Over the past two days (I won't be making it to the third and final day due to leaving at 5 AM Sunday morning for Dallas), I have attended the 2013 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville. This is my third (straight) year attending it and it has become almost the only time that I'll travel (OK, it's a 50 minute car drive) to a literary event. It has a very eclectic lineup, too much for me to see even half of the writers and presenters that I would love to see, but I did get four books signed on Friday and another six on Saturday (the final pic is of an autographed book that I purchased today but I missed the author due to a time conflict). Here are the titles, broken down by date signed, in case it isn't clear by the photographs:
Friday:
Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni (I actually first read this in ebook format back in April, but I thought highly enough of the book to buy a hardcover edition so I could get it autographed by Wecker.
Denise Kiernan, The Girls of Atomic City (I have had a review copy since March, but something or another kept coming up and I haven't yet finished it. I plan on finishing it either Sunday or Monday, while I'm riding 10+ hours each day in the car on my way to/from Dallas).
Gene Luen Yang, Boxers; Saints - (Two-volume graphic novel on the Chinese Boxer Rebellion was recently longlisted for the 2012 National Book Award for Young Peoples' Literature. 175 pages into Boxers and it's very, very good)
Saturday:
Al Gore, The Future (looking forward to reading this during the car trip; Gore gave a good lecture on topics covered in the book)
Nate Powell, Swallow Me Whole (ARC of this award-winning graphic novel. Powell was very pleasantly surprised to see this and he and John Aydin (see below) talked about how this book got Powell the job of illustrating March: Book One. Excellent read; highly, highly recommended)
Representative John Lewis, John Aydin (co-writers) and Nate Powell (illustrator), March: Book One (Graphic novel adaptation of Lewis's early life up to his involvement in the 1959-1960 Nashville sit-ins. It was an honor to get to shake his hand at the signing.)
Ron Rash, Nothing Gold Can Stay (I had already read about 120 pages out of this 224 page short fiction collection. Very good work.)
Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club; We are all completely beside ourselves (Fowler asked me why I had decided to read her earlier book and I said that I liked most of the "classics" and that I was an English and social studies teacher. When she inquired further and I said I currently taught middle school, that's when she decided to write the inscriptions that she wrote. The latter novel is one of the best 2013 releases to date.)
Therese Anne Fowler, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (I didn't get to attend her reading or booksigning, but I was lucky to find out that the bookseller's table had a stack of autographed novels. Will likely read during the trip tomorrow/Monday).
So, yeah, I had fun again this year.
Friday:
Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni (I actually first read this in ebook format back in April, but I thought highly enough of the book to buy a hardcover edition so I could get it autographed by Wecker.
Denise Kiernan, The Girls of Atomic City (I have had a review copy since March, but something or another kept coming up and I haven't yet finished it. I plan on finishing it either Sunday or Monday, while I'm riding 10+ hours each day in the car on my way to/from Dallas).
Gene Luen Yang, Boxers; Saints - (Two-volume graphic novel on the Chinese Boxer Rebellion was recently longlisted for the 2012 National Book Award for Young Peoples' Literature. 175 pages into Boxers and it's very, very good)
Saturday:
Al Gore, The Future (looking forward to reading this during the car trip; Gore gave a good lecture on topics covered in the book)
Nate Powell, Swallow Me Whole (ARC of this award-winning graphic novel. Powell was very pleasantly surprised to see this and he and John Aydin (see below) talked about how this book got Powell the job of illustrating March: Book One. Excellent read; highly, highly recommended)
Representative John Lewis, John Aydin (co-writers) and Nate Powell (illustrator), March: Book One (Graphic novel adaptation of Lewis's early life up to his involvement in the 1959-1960 Nashville sit-ins. It was an honor to get to shake his hand at the signing.)
Ron Rash, Nothing Gold Can Stay (I had already read about 120 pages out of this 224 page short fiction collection. Very good work.)
Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club; We are all completely beside ourselves (Fowler asked me why I had decided to read her earlier book and I said that I liked most of the "classics" and that I was an English and social studies teacher. When she inquired further and I said I currently taught middle school, that's when she decided to write the inscriptions that she wrote. The latter novel is one of the best 2013 releases to date.)
Therese Anne Fowler, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (I didn't get to attend her reading or booksigning, but I was lucky to find out that the bookseller's table had a stack of autographed novels. Will likely read during the trip tomorrow/Monday).
So, yeah, I had fun again this year.
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2 comments:
Those look great! I love getting books signed at conventions, it's so much fun when authors leave little messages and draw pictures.
Indeed, plus I love hearing some talk about their lives and how their works came to be. I jokingly said Saturday to my middle brother that my only regret was not being able to get my Al Gore book personalized. I wonder if he would have written "Manbearpig!" if I had requested it...
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