Twin Cities Book Fair

Today's Twin Cities Book Fair was looking pretty tempting -- I had heard M.T. Anderson, author of Feed and the Octavian Nothing books was going to be part of it. But I wasn't sure I would make it over there.

Then I had an email from a woman named Louise, who Googled cartoonist Chris Monroe and found my blog. She let me know that Chris was going to be on a panel at the Book Fair.

So I did go for the afternoon. Of course, I forgot to bring along my copies of either person's books for signing. Oh, well.


Here's Chris with illustrator L.K. Hanson after the panel discussion.


M.T. Anderson morosely, but charmingly, discussed the future of the book and the narrative in the age of the ebook, interweb and gaming.


After 40 minutes on topic, his session ended with a question from the audience: What's the first nursery rhyme he remembers? He answered that it wasn't a nursery rhyme, but a song his father sang him about Anne Boleyn wandering the Tower of London. I think I was the only person in the audience who sang along to the chorus. ("With her head tucked underneath her arm / She walks the Bloody Tower! / With her head tucked underneath her arm / At the Midnight hour.")

I couldn't resist buying a few books, of course. I've been meaning to read James Howard Kunstler, who was also at the Fair, so I picked up his titles that were for sale and got them signed, for good measure.


And the International Cartoon Conspiracy was selling the four-part False Witness! comic book series, which describes Michelle Bachmann's rise from school board to legislature to Congress to Fox News.



The Book Fair is sponsored by Rain Taxi, the Twin Cities' best-known literary review.