Book Festivals All Around
Posted by: David Bunch
Segovia, Spain is having a book festival this month, purporting to rival the festival in "the town of books", Hay-On-Wye.
Interestingly, Paul Collins is currently a featured author at a book festival in Italy called Festivaletteratura, which is happening now in Mantova, Italy. Collins is blogging from there and his story about being asked to name his top 5 books is quite amusing.
Segovia, Spain is having a book festival this month, purporting to rival the festival in "the town of books", Hay-On-Wye.
There will be all the high-brow talks, performances and celebrity interviews you'd expect from what Bill Clinton dubbed 'the Woodstock of the mind'...Hay-On-Wye is an interesting place and one of the best books to read all about it is in Paul Collins' memoir on living there entitled Sixpence House.
Interestingly, Paul Collins is currently a featured author at a book festival in Italy called Festivaletteratura, which is happening now in Mantova, Italy. Collins is blogging from there and his story about being asked to name his top 5 books is quite amusing.
Bizarrely, in the course of 10 interviews in a row on Wednesday alone -- a guaranteed way to lose your grip on reality, incidentally -- I was asked 5 times in succession: "Name 5 books that everyone should own." The first to throw this spanner into my gears was a TV crew from RAI 1, one of the national channels. My response: to stand stunned for a moment and then say, "Turn off the camera. I need a minute."Eventually, I gave them this response: "Everybody should have five books that they haven't seen in anybody else's house."
