Hitting the Books

The SB and I just scored two of the coveted Barnes and Noble wristbands necessary to attend Lemony Snicket's reading at the Texas Book Festival next weekend. Yes, believe it or not, we will wake up at a resonable hour on a Saturday morning and haul ourselves up to Austin. The event is being held at the beautiful Paramont Theater and should be a real treat. We love us some Lemony Snicket, aka Daniel Handler. Lemony Snickett = best. pen. name. ever. Also, we hear he is good friends with Stephin Merritt, the creative genius behind the band that is the Magnetic Fields.

We're also planning on attending I've Been Banned, a panel of young adult / teen authors who've written books that deal with "controversial" subjects like cutting and homosexuality. One of the authors, David Levithan, is the founding editor of the PUSH imprint (which we've written about before). Jorie Graham and Salman Rushdie are also reading / being interviewed, but their times overlap a bit. We'll probably go see Rushdie since we've seen Graham before. Ever since the foetry thing everyone has been pretty down on Graham , but we still really like many of her poems, and she's one of the few poets we've seen who is actually fun to watch (besides Heather McHugh, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty).

We'll also probably visit the cooking tent where both Mark Bittman and Ted Allen will be shelling their wares and wisdom. Ted is one of the least annoying guys or Queer Eye and the SB uses his Mark Bittman book several times a week. Speaking of food, we're also hoping to stop at the Driskill 1886 cafe and bakery for breakfast in between the morning sessions. They have waffles in the shape of the state of texas. And really good coffee.

Lemondy Snicket "author photos" courtesy lemonysnicket.com