Sunny Sunday

Sipping the last of Boca Java Ocean Drive blend. I must say I noticed the bags aren't very big. I know the trend in marketing is to sell less and less for the same money but wow. I think this bag is 8 oz when coffee used to be sold by the pound.

I have taken a complete news coverage break this weekend and I feel great. I love Book TV on C-Span every weekend and yesterday it was coverage of the National Book Festival in Washington, DC. Laura Bush and the Library of Congress teamed up 6 years ago to put the festival on at the National Mall and this year the attendance was over 100,000 people with over 70 authors. How cool is that, especially for a book reading fool such as myself.

The authors I saw yesterday include: Doris Kearns Goodwin, "Team of Rivals"; Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, "American Heroines"; Douglas Brinkley, "Deluge"; Andrew Carroll, "Operation Homecoming"; Nathaniel Philbrick, "Mayflower"; Dr. Khalid Hosseini, "The Kite Runner"; Bruce Feiler,"Where God was Born", and then Bob Woodward made an appearance.

Now, the Bob Woodward appearance was interesting. I admit, I don't care for him as a writer. I know he is excellent at rooting out investigative work for his newspaper, The Washington Post. Kudos. But, as an author of books, he uses mostly anonymous sources, gossip and makes his own conclusions as fact. That has always been my opinion of his work and I do not read this books. So I was prepared to flip the channel at the end of the festival coverage as he was the last one. But, instead, they put him on a stage with a "conservative" leaning author who asked him questions. Woodward was not allowed to speak of his new book's contents as part of the agreement with the publisher. So, that was interesting.

The New York Times scooped all the other media outlets on the new book, I might add. They broke the embargo from the publisher and ran their story of the book Friday. The book wasn't to be out in bookstores until Monday but now it is available at bookstores as of Saturday, thanks to the NYT. That newspaper is even nasty to its friends. The excerpts were to have been previewed in the Washington Post this morning.

Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal weekend edition Laura Bush listed five books that inspired her to champion literacy. They are: "Hop on Pop"
"The Little House" series
"The Brothers Karamazov"
"Little Women"
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
I love Laura Bush.

As a young girl, my addiction was for Nancy Drew mysteries. My mamaw gave me my first hard back copy one year for Christmas and she dutifully bought every one she could find for me after my love of them became obvious.

I remember really being moved by "The Peaceable Kingdom" and the use of animals as symbols of the world's population. I have always loved biographies and windows into what others have done with their lives and why they did it. I don't have the concentration to sit and make a list of only five books, though, after a life of reading for pleasure. Too many books floating around in the old brain, you know.

That Bruce Feifer was really entertaining to listen to at the festival. I didn't know who he was, I confess, even though he is the author of "Walking the Bible" and "Abraham", both huge bestsellers, as it turns out. He also spent a year as a circus clown. His is an interesting story and he has travelled extensively in the areas of the holy land as basis for his writing.. He is also the father of 17 month old identical twin daughters! Busy man.