Feria del Libro

When a guy friend from Argentina told me that a big book fair was coming to the exhibition hall down the block from my apartment a little over a month ago, I didn't exactly pencil it into my planner. When I started to see board signs for the Feria del Libro, I still didn't take much notice. But when my host mom's dad starting raving about it last week, I decided maybe I should check this thing out.

Turns out the Feria del Libro is the largest book fair in the spanish-speaking world. It's basically a two-week long meeting bringing together spanish authors, educators, publishers, librarians, bookstore owners and 1,200,200 readers from around the world. Yes, over a million. There's lectures, speeches, book signings, chats, contests, radio broadcasts, oh and books. There's books too.

This place has little, if any, resemblance to the annual elementary school book fairs where a truck would show up, unload a bunch of books about Aaron Carter and whatnot, posters (also often with Aaron Carter or some other half not-quite-but-almost celebrity)your class would have a reserved time to mingle and look at books. Then, you'd go home and tell your mom about the newest Babysitter's Club or vampire mystery, who would then send you to school with the next day with cash or a check if she was smart. Then, the girls generally returned home with a poster of yellow lab puppies and the boys with a poster of a Lamborghini.

No, this book fair is much more. It's not just a stuffy meeting of intellectuals or a giant bookstore, it's both, plus 1500 expositions from 42 countries, food, drinks, music. I guess it's more like a book party.

And how great that we still have book parties even though no one reads! And well attended book parties at that! The line was 3 blocks long all weekend, passing my front door. But I'm also in a country with a bookstore on every block. Somehow I don't think over a million people would come out for this no matter what US city you put it in...

But I like books, and being my mother's daughter, I been raised with a affinity for perusing bookstores. I can't tell you how many times I've had to beg her to leave a bookstore. If there's a bookstore in the proximity, she'll turn down ice cream, shopping, even a diet coke, so she can fondle used books. And like mother like daughter, I now seem to be stragnely attracted to bookstore, and have a hard time leaving. No matter that I will only read a fraction of the books I pick up, and a small fraction at that, there's just something fun about flipping through books, wondering what's inside, and knowing I'll never know. But how great that someone knows. If that makes ANY sense. (It's well past midnight). Anyways, I knew it was a bad idea to enter a gigantic book fair, but I did, and I've now been there three days in a row and kinda wanna go back tomorrow.

http://www.el-libro.org.ar/internacional/general/