The Boston Book Fair was a lot like trick-or-treating: I went to each booth, smiled awkwardly, then picked a free button or bought a lit mag. I ended up with seven lit mags, two regular mags, ten buttons and a book. But that wasn’t the most awesome part. The most awesome part was talking to the people at The Common’s booth. One woman said her favorite thing they had ever published was The Idea of Marcel, by Marie-Helene Bertino, in issue four. I bought issue four. The Idea of Marcel was a wonderful story. Basically, a woman goes on a date with the idea of her ex-boyfriend, then finds him dating his ideal her. It ends happily. It made me get all melty.
The other best part was going to the Drum's booth. I listened to the first story in Books, Actually through the headphones they had on an iPad. The author of the story was standing right next to me. The story made me grin (My favorite line: “She thought being at the festival would be more exciting given the way mom and dad had argued about whether she should go.”), but sometimes when I grin I look like a spooky clown so I hope Catherine Elcik didn’t look at me and think, my story is making this girl make spooky clown faces. I listened to the rest of Books, Actually at home. It made me laugh a lot and my mom informs me she had to tell me to come to lunch seven times before I heard her.
Me and my Dad picked our literary fortunes (buttons) at the Grub Street booth. Mine said Unrecognized Genius. His said Starving Artist. He said he didn’t want to be a starving artist, so he gave me his button. By that point my shirt had turned into a suit of armor made out of buttons. Thanks, Dad!
Also, we went to the Ploughshares booth where I bought five back issues (on sale for a dollar each), spooky-clown grinned at the person there and said something coherent, like, “Lit mags are good.” or possibly, “Lit mags are yummy.” (All the awesomeness made it hard to think straight.) The back issues have been good for reading, and they are just the right size for the domino chain I am trying to build out of lit mags.
