{"id":630,"date":"2009-04-26T22:07:17","date_gmt":"2009-04-27T05:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/?p=630"},"modified":"2009-04-26T22:07:17","modified_gmt":"2009-04-27T05:07:17","slug":"book-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/?p=630","title":{"rendered":"Book Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend we all went to the LA Times Festival of Books at UCLA. The number of stalls was noticeably smaller this year: a whole row of children&#8217;s publishers was gone. We saw the following panels:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Real Science (K. C. Cole moderating, with Carl Zimmer, Leonard Susskind and Avery Gilbert).<br \/>\nA good panel discussion with 3 different fields represented: the evolutionary biology of <i>E. coli<\/i>, cosmology, and the science of smells. Each panellist was engaging in his own way. I picked up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Black-Hole-War-Stephen-Mechanics\/dp\/0316016403\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1240807738&#038;sr=8-1\">The Black Hole War<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/What-Nose-Knows-Science-Everyday\/dp\/140008234X\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1240807798&#038;sr=8-1\">What the Nose Knows<\/a>.<\/p>\n<li>Science Fiction: The Grand Masters (Scott Timberg moderating, with Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison and Robert Silverberg).<br \/>\nThis discussion was a disappointment. There were some interesting points but for the most part it could have been retitled &#8220;Science Fiction: The Grumpy Old Codgers&#8221;. The moderator wasn&#8217;t very good either, dragging out such dreadfully old chestnuts as &#8220;Is SF really about the future, or about the present?&#8221;<\/p>\n<li>T.C. Boyle with an Introduction by Georges Borchardt.<br \/>\nMrs Elbeno attended this one, and according to her it was very good. I took care of the mini-Elbeno at the Target Children&#8217;s Stage for most of the time, and we watched <a href=\"http:\/\/tv.disney.go.com\/playhouse\/choochoosoul\/index.html\">Choo Choo Soul<\/a>. Then he ran around exploring the university staircases and such for an hour while Mrs Elbeno waited to meet TC and get her books (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Tortilla-Curtain-T-Coraghessan-Boyle\/dp\/014023828X\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1240808212&#038;sr=8-1\">Tortilla Curtain<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Women-Novel-T-C-Boyle\/dp\/0670020419\/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1240808212&#038;sr=8-6\">The Women<\/a>) signed.<\/p>\n<li>Michael J. Fox in Conversation with Mary McNamara.<br \/>\nI didn&#8217;t get to see much of this because the mini-Elbeno wasn&#8217;t able to sit still quietly, so I headed out with him after about 10 minutes. Which was actually more like 5 minutes because someone held up the proceedings by shouting for a doctor like it was a medical emergency, only to recover and be apparently all right. Anyway, Mrs Elbeno reported that Michael J. Fox was good; Mary McNamara not so much. And the questions from the audience were of the usual poor standard. Given that I had left early, I went straight down to the post-interview signing zone, but all the presigned books were already sold out, and I guessed that MJF wasn&#8217;t about to do a big signing after the interview. So I picked up an unsigned one from the UCLA store.<\/ul>\n<p>I also snagged a few other books from the UCLA store which was having a festival-long 20% off sale: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gaming-Algorithmic-Culture-Electronic-Mediations\/dp\/0816648514\/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1240808664&#038;sr=8-3\">Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Handbook-Computer-Studies-Joost-Raessens\/dp\/0262182408\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1240808740&#038;sr=8-1\">Handbook of Computer Game Studies<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/HCI-Remixed-Reflections-Influenced-Community\/dp\/0262050889\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=books&#038;qid=1240808778&#038;sr=8-1\">HCI Remixed<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend we all went to the LA Times Festival of Books at UCLA. The number of stalls was noticeably smaller this year: a whole row of children&#8217;s publishers was gone. We saw the following panels: Real Science (K. C. Cole moderating, with Carl Zimmer, Leonard Susskind and Avery Gilbert)&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":632,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}