It’s 1206AM in Germany and I’m ready to drop — left the flat in London at 0445 this morning to get to the Leipzig Book Fair and have had a high old time in my first of two days onsite.
Leipzig: pretty, in that particularly German way of mid-sized cities that have great swathes of cobbeldy wobbeldy old charming pedestrian streets that are nevertheless spotless and incredibly efficiently managed and fitted out. Too many of the same bloody high-street shops (the world doesn’t need more H&Ms), but a trip into a vast Conrad electronics shop to buy a plug adapter reminded me of the incredible and resilient German passion for making and fixing stuff. Something just wonderful about confronting whole walls full of locally made tools and parts for fixing the things in your house.
The fair: Young! Very young! Full of kids in cosplayer regalia, like some kind of existence proof of a Henry Jenkins essay! (Kids in manga outfits get in free). Discovered a motherlode of cosplayers in a “Japanese Tea Room” in hall 2, in the midst of a football-field-sized kawaii of anime booths (“kawaii” being the collective noun for anime booths, I am reliably assured).
So cool to see kids just totally in love with books and running around surrounded by them all day.
Lots of international pavilions. The former Yugo states have free booze at their pavilions and are swarmed. The US has Obama cardboard dollies and free pamphlets of Twain’s “The Awful German Language” in German and English. Canada didn’t show up at all.
There seems to be no WiFi, free or paid in the hall. FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL. Hey bookfair, a hint: when foreigners travel to your event, their phones’ data-plans don’t work. Which means that people here to do business need WiFi to stay in touch. Way to make publishing seem far behind the times. It’s 20-goddamned-10. You are a huge, bustling international event. Every last centimetre of your hall should be bathed in so much broadband that you get a sunburn if you stand still for too long. Christ.
The event: The Rohwolters have been lovely, and have shown me a good time. They took me and Michael — the translator for the .de Little Brother — down to a university hall where the public, critics, the press and 40-some schoolkids from a reading group met us. Michael read some of chapter three of LB, I read my traditional Delores Park concert scene. The Q&A afterwards was marvellous — the kids were sharp as tacks. Reminded me of the Berkeley High kids from the LB tour, hands-down the sharpest kids I met on that trip.
Dinner was lovely — delicious, with great conversations with my German audiobook publisher, who have incredible plans afoot for the LB audiobook.
