It’s Book Fest Day! We’ve embedded the #dbf2015 Twitter and Facebook feeds here and you can use the comments section of this thread to let us know what you’re up to! (Photo courtesy of Parker Cross)
Tweets by @DBookFestival
Decatur Book Festival
Decatur Book Festival Open Thread!!
What’s the status of the County parking deck? Still free or not?
C’mon, y’all. How many headline exclamation points will it take to get some comments going here?
I think the Facebook has made it a tough business for event open threads. I should have asked for pics too!
Really like the cooking stage set up this year!
Answering my own question- parking is still free. Managed to find a spot on the 1st level!
Hot
Who?
Weather
Not telling you your business, DM, but I don’t see how you can possibly keep up with the tweets. DBF2015 was trending in Atlanta all day and the top tag all afternoon until football muscled it down a notch or two.
Personally I had a whale of a time.
I saw The Hidden History of America at War: Untold Tales from Yorktown to Fallujah by Kenneth C Davis.
That was super-interesting and Mr. Davis spoke generously of the beauty of our old courthouse, which was nice.
I saw Mountain Vengeance, Julia Keller and Brian Panowich, moderated by (Decatur’s own)Thomas Mullen. Very lively talk about crime fiction in rural settings and the relative merits of DC vs Marvel.
I also attended This Woman’s Work with Ashley C. Ford, Randa Jarrar, Mari Naomi, and Kirstin Valdez Quade, four writers new to me. I’m not exactly sure what the point of this panel was but the conversation was lively and the audience was engaged.
I also drank a bit of wine, walked around the book stalls, and met up with lots of friends.
A great day and I am looking forward to tomorrow.
Something I learned today: those giant crossword puzzles–they erase them when filled so they can be done again, and again, and again. All these years, I’ve tried not to fill in too many answers so that others could have a chance too.
IMHO, the festival just gets smoother and smoother.
I was a bit bummed to find out that the talk I was most looking forward to seeing was actually titled “Black Man in a White Coat” and not “Fat Man in a Little Coat” as I had thought. And I found this out AFTER they made me chug my beer because it wasn’t allowed in the church for some stupid reason. Grrrrr. But all that aside, it turned out to be great and I highly recommend Damon Tweedy’s book to anyone interested in a good read by a keenly observant doctor’s experiences with race and identity.
Someone from WABE must be hooking up NPR this weekend, because they had interviews with both Jong and Dr. Tweedy this morning. And yet no mention of the festival (that I heard).
I had a great time and saw several interesting speakers, especially in the science tavern track.
I have some suggestions for the organizers:
#1. Get to the point. We are there to hear the authors not the Stage Captains nor the introducer/moderator. Principally I’m talking about the stage captains instructions and the introductions. Put the rules, (cell phones silent, tweet @…) on a big sign or a slide and have the captains sprint through them. They could use laser pointers for emphasis. And I’m not interested in the full CV of the introducer/moderator — two sentences about him/her is enough.
#2. Stay on the point. It feels like some of the moderators want to make the presentations about their agenda or their interpretation of the book so that we might admire their insight and brilliance. Halfway through one session a little old lady raised her hand then called out, “This was supposed to be about War and Redemption not about writing.” The moderator was a writing teacher and a writer so all his questions were about writing. Which was fine by me, I was enjoying it, but writing wasn’t really the point.
My best DBF experience yet. Logistical execution seemed smoother than ever, very impressive!
Agree wholeheartedly with both of unclecharlie’s suggestions and respectfully add:
– Enforce the ban on food and drinks in session rooms. Crunchy snacks, food in noisy packaging and (must it really be said? Apparently, yes) meals in creaky styrofoam takeout containers have no place inside these rooms. It can be a challenge to grab a bite between sessions but that goes with the territory. (And longer intervals this year helped.) School the volunteer staff and empower them to stand firm.
– Another assignment for stage captains and staff: when a session is likely to fill up, start early encouraging people to get cozy and fill in seating in the middle. It’s disappointing to be turned away but even worse when you know the space could accommodate a few more (or many more) folks if everybody would just squoze. Left to their own devices, most people around here leave plenty of elbow room in all directions but if asked nicely to scoot over and make room, most will graciously do so. We just need to be reminded.
– Please, please, please make it easier to cross-reference between the schedule and session descriptions. Could be an app (with an Android version, please!!!) or a printed supplement to the printed schedule, or a more mobile-friendly main site that contains such a cross-reference… just some way to plan ahead and also navigate on the fly, for those of us who can’t quite memorize the entire program listing.
Great job!
unclecharlie and smalltowngal, thanks for the detailed and worthwhile suggestions. Our stage captains do great work, but sometimes they need more guidance.