National Book Festival was a grand time

My daughter Megan and I waited a year to attend the National Book Festival downtown yesterday, and it was worth the wait.

There were big-name authors and ones I never heard of in large tents about a half mile long. They gave 30-minute talks, which kept things brisk. There were supposedly 130,000 people there for a big-time feel. The rain was constant for half of it, but as they say, it didn’t dampen spirits.

I had never attended any of those festivals downtown so here’s one more thing off my list along with going inside the Smithsonian castle on the mall. You’ve seen it – the dark brown stone so out of character on the mall. It’s where the Smithsonian lived. In fact, his remains are in one of the rooms. So that’s two things off the list around town.

Next up – one of these days I have to go to the White House. Can’t believe I’ve never been in there.

Anyway, Ken Burns was pretty interesting talking about the TV series on national parks that starts tonight. Big crowd there. James Swanson gave an impressive talk about Lincoln based on his two assassination books. As a relative of John Wilkes Booth who lives on a few miles from Dr. Mudd’s house, I found Swanson’s books very accurate.

James Patterson was engaging. But you talk about engaging, Paula Dean was amazing. I’ve never seen her cooking shows, only the SNL skits about more butter. But she was a pip. I could have listened to her all day.

It was also interesting listening to a couple lesser known writers. One was a Dominican who wrote this supposedly depressing book that everyone loved. Took him seven years. Seven years? I’ve co-written or written seven books and never needed more than a few months for any. I truly understand what he meant when someone asked if he’d write a sequel and he said his last thought when handing in the manuscript was blank-you to it. I’d hate it, too. But, he was very thought provoking. I found it interesting to listen to someone who loves writing and talks about the art form. Some days I think newspaper people like myself just see it as a paycheck and forget it was once our passion. That’s to our shame.

There was also an Iranian woman who wrote a popular book about life in Iran for women. It was more of a political rally than about a book, but that’s OK. If we’re ever going to understand another culture, we need to meet people from it.

My daughter even had dinner (a tweetup!) with 28 book bloggers like herself from across the country that met for the first time. That’s pretty cool. I sat at the bar and watched football games while she spent a couple hours with them. The Elephant and Castle around 12th and Pennsylvania Ave. is a great British pub.

So after 11 hours, we made it home. And, I was pretty tired. Still, it’s a great experience. I just don’t know if I’ll say yes to going again next year. Probably. Can’t let getting old stop you from going to things.