Boekenbeurs, opening night

What do you get after hours of unpacking books and organizing them in an orderly fashion? The answer: an aching back, crackling knees and this


A neat and appetizing booth if I do say so myself.

Last night was the opening night meaning lots of people in the biz, tagalongs, authors and some minor celebrities who were desperately trying to get their hands on a wide array of snacks and free cava while fondling the merchandize. Yummy.

Still it was fun to see the end result, especially after all the painting, assembling, unpacking and unavoidable cursing that went on the previous days. It's a special atmosphere indeed. Although the heat, crowd and abundance of Flemish books, isn't exactly my cup of tea, I must admit that I tend to get slightly giddy in the presence of so many books. I didn't buy anything, seeing as I rarely do at the Boekenbeurs, but I'm sure I'll pop by Pinceel, Exhibitions International and Sterling Books once or twice during the next couple of days.

Thursday's trailer

Busy Bee

I have been so tired and busy lately that even reading a book seems like too much of an effort. When I come home these days my evenings consist of diner, shower, BBC's Masterchef and bed. Not necessarily in that order.

This weekend is the kick off of our annual Boekenbeurs, where Flemish publishers and bookstores unite to (hopefully) bring you the best books in the business. In layman’s terms there will be lots of pushing and shoving by hot and sweaty people who foolishly believe that having their latest Aspe signed makes them a culturally rounded individual.

Personally I don’t see what all the fuss is about and I also truly believe that anyone who is remotely interested in reading wouldn’t endure this horror and would simply go to a bookstore where he / she could browse in peace minus the sweat, crowd and screaming children. Or as yours truly, do it from the comfort of their own couch, bliss.

But I have to admit, there are some interesting lectures and author signings this year like Michael Cunningham and Charles Burns, making me lean slightly towards the darkside of Flemish pseudo-intellectual commercial decadence.

What I am kind of excited about, is that this year I won’t be a mere spectator but I’ll also be working there, holding up the fort aka the Groene Waterman’s booth for a couple of days. Speaking of booths, we started “constructing” it today meaning: assembling the furniture and piling on the books. There’s still a lot of work to be done the next few days but I can’t wait for the end result. Watching this bookfair be built from scratch is an awesome experience.

The best bunny cake, ever

Bunny Cake

I’m spending the entire day baking, you heard me. A while back I agreed to take on the daunting task of making a cake for 80 people. No biggie, I was thinking at the time. Making the batter isn’t that much work seeing as I’ve done it hundreds of times before, the glitch is shoving cakes in and out of the oven for several hours leaving me with little else to do than some necessary cleaning and paper work seeing as I’m pretty kitchen bound at the moment.

Paul Verrept has book presentation tomorrow at the Groene Waterman because he is the star author of Larrios, a new branch of Epo publishing. He’ll be reading to the kiddies and talk a bit about his career which will all be leading up to the main event, namely my hopefully delicious cake featuring one of his characters: a bunny aka God.

The pressure’s high seeing as I’ve never baked for so many people but it’s a challenge and I’m enjoying myself. The only thing that could go wrong, is that my cakes start imploding, again. But I’m about 80% sure they won’t. Still… Either that or my sweet pea messes up the rabbit, meaning no cake for him, ever again.

Thursday's trailer

The Book Club Cookbook

I recently became the proud owner of The Book Club Cookbook which once again affirms my geeky love for books and baking. I was pretty excited when I stumbled accross it to be honest.

What I really love about the BCC is that it combines your typical book club review book (i.e. a short review of the book, author and period) with a lushious literary cookbook. Each book that is featured, is accompanied by a lovely recipe that is either part of the story or would be devoured by the characters during the period in which the book takes place, adding a little more authenticity and not to mention culinary delight to those delectible meetings.

I know for a fact how important food is to our beloved book club meetings so this book will probably add an entirely new dimension to the mix, opening up the floor for some tasty food related discussions. Like we need an excuse...

Mockingjay

I’m comfort reading at the moment so I indulged in some more YA this week and finished Mockingjay, the third installment of Suzanne Collins’ world famous Hunger Games trilogy.

Ok, although I said world famous, I’m well aware that lots of people (and I’m talking to my fellow Belgians here) have probably never heard of this wonderful trilogy aimed at teenagers, seeing as the market for Y(oung) A(dult) fiction is slim to non-existent here. In Anglo-Saxon countries however, it’s a bubbling and booming market with exciting authors, great characters and plots that can easily be read by fiction lovers of all ages.

