TUCSON FESTIVAL OF BOOKS
I’m taking a bit of a break today so I can read FAMOUS AUTHOR’s latest book. That is because I am the volunteer driver for FAMOUS AUTHOR when he comes to the Tucson Festival of Books on March 12 and 13. You can meet him and a couple hundred other authors and see more books than you can believe can be in one city at one time. (Watch for my Twitter quiz and see if you can guess my FAMOUS AUTHOR.)
Just plan your travel to Tucson, park free at one of the University of Arizona parking garages, and walk around the U of A campus. The Festival is free admission, but I can’t control how many books you may buy, not to mention t-shirts and mugs with an adorable tarantula.
You will want to spend two days at the festival–9 acres full of tents and displays and entertainment, 5 program venues each running four programs a day and C-SPAN filming one of the venues. Besides the adult book activities, you can bring your kids to the children’s area, your teens to the science section or the fantasy books or the stage with entertainment by teen bands.
I’ll be at the Western National Parks tent near the main library from one p.m. to two p.m. on Sunday, March 13, introducing Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist. But if you plan to see even half of the stuff you’ll want to see, download the schedule in advance and make a list.
Last year travel writer Rolf Potts made my eyes roll, I enjoyed meeting Margaret Randall , Margaret Regan was a hit with her book on immigrant deaths on the border, and I envied Adele Barker her year in Sri Lanka. I also learned some statistics about LISTENING instead of Reading a Book.
LONGITUDE TRAVEL BOOK SERVICE BLOG
And conveniently, one of my favorite book stops on the Internet, the blog of Longitude Travel Book Service, did a blog post last week about places to eat (and a bit of sightseeing) in Tucson. Don’t miss the good recommendations when you come to Tucson. They are spot on.
I hope you will not get tired of me referring to Browser.com I cannot help myself. They’re just great. Their Five Books each day on a different subject would be worth getting the free newsletter in your e-mail box, but that is just the beginning. After reading some of the works of authors coming to the Festival, I got to thinking about spy novels and their popularity. And lo and behold, here are five articles, interviews and book suggestions all about spies–real and fictional.
PAGE 99
This is just for fun. Just for readers. Do you skip to page 99, read it, decide whether or not to read the entire book? At this site[ which as of August 2014 seems to be shut down], writers submit page 99 of their published or unpublished ms. and when you go to the site, you see a page at a time, presented randomly and you get to vote. Would you read the next page? Would you buy it? Why or why not? Once you have answered, you learn whether this is a published or unpublished work. You can select genres to read, so you don’t have to slog through young adult if that bores you, or whatever. And you can skip right past one that you don’t want to rate. Fun!
I put a page of Quincy Tahoma up and I’m nervously waiting for the jury to return. Sorry, you can’t choose it. You will be presented with random selections.
Would have loved to go for this festival- it sounds absolutely delightful!!! As I said- my blog reader thingy was malfunctioning and your updates didn’t show I’m …so I’m playing a bit of catch up here…have fun driving!
I might get a bit behind on comments in the next couple weeks, as I’m going to be over in Singapore…but I promise whenever I get a chance to check the internet– I will catch up 🙂
Connie: Not that I’m pushing e-mail subscriptions or anything, but if you subscribe by e-mail you aren’t subject to the whims of your RSS reader and they’ll come with you to Singapore. Have a great time over there by the way. We’ll see you when you get back.
looking forward to hearing how things go at the festival. have an idea about famous author, but let me go see if he’s on the festival schedule…
I am never in the right place at the right time. . .until now! Can’t tell you how excited I am to have bumbled our trip planning to coincide with the Book Festival.
See you there! (I’ll be the one with webs between the toes and looking like I’ve just come from Seattle).
You can definitely link to your specific book on Page99 – they keep encouraging me to do exactly that with my sample. To be honest I’m finding it a bit stressy… I’d much prefer to just see the results at the end rather than one at a time!
I can see how I can link to my own entry, but I can’t see a way that I can choose which excerpts to read. Did I miss something?
You get to meet Skippy Jon Jones? 😉 Sounds like a great festival. have a fabulous time with the Famous Author!! Tell us all about it!
You must be a fan! I didn’t even know who Skippy Jon Jones was, and can never remember his name. My hero was the giant Pat-the-Bunny! But there were a dozen other “personalities”.
oh, i wish i was there. i LOVE book festivals! thanks for the great resources!
I’ll put a plug in here for the Culinary Stage, which is going to have great cooking demonstrations by some celebrity chefs (who I am not going to be chauffeuring) and cookbook authors. And of course there’s great local food at the food court. Book shopping is such hungry work!
And Edie is going to be talking about Food–not dogs–not even food for dogs, or hot dogs, I presume. She’s right though, the Culinary Stage is something I have not seen in Book Festivals before and it is riveting. Not to mention the wonderful food court!