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Is Reading Dead? Not for 150,000 Who Thronged the L.A. Times Festival of Books!
By: Ken Fermoyle
  Crowd shots w/Royce Hall in background. The event spreads over all of the campus but this are is pretty much the center of the Festival. |
For me, that is the annual Los Angeles Festival of Books, held every spring on the beautiful University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Some 150,000 book lovers swarmed over the sprawling UCLA campus on the last weekend of April this year in a powerful testimonial to the power of the printed page.
They ranged in age from toddlers and tots in prams and strollers to teens, twenty-somethings, plus middle-age boomers and gray-haired seniors, some obviously in their 70s or even 80s. There were scholarly types, but many more who didn't fit the stereotype of “book people.” Some wore heavy metal T-shirts, others clung to styles reminiscent of the '60s and 70s. Footwear ranged from cowboy boots and Doc Martens to sandals, sneakers and suede Hush Puppies.
In short, it was a diverse crowd, but with one over-riding thing in common: a genuine love of books and reading.
Saturday's featured authors included Daniel Ellsberg, Mark Bowden, Po Bronson, Pete Hamill, Richard Rodriguez, Joyce Appleby, Philip Dray, Mary Norton, Samantha Power, Timothy Ferris, and others.
Many other distinguished names dotted the lists of panelists and authors who signed books for long lines of faithful readers. Among them were:
 Elmore Leonard: Mystery writer, signing books. |
In short, there was something, or somebody, for every reader present. And that's without even considering the winners and finalists for the L.A. Times Book Prizes, which are a centerpiece of the Festival of Books every year.
 MRA: Elmore Leonard (sunglasses), one of the deans of contemporary mystery writers, signs in the Mystery Writers of America/Mystery Bookstore (L.A.) Booth. |
 Several giant crossword puzzles scattered around the Festival grounds attracted crowds of word puzzle fans. |
BIOGRAPHY
Winner:
Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3 (Alfred A. Knopf)
Finalists:
Gioconda Belli, The Country under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War (Alfred A. Knopf)
Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (Viking)
T.J. Stiles, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf)
Claire Tomalin, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (Alfred A. Knopf)
CURRENT INTEREST
Winner:
Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (University of Minnesota Press)
Finalists:
Timothy Ferris, Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Space and Guarding Earth from Interplanetary Peril (Simon & Schuster)
Nicolaus Mills and Kira Brunner (editors), The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention (Basic Books)
Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (Broadway Books)
Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (Basic Books)
FICTION
Winner;
Ian McEwan, Atonement: A Novel (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
Finalists:
Peter Cameron, The City of Your Final Destination (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Aleksandar Hemon, Nowhere Man (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
Kate Jennings, Moral Hazard: A Novel (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins)
Joanna Scott, Tourmaline: A Novel (Little, Brown and Company)
HISTORY
Winner:
Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press)
Finalists:
Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (Random House)
Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (Basic Books)
Gregg Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (A John Macrae Book/Henry Holt)
Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (Alfred A. Knopf)
MYSTERY/THRILLER
Winner:
Finalists:
Tod Goldberg, Living Dead Girl: A Novel (Soho Press)
Henning Mankell, One Step Behind [translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg] (The New Press)
Scott Turow, Reversible Errors (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
POETRY
Winner:
Finalists:
John Koethe, North Point North: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers)
J.D. McClatchy, Hazmat: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)
Harryette Mullen, Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California Press)
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Winner:
Finalists:
Judith Hooper, Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale, the Untold Story of Science and the Peppered Moth (W.W. Norton)
Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History (Walker and Company)
Richard Preston, The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story (Random House)
YOUNG ADULT FICTION
Winner:
Finalists:
Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby: A Novel (Viking/Penguin Young Readers Group)
E.R. Frank, America: A Novel (A Richard Jackson Book/Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Joyce Carol Oates, Big Mouth & Ugly Girl (HarperTempest/HarperCollins)
THE ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION
Winner:
Finalists:
Jay Basu, The Stars Can Wait: A Novel (Henry Holt and Company)
Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin Company)
Nicole Krauss, Man Walks into a Room (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
Hari Kunzru, The Impressionist (Dutton/Penguin Group (USA))
George P. Pelecanos, Hell to Pay: A Novel (Little, Brown and Company)
Stephen L. Carter, The Emperor of Ocean Park (Alfred A. Knopf)
Cynthia Zarin, The Watercourse: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)
Terrance Hayes, Hip Logic (Penguin Books)
Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (HarperCollins Publishers)
Deborah Blum, Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection (Perseus Publishing)
M.T. Anderson, Feed (Candlewick Press)
Kate Banks, Dillon Dillon (Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Arthur Phillips, Prague: A Novel (Random House)