made it through the line at the booktent. In my case, Borders's loss was Amazon.com's gain.

As you might imagine, the Festival catered to all ages. Here are a couple of examples. This was one of the many activities inside or around one of the children's tents, though it wasn't just children who were contributing to this mural. There were various costumed characters circulating. I would have gotten my photo taken with Curious George if the line had been shorter. There was a free-range penguin, though.
After a quick lunch from the vegetarian food booth, we found ourselves in the Fiction & Fantasy tent listening to Jeanette Walls, another author with whom I was totally unfamiliar. She spoke about her difficulty in writing pure fiction but her ease in writing memoirs that read like novels. I've ordered Walls's The Glass Castle, her memoir of her painful childhood. During the question period, a librarian related the story of how a teacher at his school had, for three years, read The Glass Castle out loud to her classes over the course of the year, commenting how it had touched the lives of the students, most of whom came from disadvantaged backgrounds similar to that of Walls. Walls was teary as she thanked the man for relating the story. We had actually come to hear Walls only because of the speaker who followed in Fiction & Fantasy, but I was very glad that we heard her.

The speaker we had come to Fiction & Fantasy to hear was Sabiha Al Khemir, a Tunisian-born author. According to the Festival program, "her second novel, The Blue Manuscript (2008), focuses on the interaction of Western and Islamic cultures." My friend is a dual US-Saudi citizen but had never heard of this author. In fact, the book we both put back on the table after seeing the line in the booktent was The Blue Manuscript; I've now got it on order from Amazon.com. Al Khemir talked about how her work as an Islamic art historian had influenced her writing. She also touched on the difficulties inherent in translating fiction into another language while retaining the subtleties of the original work. My friend is looking forward to reading The Blue Manuscript in both languages; I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say about it.

There was no one we really wanted to hear immediately after Al Khemir, and it was raining, so we went across the street to the National Museum of American History for coffee and a bit of indoor sightseeing. In an exhibit case right outside the coffee shop was this interesting item. It's a Torah ark decoration from the late 1800s or early 1900s. Of course, my friend and I, both being a bit geeky, immediately turned to one another, flashed the Vulcan hand sign, and said, "Live long and prosper." Older son did a bit of research after I called him with the news and reported that Leonard Nimoy created the Vulcan hand salute based on a Orthodox Jewish blessing he had seen as a child. You learn something new every day!

We returned to the Festival wanting to hear Ken Burns speak in the History & Biography tent. We arrived in time for the speakers right before Burns, Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, thinking that we might grab seats in between the speakers. Unfortunately, all the people there to hear Balz and Johnson also wanted to hear Burns and his co-author Dayton Duncan. It didn't matter, though, because even though we could barely see Burns and Duncan, we could hear them just fine. They spoke on their new PBS series on the National Parks. The sound bite I took away from their talk to throw out at cocktail parties or as the need arises concerns their use of music in their documentaries. Burns noted that most films are "locked" or visually finished before any music is recorded for them. For their documentaries, though, Burns and Duncan have all sorts of potentially relevant music recorded ahead of time and often in multiple versions. Later, as they are putting together the visual record, they actively work with the music. If there is a musical piece that merits longer play, then they tailor the visuals around the longer play. Definitely high on the list of neat things to know.

After Burns and Duncan, the Festival was over, so we returned to the car for a rather eventful drive back to the Fairfax area in which my friend lives. By this time, it was raining fairly heavily, making it just the right time for the passenger-side windshield wiper to break free from the arm and dangle, useless, against the windshield. We stopped three times so I could hop out and reset it, after which it held for just a while before it popped loose again. We did make it to Moby Dick's House of Kabob safely, where we had a wonderful chicken dish. (Older son was, I think, a bit disappointed to hear that there was no Call Me Fish Meal at Moby's.) After dinner, and a cup of tea at my friend's apartment, I made the drive home in the dark and rain. It was worth it, though, because it was another wonderful day at the National Book Festival. And now to wait for next year's!

National Book Festival

I wasn't going to post this until after Christmas (you'll see why if you read on), but Debi has made it sound as if I can. Elder son asked way back in the summer if someone would take him to the National Book Festival in Washington, DC, on September 27. Neil Gaiman was on the program, and elder son really wanted to hear him speak even if it meant getting there super-early to stand in line and wait. At the time younger son agreed to handle the driving. (Younger son is 18 and has a driver's license; elder son is 20 and has a learner's permit.)

Fast forward to the week before the National Book Festival, and younger son decided he'd rather go to the Vegetarian Festival here in Charlottesville than the Book Festival in DC. Not wanting to see older son heartbroken, I agreed to take him. I will be honest here and say up front that at the time I had never read a word by Neil Gaiman. I'd been meaning to, after hearing both sons extol Neil's writing, and after reading several of Debi's reviews. I did get Neverwhere (the local Barnes and Noble was out of American Gods and start to read it Tuesday of that week, but that was as far as I'd gotten. When Don and I were talking on Tuesday night about our upcoming adventure on Saturday, I mentioned that I could get a book signed, too. He suggested that I could get one signed for Annie, so I shot a quick e-mail to Debi and asked whether I could do that--was there a Neil Gaiman book that she and Rich would like to give Annie for Christmas that I could take up and get inscribed? She replied the next day that they would love to give Annie a copy of Coraline, so I picked that up Wednesday night.

