Books, BOOKS and MoRE bOOks

Just came back to Earth from Heaven

One of my FAVORITE events of the year

took place Wednesday through Sunday

The Virginia Festival of the Book

 

Each year hundreds of writers come to town

To talk about their books in presentations and panels

There are multiple events in multiple locations each hour

From 9AM to 8PM for 5 days.

The city, the county, local businesses and the

Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

sponsor these

And for the most part they are free

(which is becoming harder and harder to do as you can imagine)

Unfortunately I was

SO INVOLVED

That I took very few pictures.

I attended an event entitled

“Virginia Stories: History and Geography”

About The Canal on the James (river that is) and The Great Dismal Swamp and The Great Valley Road of Virginia.

A multimedia presentation and talk by astronomer Stephen Martin about his book
Cosmic Conversations

This was a  discussion panel at the main library

all 3 authors did good presentations and readings

Their books sounded very interesting.

The woman on the right discovered

A picture she’d never seen before

when going through her father’s things after his death.

It was her mother at age 13 dressed in traditional Iranian Wedding Dress

standing next to an older man she was obviously not so

happily going to marry. 

The author was totally unaware that her mother

had a previous life and marriage in Iran

including another daughter.

The book  The Good Daughter is the story of the author’s grandmother and mother

and the life her mother ran away from.

I would love to read it but can't add one more thing to

the weight in the RV.  Hope I can find it somewhere somehow to read.

The woman in the middle grew up in a strict Amish family

and was forced, as is their custom, to leave school in the 8^th grade.

She struggled and struggled with that limitation in her life and

eventually left everything she knew to pursue her education.

My Life With The Amish would also be an interesting and informative read.

The male author wrote about his experience as a secular humanist

dealing with his 3 year old son coming home from pre-school

and asking if he knew who God was and what he did

His book was entitled

Between a Church and A Hard Place: One Faith Free Dad's Struggle to Understand what it means to be Religious (or not)

Another I hope to find on the road.

I attended poetry readings

in bookstores.

 

Overflowing crowds sitting on stairs

Presentations in City Council chambers

And in Outdoor gear stores. 

This is Blue Ridge Mountain Sports

 

The young woman in orange wrote

Becoming Odyssa: Epic Adventures on the Appalachian Trail.

She has now hiked it 3 times since her first hike at age 21 when she had never been backpacking ONE TIME

and DID NO training

for this 2100 mile hike. 

Her last Hike done in 57 days

broke the women’s time record for hiking the trail

and this summer

she plans to try to break the men’s record

which will require that she hike FORTY FIVE miles a day.  

GOOD GRIEF!!

 I attended GREAT talks on Environmental books from authors
who looked much happier when they were talking than here while
they were waiting 

 

The ENTIRE town turns into a bibliophile’s dream

There are Forums on publishing, sci fi, how to write a mystery.

Gatherings of mystery writers

children’s book writers

Book events for children

It is SIMPLY AMAZING

Check it out at www.vabook.org

I won’t drag it out by detailing any more events. 

Suffice it to say

That this year I

limited

myself to

ELEVEN

Of the HUNDREDS of events

Going on Wednesday through Saturday.

And that took

serious self control

BUT

I’ve actually been able to learn from

My past mistakes over the 17 years

that the festival and I have

been meeting like this

and I know

that I won’t make it past

Thursday if I don’t control myself!!

I pretty much did nothing else

at least Wednesday through Friday

I know, I know,

I should have been

Getting ready to get

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

But I couldn’t help myself

It was here, I was here and I had to do it!

Just couldn’t leave that cookie on the plate.

But then

Life IS all about

Livin’ it

and

Lovin’ it

I had a

GREAT TIME

Doing

JUST THAT.

BUT………………

 that wasn’t the only thing happening this week-end…….

(check back tomorrow for the big Equinox/Birthday week-end post)

Do you have an special annual event that you just hate to miss??