LA Times Festival of Books – Day 1 Recap
Hello! If you follow me on Intagram or Twitter, you may have noticed that this past weekend was the annual LA Times Festival of Books, aka Bookchella, aka Festival of Buying too many books, lugging them home and sneaking them inside. That last one is from my friend Kimberly. It’s a really fun but tiring event held on campus at the University of Southern California. Sometimes I only go for one day but this year’s line-up was too good and was there for the majority of both days. This year’s fest was heavily YA oriented for me. I am going to try to keep this recap somewhat brief. :)
Saturday morning I met up with my friends Laura N, Kimberly and Katie bright and early. We took the metro (which I rarely take) and made it to campus right on time. After picking up our handy press badges (thanks, LA Times!) we proceeded to meet up with Nicole an take a quick walk about the grounds before our first panels.
Food trucks are all the rage and it looks like publishers are getting in on the action, too. Besides the Library Store Truck, which I’ve seen a lot, Penguin also had a book truck. It was really fun seeing the books like this and I ended up grabbing a copy of Attachments and The Day the Crayons Quit from the truck.
After that I headed over to Norris Hall for my first panel of the day which was Young Adult Fiction: Testing the Boundaries with E, Lockhart, Rainbow Rowell, Andrew Smith, John Corey Whaley and moderated by Aaron Hartzler. This was a really great mix of authors. They spoke in length about the boundaries that their characters push and the boundaries that they come across as authors.
After the panel I hurried on over to the signing area, where a formidable line had already started. A lot of people were there for Rainbow Rowell. Everyone was super nice though and I had a nice wait with them.
Finally it was time for me to see Rainbow and I don’t remember much of what I said except probably that she was awesome. She also had some fantastic Fangirl nails going on and I asked her if I could snap a pic of them. How adorable is she?
While in line for Rainbow I also snuck over to get a copy of Noggin signed by John Corey Whaley. Corey is a great speaker and I always love seeing him on tour. His newest book sounds fantastic and I can’t wait to read it.
After this signing, my friend and I quickly went to the Pages booth to see if we could catch Oliver Jeffers and Drew Daywalt, the illustrator and author of the picture book The Day the Crayons Quit. I love this book and have a bit of a crush on Oliver Jeffers so it was fun seeing them.
After a very quick lunch at Lemonade, it was time to get ready for my last panel of the day. On our way back to the hall, we saw that the John Green line was still going strong. This was around 3:45 and I think his line started a little after 1pm. It was not short when we went by it either. I heard that John Green signed for several hours, making him a hero in my book. Here’s a drive by photo of him.
My final panel on Saturday was Young Adult Fantasy: The Real & the Unreal with Soman Chainani, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Margaret Stohl, Laini Taylor and moderator John Corey Whaley. I was really excited about this panel because I love Laini Taylor and thought that this group of authors was an interesting mix. Soman Chainini really impressed me and was really funny. Unfortunately the signing booth was out of his book The School of Good and Evil, but I managed to pick up a signed copy of it at a booth the next day.
After the panel it was off to the signing line again. Luckily our friend had her father get in line quite early and we were near the front of the line. I was so excited to see Laini and I am pretty sure I made no sense, but she was sweet and signed my book.
By this time it was after 6pm and my friends and I were done for. We climbed back on the subway and made it home in order to rest up for Sunday’s events. Special shout out to the many bookish friends I saw that day, even if it was just briefly. I’ll be back soon with my day 2 recap!
