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Monday, September 3, 2007
Did you go to Decatur Book Fest?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So who went to the Decatur Book Fest? Who did you see? Anybody really good? Any scandalous tales of drunken authors late at night at Twain’s?
I went both days, and thought it came off pretty great, even if I do get a paycheck from a sponsor. I heard unofficially that crowds ran more than 70,000 over the two days, and sometimes it seemed like all of them had just shown up at the venue I wanted to go to.
Friday night I got stuck in traffic in front of Agnes Scott College and by the time I got to Kinky Friedman, the place was full and the “overflow room” (video feed) was about to overflow. So I missed Kinky.
But I got to see Roy Blount Jr., who packed the auditorium at the Decatur Library. When I got there the staff told me the room was full. “But I’m a blogger!” I explained. And once again those words worked their magic and got me standing room in the very back.
Roy was great and had the room in stitches. He’s been up North for 40 years now, and the longer he stays away from the South, the more Southern he sounds.
Kathy Hogan Trocheck (a close personal friend of this blog) also packed the place and was fantastic. She writes Southern chick lit under her pen name Mary Kay Andrews, and explained why she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize at least as much as Jimmy Carter:
“I make a lot of hormonal women happy; I think that’s a blow for peace!” The room, which was probably 80 percent female and over 40, was rockin’.
Diana Gabaldon pleased her fans by telling them she not only is writing the seventh installment of “Outlander,” but has decided there will be an eighth as well.
I caught Alan Weisman reading terrific stuff from his best-seller “The World Without Us,” which I now have to go buy, and got to introduce Melissa Fay Greene, a singular treat.
Come on, I know it’s Labor Day, but take a second to tell us what you saw, liked, and didn’t like at the Decatur Book Fesitval.
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