Saturday morning, older son and I left the house at 7:00, drove to Vienna, where we hopped on the Metro. We were on the Mall at about 10:00. Neil was speaking from 11:45 to 12:15 and signing from 1:00 to 3:00. As we approached the area where the Book Festival was, we could see a line that may have been a quarter of a mile long waiting to pass though a medical detector, bag search, and other security. We started to get a bit nervous about spending the day in the security line. Luckily, a chat with someone in the line revealed that this was the line to get into the children's tent, where Laura and Jenna Bush were speaking and signing. Neil was going to be in the teens and childrens tent, and we could walk through the children's tent security line and straight into that tent. We got seats in the back, and listened to the end of the first talk, by Judith Viorst. When people left after her talk, we grabbed two seats in the front row, and sat through two more talks by people we'd never heard of but who were still somewhat interesting. It also gave me the chance to see what kind of photo ops I might have with the 10X zoom lens on my digital camera. The picture here is of the speaker who preceded Neil, Joseph Bruchac.

By the time Neil came on, the tent was packed to the gills. He told some great stories including that The Graveyard Book is one of the few books for which he can say very definitively how he got the idea. He also told about the two books inspired by his children (Wolves in the Wall, and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish). He read part of The Graveyard Book and answered some questions. Very, very entertaining and, yes, for those of you who might be wondering, very, very pleasant to gaze at and listen to. As you can see in the photos, he was dressed in his usual black jeans, black t-shirt, and black leather jacket. He was also wearing black leather shoes that I almost took a photo of but didn't. They looked somewhat clunky, but comfortable, like the sort of shoes I like. They also looked as if they might add an inch to his height, though I have no idea if that was the intent.

After the talk ended, older son and I hustled to the book sale tent and scored three copies of The Graveyard Book. It actually wasn't released until the following Tuesday (September 30), but the publisher had agreed to let copies be sold in conjunction with Neil's appearance at the Festival. I don't know how many copies they had on sale, but they sold out while we were standing in line to pay for ours. Of course, we saw a couple of people with six or more copies in their arms, but perhaps they were buying for friends who were holding places in the signing line.

As for the signing line, that's where we hustled to from the book sale tent. We arrived there at 12:45 and were directed to the end of a line. We were thinking that we weren't all that far back in line which was good. About that time, though, we realized that the line to our right was also a Neil Gaiman line as was the line to its right. It turned out that we were in the fifth Neil Gaiman line. We were initially told that he would sign three things for each person. Fine, we decided. I could get Coraline signed for Annie, one copy of The Graveyard Book signed for Debi, and another signed for me. Older son could get Sandman signed for himself, American Gods signed for younger son, and another book signed for a teenaged friend of mine who goes to the College of William and Mary. Not too much later, as the seventh line was filling up, they announced that it would be one item per person. (Oh, yeah, I didn't mention that Neil had a broken finger on his right hand, the middle finger, in one of those funky metal braces.) I decided then and there that my one item would be Coraline for Annie. Much as I would have liked to have something signed by Neil Gaiman (I had been reading The Graveyard Book in line and was greatly enjoying it), I knew that it would be even more special for Annie to have something.



So we stood. We sat. Don lay down and slept for a while. I read half of The Graveyard Book before it started to drizzle. We stood up. Drizzle changed to rain. Rain changed to hard rain at an angle. We waited, by this time watching lines two and three move forward. At 3:00, they stopped letting people get in line and announced that Neil would be staying until at least 5:00; they later announced that he would stay until everyone in line by 3:00 had been seen. We watched line four move. Eventually, line five started to move. By this time it had stopped raining, and there was a rainbow that put the pot of gold in, of all places, the U.S. Capitol. I found this somewhat appropriate given that this was the weekend right after the first attempt at a Wall Street bailout had failed.

Finally, four hours after we got in line, we got up to the signing table. Neil was joking and thanking people for waiting for him in the rain. I handed over Coraline, with a card inside saying "Annie" (we had been directed to do this so that he didn't have to ask how to spell the name). I told him, though, that I wasn't Annie, so please don't write something like "thanks for waiting." He asked who Annie was, and I told him she was my cousin. He commented that she must be pretty special if I was having the book signed for her and not myself. I said that she certainly was special, that she had used National Novel Writing Month last year to write a 50,000 word novel at the age of 10. "She IS very special then," he said as he drew ... a mouse ... and autographed it.

Then Don got his book signed, and we headed back down the mall to the Metro station. We took the Metro back to Vienna, hopped in the car. After picking up food to eat on the way home (we hadn't eaten since breakfast in the car on the way up), we got home around 8:30. It was a very long day, but a great time. It was also a long day for Neil. According to his blog, at about 5:00 he took his pen and just moved down the line signing a book for everyone. The National Book Festival estimated that he signed for 1,400 people. Wow!

As for why this wasn't supposed to be published until after Christmas, well, as Debi put it, she and Rich "caved" and gave Annie her book early. I can't say I blame them. I probably would have given it early, too.