When I was a kid, I remember that there weren’t that many novels that bridged the gap between 13 and 18 making me reads lots of stuff I wasn’t theoretically ready for but now, an entirely new genre has popped up. Although these books may be aimed at youngsters, about 50% of the readers are older than the target audience. One of the best examples of this trend will without a doubt be Harry Potter.

Anyway, I’m getting off track again. To prove to you what a big deal this trilogy is, I’ll just add that when Mockingjay was published in US in August, 450 000 copies were sold during the first week alone. Enough said.

Now I first discovered this trilogy last summer when blogs were raving about Catching Fire, part two of the trilogy. As you all know I’m a sucker for the latest fad in fiction and whenever a book is hailed as the next big thing, I just have to read it. I immediately bought part one and two and was pleasantly surprised. The story is original, you can’t help but root for the characters and it’s basically a roller coaster ride filled with adventure, love and tragedy aka the key ingredients for a perfect lazy Sunday afternoon.

Writing a review of part three is kinda stupid if you haven’t read the previous novels and seeing as most of my readers haven’t I’ll just conclude by saying it’s a very good book although the ending was a bit weak. As a whole, the Hunger Games trilogy is great but this has to be my least favorite book seeing as it lacks the action of the previous two and just isn’t that convincing. Still, I highly recommend these books, they’re so addictive.

Thursday's trailer

Squirrel seeks chipmunk

In order to deal with the mindnumbing mediocrity that is Franzen’s Freedom, I decided to read something completely different over the weekend. I’ve never been a fan of juggling several books at the same time but my mental health was at stake here. I’ll get back to this debacle if and when I finally finish it.

This weekend’s book was something very special indeed, namely comic genius David Sedaris’ latest book. No hysterical and semi-autobiographical short stories about his family and multiple youth trauma’s as usual but a beautifully illustrated book filled with little fables starring our furry friends.

Squirrel seeks chipmunk, a wicked bestiary, is a true delight filled with entertaining morality tales, some funny, others sad and then there are those that are just plain weird but brilliant none the less. These bittersweet stories were accompanied by Ian Falconer’s glorious illustrations making this compact book a real treasure and the perfect way to pass your Sunday afternoon.

This modern interpretation of Aesop’s Fables may not be as good as his other books or his many TV and radio appearances but it’s just so damn cute! For lovers of self-deprecating humor, stylish sentences and the truly bizarre…

Frankfurter Buchmesse

Yesterday we went to the Frankfurter Buchmesse which is best described as gigantic. After almost four hours of driving (yes, we’re that devoted or plain insane) we arrived in this sunny German city that is home to the biggest book fair in world for five consecutive days. I never really thought about going before but, seeing as my employer was kind enough to score me some tickets, nothing was standing in the way between me and bookish bliss.

Like I said, this place is huge. There are no less than twelve large halls (each one is about the size of the Boekenbeurs for all you Belgians out there) filled with beautiful books. The interesting thing about this fair however, is that although every publisher in the world is present with a quaint little stall, you can’t actually buy books. They’re sadly just for show but one hell of a show. There are just no words to describe this abundance, except wow. Trust me if you love books, you really need to check this out.

There were about five halls that housed the international publishers ranging from the USA to Romania, from Abu Dhabi to Peru and back to Belgium. It was fun browsing the Japanese, Finnish and even South African books. It’s not something you get to do every day, right? I was simply gobsmacked by how much is out there and the tiny fraction I’d heard of.


There were also two really big halls with German books (fiction, non-fiction, children’s books, tourism, cooking,…) which are like our own Boekenbeurs only twice as big. The concept’s the same: buy books, score some autographs by the many German authors who were signing books (I hate to admit that I didn’t know any of them) and simple get trampled on. Needless to say, we were out of there in no time. The comics section however, was a lot of fun seeing as loads of youngsters and mainly Goths came dressed like their favorite comic and fantasy characters, which was pretty cool.


Then there were three halls that were devoted to art, audiobooks and “publishing solutions and book trade services” aka digital press and eBooks which tickled my sweet peas fancy. We saw some pretty cool devices and although I’m not pro eBook, I have to admit it does offer a lot of awesome options which my better half is dying to explore.

