London Book Fair
LBF, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, was quite the experience. I have been to many fairs in my life, but none have been anything like this one. From the first morning when I arrived, I was in awe. Earls Court was filled with books to the last corner, and people who make their livelihood writing, publishing, selling or distributing them: heaven. While even after three days I am still not entirely sure what deals were being struck at all those tables, I have come across many people whom I’ve had the utmost respect for for a long time. I ended up buying a cup of coffee next to Richard Charkin, CEO of Bloomsbury, Cory Doctorow rushed past me in the Digital Zone, and I met a lot of new, interesting people.
I went to talks by Richard Charkin, Cory Doctorow, James Bridle, the winners of the International Young Publishing Entrepreneur Award, I saw interviews with Kazuo Ishiguro and Boris Anukin. I went to a seminar with David Rowan, Frank Rose and Matt Locke, and to one with Tom Hall, Joe Pickering, Davina Quarterman and Angus Phillips. I saw presentations by companies such as Sideways and iPublishCentral. And I spent £1.95 on a tea that I had to drink black because they were out of milk.
To tell the truth, my brain is still trying to catch up with the massive amount of information that got dumped on it these past few days. I got a real buzz from learning from these people – I took more notes at the LBF than during most lectures. I could hardly keep up with scribbling down all the knowledge that got thrown at me, and it felt absolutely amazing!
I also loved the fact that I had so many languages around me constantly. French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish… This is my world (and multilingualism is about the only thing I really miss about my home country). Constantly switching languages and being surrounded by books, while learning from the very best in the industry: there cannot possibly be anything better. I cannot wait for LBF 2012.
Tibor Fischer interviewed Boris Anukin.
Boris Anukin spoke about he doesn’t read fiction anymore, and about the origins of the Russian crime genre.
Kazuo Ishiguro spoke about his next book and how authors may be able to survive in a world where books are pirated.
I was tempted to listen in on some of the talks at these tables, but the space was too open to do it inconspicuously.
Lost? There were close to 1700 different companies at the fair.
This, quite frankly, shocked me a lot, and I could never work for such a publisher.
I don’t know anything about Boris Anukin, but I’m curious why he no longer reads fiction. I’m actually getting to a place where I have no desire to read fiction. The trade just puts out too much crap every year. The nonfiction stuff is the only thing worth reading to me. :P
I’d never heard of him either. I went there early to make sure I’d get a seat for Kazuo Ishiguro, and he was being interviewed before. He was a really interesting guy, I’ll probably grab one of his novels after this proposal is done. As far as I remember, he said he stopped reading fiction when he started writing it himself, and will only read it again when he retires. I guess he doesn’t want to be influenced by other writers.
I’ve mostly been reading non-English stuff lately, because I got fed up with “the next big thing” on the 3for2 tables. I love German author Daniel Kehlmann, especially his latest work Fame: A Novel in Nine Episodes (I think that’s the last novel I read in one go). Norwegian author Erlend Loe’s Naive. Super is pretty good as well, it read a bit like a modern day Herman Hesse. There are good authors out there, it just takes a while to sift through all the crap…
An English one I do love to recomend is John Banville’s The Sea. An absolutely amazing novel.