Texas Book Festival: (Belated) Recap!!

The Texas Book Festival was: Awesome! Inspiring! Funny! Creative! And basically an all around good time. The capitol was the perfect place to have it. Book lovers and writers alike (is there really a distinction?) could be seen hurrying through it's majestic halls and climbing it's stoically ornate stairways to get to their next seminar. The capital grounds and much of Congress Ave. were covered in white tents full of books. It was overwhelming the number of books in those tents! How could anyone hope to look at them, much less read them all! Of course (because writers are cool), the seminars/interviews/panels with different writers were all wonderful, and believe me, there was something for everyone. But- I'm getting ahead of myself. Because I know you're all dying to see them, here are some pictures!

Sunrise on the way to Austin.

Authors on parenting spoke in the Senate Room. (My parents wanted see this, but it was actually more interesting than I expected)

My Dad and me 

This was a wonderful sight- and there were more like this. A lot more!

Yes, that's Louis Sachar and Mary Worlitzer!

Mom and me on the Senate Room floor! Those chairs are comfy!

Just had to take this. So beautiful!

Austin's two most famous domes! (One is a little more famous than the other...)

BEST INDIAN FOOD EVER!!!

We went on a nighttime tour of the State Cemetery. There was a HUGE crowd, so it wasn't quite as fun as we'd hoped. That, and we were tired! 

There's Thomas Mullen!!! (Second to last on the left) This was a panel on Genre Bending fiction. A lot of people were there to see  Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus (which I am planning to read, eventually), but I wish more people knew about Thomas Mullen. He deserves more notice!

This guy was great! He read a passage from one of his middle grade novels inspired by the Hardy Boys series. It was highly entertaining!

View from the Senate Room balcony window. Look closely and you can see the tops of the white tents!

One of the best panels was one with Kate Dicamillo and Rebecca Stead. Those two could be stand up comedians! I wish I had a picture to show you, but we were so mesmerized by all that energy in one place, we never got a chance to take one! If you EVER get a chance to hear either one of them speak I highly recommend it. 

Anyway, I had a great time (can you tell?). The weather was perfect, the people were friendly, and the writers were inspiring. I came home with three book marks, a (signed!) copy of Thomas Mullen's The Revisionists, the book Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris,  a free sample from Penguin with the first three chapters of 9 different books, and-get this- a free notebook! I've got so much reading to do,  and no time at all! But I'm so glad I went to the Texas Book Festival, and (as if I haven't said this enough) I recommend it to anyone and everyone. Hope to see  you there next year!