What else? There was also a film and media centre which we sadly skipped because we were out of time and the literary agents’ floor which was sealed off to the public but intrigued me none the less.


My favorite hall of course was the biggest one with all the top American and British publishers: Penguin, Random House, Harper Collins, Faber & Faber,… You name, they were there with all the latest in fall fiction. Be still my beating heart…

Besides ogling loads of books there were also many interesting lectures on the future of the book for instance, book signings, interviews, basically everyone who’s anyone in the book industry was present.

It’s a shame we had to rush through the place like a couple of bats out of hell but I’m so glad we went, it was truly amazing, inspiring and oh so tiring. There are even busses to take you from one hall to the next, it that big!

Thursday's trailer

Writing up a storm

I finished Chabon’s and Dorrestein’s books on writing this week. They were both very inspiring in completely different ways, namely one informed me on how to write which is interesting, necessary but not always that much fun to read. The other one (Chabon’s) dealt with why authors write, what inspires them and how to develop your style. It wasn’t that “educational” but it was a great read, if books on reading and writing are your thing that is.

Anyway, I finished them just in time to get back to my own writing. I haven’t done any actual writing on the novel but I have done some fine tuning and corrected a few inconsistencies. The main thing is, I’m slowly but surely getting back in the fictional mode.

I have, however, done a lot of “non-fiction” writing because the assignments are pouring in again. This week I’ll be getting all artsy with Flor Bex about his new exhibit at Muhka and today I’ll be finishing of a text for Flemish photographer Nele van Canneyt who wanted me to write some texts for her upcoming catalogue. It’s been getting very artsy lately.

I haven’t had a lot of time to read the past few days but I did start in Jonathan Franzen's so called masterpiece Freedom. First impression: not bad, better than The Corrections but far from great, at least not yet. I’ve read worse books, I’ve read loads of better books but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt since I’m only on page 150.

The funny thing is that yesterday I found out that I’m actually the proud owner of one of Franzen’s misprints. Apparently Harper Collins, the British publisher of Freedom, accidently published an earlier version of the book instead of the final draft. Oops… 80000 copies will now have to be destroyed and those of us who have a flawed copy can either keep it (like I will) and hope it becomes a collector’s item or send it back to the publisher to have it replaced free of charge. What are the odds of this happening to the most hyped book of the year?

Molly Madness

Yesterday we went to the vet with our beloved munchkin Molly who I don’t mention enough actually. As most of you already know, she has a heart murmur and has been taking medication since March after she had two minor “attacks” where she momentarily lost all motion in her back legs. Every six months we have to go for a check-up and once a year she has to have a sonogram of her heart. Now, since she has been on her meds she has been more mischievous, playful and loving than ever so good news all round. The only downside is that I have to give her her meds every night around the same time (too much time between meds and she could have a heart attack) and to do so, I also have to feed her by hand which I actually love doing. I know some people think I’m crazy or that it’s disgusting but it’s actually a perfect peaceful moment. Plus she’s my baby, enough said.

During the check-up, which is usually an incredibly stressful event for both me and my fuzzy stalker, she was shedding like usual and sweating like a piglet (trust me, it’s adorable). Then the vet told us she was also the carrier of a chronic virus which makes her eyes tear up, makes her sneeze and ultimately results in pulmonary issues. To us it may sound like a common cold but for Molly it meant red alert. She wasn’t sick or anything but her glands were swollen so something was about to break through. Needles to say a virus is the last thing a spoilt rotten kitty with a bad heart needs. So now I have to keep her warm at all times, makes sure she doesn’t catch a cold (aka her death) and make sure her immune system keeps on going full speed ahead. Luckily, she is blissfully unaware and spends her days purring on my lap, walking over the keyboard whenever she feels neglected for five seconds, being handfed, chasing imaginary ghosts, hiding q-tips and finishes off her days by crawling into bed every night with her minions.

I got slightly off track here. In order to boost her immune system I now have to give her Echinacea drops: 0,3ml twice a day. I can’t put it in her water because she won’t get her recommended dose and seeing as she only eats dry food, I can’t mix it up with that. Or can I? The Echinacea smells pretty bad so she can smell me coming with the stuff a mile away so now I, bare with me, put some drops on kitty treats and let them absorb the liquid. When they’re dry, I mix them with her regular food and meds, sit down next to her and place them one by one on her tongue. I know what you’re thinking but come on, isn’t she the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?