Booktopia WA update

Booktopia Bellingham update - I'm not home yet, but I have the opportunity to expand on my quick note from yesterday. There were seven authors at Booktopia and the whole weekend was a treat. I loved being surrounded by people who are passionate about reading. Everyone was so friendly and I found it easy to get into conversations in between sessions, even though I'm an introvert. We talked about books, of course.

The authors were: Peter Clines, Jonathan Evison, Ru Freeman, Caroline Leavitt, Rhonda Riley, Jan-Philipp Sendker, and Maggie Shipstead. Shipstead was the only one I'd heard of before Ann and Michael announced the author line-up for this event. Like many of the other attendees, I tried to read as many of the books as possible before attending, and I got through five. Follow the links above to my reviews. I haven't posted anything about Shipstead's satirical Seating Arrangements yet, but I'll be discussing it at my Two Bichons book group later this week.

Sendker's book was the only one (out of the five) that I did not enjoy, but there were many readers there who loved it. One woman said she never expected that a love story between a blind man and a crippled woman in Burma would even interest her, but she declared it ended up being the best book she had read in her life! Sendker asked her why she read it, since she didn't think she would like it. She told him it was because it was for Booktopia. (I'd recommend The Art of Hearing Heartbeats to people who liked Secret Daughter.)

Because so many people had read the books beforehand, the sessions with the authors were somewhat like book discussions. I cannot stress enough how special that is. A number of the authors expressed a similar pleasure, since they usually have to convince people to read their books when they attend author readings. Thank you to Michael and Ann of Books on the Nightstand for organizing this event!