Category Archives: Book Column

Authors, Book Column, Book Talk, Events

Four Southern Book Festivals

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If you live in the South then you know the value of sweet tea and front porches. It’s those values that the following four book festivals, no matter how big or small they are, has in spades. Plus, you get to meet authors, listen to readings, buy books, and get your books signed. Did I mention there are books there? Check out what these four Southern book festivals have to offer in 2014:

Alabama Book FestivalAlabama Book Festival  Saturday, April 19, 2014 – for its 9th year, it will be held in Montgomery, AL’s, beautiful Old Alabama Town . It’s a wonderful venue, with walking paths between period buildings filled with authors giving talks and books to be bought. The Alabama Book Festival also has a great Children’s area with costumed characters and free books for kids. All those front porches in Old Alabama Town also mean that you never have to fear the rain as there’s always a place to gain cover.

Decatur Book FestivalDecatur Book Festival August 29th – August 31st, 2014 – this is a pretty large event, in Decatur, GA, and worth making the trip, if you don’t mind crowds. They have yet to publish a schedule or list of authors who will be attending, but they always have a list of big names that are fun to see (and have sign copies of your books!).

Southern Festival of BooksSouthern Festival of Books October 10th – October 12th, 2014 – this is another big event, in Nashville, TN. They always have 250+ authors, plus the added bonus of hosting a special venue for readings, literary performances and music (hey, it’s Nashville). I’ve heard that the hotel rooms are already all booked up. But they’re also planning an Authors in the Round Dinner, where you can buy a ticket to eat and chat with 40 visiting authors. That sounds kind of neat.

Mid-South Book FestivalMid-South Book Festival September 27th, 2014 – this one is a bit of a dark horse… a start up… a black swan, maybe? Held in Memphis, TN, this will be the inaugural year for Literacy Mid-South’s new book festival.  I don’t know what to expect, but I’m excited, because the folks organizing sure seem excited. It’s 2014, everyone should be in start-up mode, right!? I can’t wait to see what these folks put together to promote books and a life-long love of reading.

Authors, Book Column, Writing

Amor Towles Talks Writing

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Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility was one of my favorite books I read in 2012. It’s such a good book and so well written. I just ran across this very short interview with Towles asking about his writing and writing habits. I was surprised that Rules of Civility was written in just a year! And it was intentionally done so:

I gave myself one year to write that first draft because I wanted to maintain the brightness, the lightness, the nice poetic urgency that is part of the first draft.

You see, that makes sense to me. That’s actually encouraging. In the interview, Towles also offers some thoughts on inspiration and finding time to write (he had two young kids when he wrote Rules of Civility).

Amor Towels

But I also like what he had to say about revising his work:

I revised Rules of Civility from beginning to end three times in three years. All of that revision work was driven by the goal of economy.

It wasn’t about just the poetry or turn of a phrase, though if you read Towels’ book you’ll see he nailed those as well. I like the idea of writing with economy in mind. That has a very ‘newspaper’ feel to it. A feel that a reader would find useful and appreciate when reading a long novel.

Go read the full article. It’ll only take you a few minutes, but it’s packed (economically so) with wonderful insights that are immediately applicable to your own writing. And Amor Towels pulls no punches when it comes to “being a writer”:

Writing is a craft. It’s not a mystical state. It’s not a single emotion. It is craft.

And a craft can be learned. Very insightful and encouraging!

Book Column, Games for Readers, Gifts for Book Lovers

Book Trivia Board Game

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Here is a great “gifts for book lovers” that I stumbled upon: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, is a book trivia board game all about books.

book trivia game

I haven’t played this one yet, but it sounds like something I’d enjoy. Basically, you and your friends move around the board while trying to identify books by their opening lines or book covers.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night has been for sale via a few sites around the interwebs for a while. The price floats around the $30 mark. A few of the book trivia categories are:

  • novels
  • poetry
  • mysteries
  • children’s books
  • science fiction
  • books made into movies

I have to admit that identifying a book simply by its opening line sounds tough, but maybe it’s all multiple choice. That’d be better.

Good luck and let me know if you’ve played It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. I’d like to know if it’s as fun as I want it to be.

Book Column, Book Talk, On the Web

Google Explore For Book Lovers

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Last week Google launched a new search feature for their Google+ social network. Basically, it adds groupings, tags, etc. and makes the network all searchable so that you can skim through all of the content generated on Google+.

So what’s the first thing I did? I did a few simple searches through Google Explore to see if I could find any books and book-related content that was of interest. I really wasn’t looking for people “curating” (like pinterest or tumblr), but for real content that harkened back to the days of book blog rings and such.

So I clicked on the “Explore” button up top…

google explore book search

and searched for “Books”. I was thankful for the Google Explore displayed all of the books-related tags that I could follow and check out.

google explore books

Early on I found these not worth following because of all the ads, spam and sales pitches:

The rabbit holes I really enjoyed falling down through Google Explore were:

  • #BookReview
  • #AuthorInterview
  • #BookLovers (the best of the bunch)

google explore book lovers

As you can see, once you click on #BookLovers you’re presented with a whole new slate of sub-categories and tags to click through. As new as the feature is (and as under-used as Google+ is) it’s not hard to quickly separate the signal from the noise and find folks worth following. From there it’s a single-click to add them to a new (or old) circle to keep up with them.

When I next have a few free moments I’m going to click around with category, subject and book genre searches. Hopefully those will yield more leads to books worth reading. So check it out and let me know if you find any bookish folks worth following.