Midlife crisis list:
#46 Simplify my life
#43a Attend the Southwest Festival of the Written Word in Silver City, New Mexico (October)
#43b Attend the Festival of Books at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona (March)
#42 Meet an author I admire
I love books. I have loved books as long as I can remember. I tend to pick up books wherever I go--those are my favorite souvenirs when I go on a trip. Lately, though, I have noticed that I seem to have books everywhere. Books two rows deep on my bookshelves. Books on the floor by my bed. Books IN my bed when I fall asleep reading them. Books in the family room by my chair and in the living room by my computer and...you get the picture. I have a theory that there is no such thing as too many books, just not enough bookshelves, but I was starting to push the limits of that theory! I realized I might have a serious problem. I started to feel better when a friend of mine told me a book addiction wasn’t a serious problem until you started using your books for furniture. I was pretty happy that I’m not that far along in my addiction. Then she said that also meant stacking books by the bed and using them for a night stand. Definitely guilty of that one!
Deciding to do something about the abundance of books in my home, I took all the books that don’t fit on a bookshelf and put them in one spot. This is when I realized how serious my book addiction really is!
You might not be able to tell in the picture, but the highest part of this stack is 3 books deep!
These are the books that DO fit in the shelves.
Cookbooks and several folders of recipes
Even if I never use all of these recipes, I have fun reading the cookbooks!
In this last picture, the small bookshelf only has one shelf of books. The others are full of movies. Even with those two shelves of movies taken out, I have a LOT of books!
The Plan: Since about 5 of my bookshelves are full of children’s and youth books and my children are grown, I am going to give away some of those books. I will keep the ones my nieces and nephews like to read when they are her and the ones I want to read with my grandchildren one of these days. (This is where the Simplify My Life part comes in.)
My book acquisitions have been slowing down, which has not been easy for me. If you look at the top of this blog, two of the things on my list are book festivals! How do you go to a book festival and walk away without buying any books? I was proud of myself that I managed to keep my book buying to a minimum.
The Southwest Festival of the Written Word in Silver City, New Mexico is a smaller book festival celebrating Southwest authors--both those from the Southwest and those writing about the Southwest. I almost didn’t go because I would be going by myself, but I am really glad I went. The largest author session I attended was about 30-40 people. All the others 25 or fewer people, so it made it very easy to visit with the author afterward if you wanted--and I did. The workshops were scattered around historic downtown Silver City, and I did a lot of walking. I have only been to Silver City a couple of times as an adult, so I was really glad I had my maps!
My two favorite sessions were the writing workshop with Stella Pope Duarte and the writing about cooking session with two authors, Carolyn Niethammer and Rob Connoley. Both of those sessions were held in a Quaker church. I had never been in a Quaker church, so my day was filled with new adventures!
Stella Pope Duarte talked about using your life experiences in your writing. She took us through a few scenarios to get our creativity flowing. She asked us to think of our childhood car. Who rode in the car? Where did we go? Who did we go see? She then told us to use some of those experiences and that emotions in our writing. She was talking about fiction, but I immediately thought about applications for writing my life story. I could write a ton of stories about our old tan van!
The two cookbook authors were very interesting. They had not met each other before, but both of them write about using native plants in recipes. Carolyn Niethammer first started publishing in the 70’s and she has been credited with the beginning of the movement to cook with native plants. Rob Connoley owns a restaurant in Silver City, but the cookbook he has coming out this year is his first book. I found it very interesting, though, that both of them had the same mentor in Silver City when they were learning about native plants in that area!
I had a wonderful time at this festival, and am planning to go again next year. I liked it so much, I have told one author about it and will be telling another actor about it over the summer. Maybe I will see them there in October!
The Tucson Festival of Books is done on a much larger scale. Although it was only two days long, there were over 350 authors in attendance, along with a LOT of people. One news story I saw said that, in the past, about 100,000 people have attended! That is a very large crowd, especially for someone who lives in a town of less than 1000 people!
In Tucson, there were several events where authors were speaking. Since I was only going to be there for one day, I decided to just wander among the hundreds of tents and see what they had to offer. I got to the site of the festival about an hour before it officially began and started wandering. I had two limits on book-buying. First, I couldn’t go over my budget. Second, I couldn’t buy more books than I was willing to carry around the festival for the rest of the day! Since my car was almost a half mile away, this was definitely something I needed to think about as I was buying books!
One of my favorite parts of the Tucson festival was being able to stop and talk to random authors about their books. I liked to ask them to tell me about their books, then ask them which book was their favorite and why it was their favorite. I liked to see their faces light up when they talked about their work.
Two of the books I bought were completely spontaneous purchases. I had stopped by a tent to sit for a few minutes and to listen to the authors talking about their books while I rested. I enjoyed listening to the authors so much that I had to buy their books--and then have them autographed, of course!
Danielle Paige wrote the Dorothy Must Die series.
Rae Carson wrote The Girl of Fire and Thorns
At the end of the day, I finally got to the main reason I went to the festival--meeting one of my favorite authors, Margaret Peterson Haddix. She writes for young adults, and I have liked her books for several years. I was very happy to meet her, tell her how much my students have liked her books, and get her autograph on two books I bought!
I am looking forward to attending both of these book festivals again!
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