One short week after my Literary Adventures in Boston, I found myself back in Beantown for more literary adventures with the Boston Book Festival. My first stop was Trinity Church for a program with Children’s authors. Being a lover of books for all ages, I was especially looking forward to Rick Riordan discussing his stories of Greek Mythology.
I did not plan the festival very well.
When I got to the church, I noticed a long, long, did I mention long? line of kids. Now, don’t get me wrong: children are much more imaginative than most adults, and I do appreciate them. But the thought of being in a room with so many of them, making more noise than a library worker can bear, was not the way I wanted to start the festival.
After being handed a program with the BBF events, I spotted some benches to the side of Copley Square and decided to see what else was going on. When I arrived at the benches, I was in for a surprise: free books! Traveling books! All the books were thin, and the idea was to read them and send them off after recording an entry on the website that was tracking where the book had been. I saw a few that I was interested in reading, but my eye was drawn to one particular book that I had been searching for in vain for one of my friends who lives in a different state. Already, the festival was getting off to a good start.
I rerouted my first venue to the Church of the Covenant (so many churches in Boston!), where I learned about horror fiction with three authors whose books I’ve not read (most likely because I’m a scaredy cat and don’t read horror). But it was nice to learn about an unfamiliar genre.
After that, the next talk I heard was called “Masters of Fantasy,” a panel that included Gregory Magurie, whose book Wicked I highly recommend, and that took place in another church, which at times felt ironic whenever magic and the supernatural were mentioned.
A popular theme I had seen in both of these events is that there is a connection between writers and the books they read as children. This just goes to show that, to be a better writer, you need to first be a good reader.
Stay tuned for more about the festival from Editor Sandy!
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