A Season of Favorites
November 6, 2011

While reading is seasonless there is something, at least for me, about cold weather reading that just feels . . .  so right. Gathering blankets and cats and a hot drink along with a selection of books and magazines onto a sofa and curling up in one corner with my legs stretched out before me (and having used the bathroom immediately beforehand) is nothing short of perfection. While I know people who have Kindles and adore reading on them, I am not one. I like being surrounded by things I love and piles of them are even better.  Just before coming over here to write this on a cold, windy, lazy Saturday afternoon I was doing just that with Amara, Athena, and Aphrodite (cats), a hot drink (apple cider enhanced with cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom), and books (The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Tale, The Beautiful and the Damned, and Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City). It’s a joyful day, and I wish you well as I head back to it.

Upcoming Book Festivals and Fairs:
Seven book festivals will burst forth this week for lucky people in Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Michigan. If you are in those states, check these out.

Location: Dahlonega, Georgia
Site: Community House, St. Luke’s, Hancock Park
Festival: Dahlonega Literary Festival
Date: November 10-13
Seventeen authors including keynote speaker Terry Kay will be there to talk about books and sign their own. Other events include a writers workshop, Friday evening special, Evening with Mark Twain event, panel presentations, Lunch with the Authors, Saturday Night Extravaganza, Sunday  Brunch with the Authors, and more.

Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Site: Hynes Convention Center
Festival: Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair
Date: November 11-13
This is one of the two top antiquarian book shows in the United States (New York’s companion show being the other). Unless you are rolling in money you are more likely to look than buy, but oh, what a place to look. One hundred and twenty-eight dealers from all over the world attend this one with their best rare books, autographs, maps, and prints. Hours are Friday from 5:00-9:00 pm, Saturday from noon to 7:00 pm, and Sunday from noon to 5:00 pm. Besides the many dealers, there will be book appraisals, talks (Decorating with Books and Prints; Redefining Collecting, Reconceiving Writing, Rethinking What Your Books Can Do) plus the Ticknor Society Collectors Roundtable. Admission is $15 for all three days, or $8 for Saturday or Sunday.

Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Site: Park Plaza Castle
Festival: Boston Book, Print and Ephemera Show
Date: November 12
From 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, this small fair which specializes in antiquarian books, ephemera, prints, maps, advertising, etc. will be open. I could not find out how many dealers will be there, but the show  is in direct competition with the prestigious Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (above). My guess is that the prices will be much better even if the admission is a stiff ten dollars.

Location: Lansing, Michigan
Site: University Quality Inn
Festival: Classicon 40
Date: November 12
Classicon is a pulp and paper show, meaning you can find dealers offering collectable pulp magazines, digests, and paperbacks, as well as calendars, pinups, original paperback art, vintage comics, and more. The event runs from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, and admission is $4.50 (children 13 and under are free).

Location: Louisville, Kentucky
Site: Frankfort Convention Center
Festival: Kentucky Book Fair
Date: November 12
From 9:00 am to 4:30 pm, this diverse and fascinating festival will offer seven symposiums, 180 authors talking about and signing their books, a Banned and Challenged Books Exhibit, Lunch with Bob Edwards, readings, and a special signing by Douglas Boyd. For the first time this year, the festival will feature a Children’s Day on Friday, November 11, but is open only to those who have already registered.

Location: Storrs, Connecticut
Site: University of Connecticut, Rome Commons Ballroom
Festival: Connecticut Children’s Book Fair
Date: November 12-13
Two dozen authors and illustrators will be at the fair to talk about and sign their books and meet fans. In addition, Clifford (the big red dog) and other storybook characters will be there to have breakfast during a pre-festival event from 9:00 to 10:00 am, and will also be at the fair, which opens at 10:00. Reservations must be made for the breakfast; adults are $4, children under twelve are free. Also appearing will be musical groups and other entertainment.

Location: Miami,, Florida
Site: Various venues
Festival: Miami Book Fair International
Date: November 13-20
One of if not the biggest book festival in the U.S., this one involves eight days, 350 authors, a three-day street fair, six nights of readings and discussions, a Children’s Alley with theater, arts and crafts, cooking demonstrations, the Literary Death Match, Twilight Tastings, Festival of Authors, storytelling and readings, and more. During the street fair, more than 250 publishers and booksellers will exhibit and sell books  (including signed first editions, original manuscripts, and other collectibles from antiquarians) and related gifts. The featured country this year so there is a symposium and roundtable discussion with some of China’s contemporary writers.

The Pub House:
Dundurn Press is one of Canada’s largest publishers with more than 100 new titles each year particularly in the areas of Canadian heritage, natural history, biography and art.. For those outside Canada, their books offer an outstanding opportunity to learn about Canadian literature and nonfiction. Canadians at Table: Food, Fellowship, and Folklore: A Culinary History of Canada explores the foods the traders and early settlers depended on, what developments came about as the result of growing communities, improved transportation, and immigrants with their own culinary histories but which required adaptation in their new homeland, religious, social and economic needs, temperance societies, and even street markets and fairs. Growing Up Ivy is a memoir of a girl living in Depression-era Toronto with first her actress mother who sent her to live with her paternal grandmother then with her father, an illiterate peddler who takes her with him for the summer as they wander the countryside by a horse-drawn caravan, selling shoes. Summer’s end has her meeting a teenager and they, despite vast differences, find a secret connection that changes both their lives. Beautiful Lie the Dead is the newest in the nine-book Inspector Green mystery series, that opens with a phone call to the missing persons unit of the Ottawa police and a missing wealthy social activist. Is the frozen body found only block’s from the man’s home the missing activist? It’s up to Green to solve it.

Imaging Books & Reading:
What television shows do you watch? For the sake of your books you may want to reconsider . . . 

Of Interest:
The Cabinet of Culinary Curiosities was an exhibition mounted by Smith College’s Mortimer Rare Book Room that an from September 5, 2010 through January 20, 2011. If you missed it, it is worth viewing the online version, though the fact that it is a pdf file means you cannot enlarge the images. Still, this array of more than fifty culinary curiosities that was gather from books from the sixteenth through the present is fascinating. Fried tulips, anyone?

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren