[SKRIVA] Söderhamn Book Fair
- From: Ahrvid Engholm <ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <novellmastarna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <fictionmags@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <trufen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2012 16:27:55 +0200
It was the third time for the book fair called Norrland's Longest Book Table,
last weekend. (Norrland is the name of the northern half of Sweden.) You gather
ca 25 writers to the central library of the Norrland city of Söderhamn, where
they can sell and promote their books on book tables and also hold
mini-lectures in the library itself. Plus mingle with fellow writers.
It was my second invitation to this book fair. The first time i lectured on
sf, mysteries and short stories - my collection Murder on the Moon was just out
then. This time I talked about E-book publishing - an E-collection of short
stories I've edited (with Cecilia Wennerström) has just come out, Leap Day and
Other Terrible Things,http://www.adlibris.com/se/product.aspx?isbn6081454<
First sunshine, then rain
Organisers are the local writers group (Skrivare i Hälsingland) and they
provide hotel, a dinner with entertainment and your book table, but not
transport. No problem if you have friends with a car. I came there with a
fascinating woman by the name Irene Canel, who entertained me on the road with
numerous anecdotes from her varied life. She's just published her memoires, and
was born in a German family in a part of Poland, fleeing in the end of WWII,
later emigrating to Uruguay, starting a ballet academy, emigrating to Sweden,
starting a successful philately firm. And much more. A very nice and
fascinating lady.
The Friday of the book fair was fine and sunny and with many people turning
up - the book tables were outside the library on a pedestrian street.
Unfortunately the Saturday was not so good with contstant rain and a chill you
wouldn't belive from early June. The book tables moved into the library, but of
course the weather cut the number of public turning up. In fact, papers said
this was the coldest early June for 84 years... Stockholm Marathon was on at
the same time and it was + C. In southern Småland it was even snowing!
Perhaps you don't sell so many books (apart from my Moon murder collection I
have also http://www.sfbok.se/asp/artikel.asp?VolumeID796 - plus a soundbook
and the E-anthology pubbed this spring, available through the library) but I
see it as an opportunity to make yourself visible and making contacts. And
visibility was more than OK. The local paper Söderhamns-Kuriren was there and I
was in both a photo and quoted in the rather long report, from my lecture on
E-books. Unfortunately, they spelled my name wrong... (The piece is behind a
paywall, but it was June 2, title "A Long Book Table".)
Friday evening Mrs Lena Durling, who comes from Söderhamn, had a little mini
sightseeing with about a dozen of us, telling about the history and
architecture of Söderhamn. The park, the church, the castle-like tower, the
city hall, etc. It's a very cosy city with a nice layout and lots of history.
Lectures
There were lots of lectures during both days. The fair has the idea of giving
each author 15 minutes (it somewhat resembles the famous TED Talks) and I had
two talks, both about E-books. Lecture one had problems with my prepared
Powerpoint slides, and because of that I in lecture two made a small summary of
what might have been missed in lecture one - and I thus ran into a
shortage of time. However, I think it went reasonably well despite this, and I
have through practical connections with the E-book world obtained some
knowledge. (I was invited to speak on E-books for a Rotary club afterwards.)
Other lectures I want to point out are eg the speeches made by crime writer
Ulf Durling and Bertil Falk, both members of our
writing society Short Story Masters (Novellmästarna), which had five members on
this book fair. Bertil has for a few years worked on what is probably the FIRST
Swedish sf history, ie covering only Swedish skiffy. He's been sitting on the
Lund University Library for months and months researching (I've read parts of
the work in progress) and he talked about some lesser known works of Swedish sf
from the 1700s up to our days, incl slides of authors, book covers etc. Very
interesting.
Ulf Durling has a very fascinating style of holding a speech. He has a
general idea of the topic and then seem to go into a sort of trance to spit out
the right words which are often very well phrased and entertaining. He's not
satisfied with today's mysteries, which are too long and too bloody and often
not well written. He sits in mystery award committees and has to read
everything. In his first speech he also covered his connection to Hälsingland
(the province) where he has placed some of his stories. The second speech
covered eg the book The Bandy Player in Gambia. (Bandy is a game played on ice,
not frequent in Africa.)
I also heard speeches by eg Irene (covering some things I already heard in
her car), Kjell Genberg (covering things i already knew from reading his
excellent autobiography), Ulf Broberg (covering an infamous immigrant "honour"
murder), and some others. But I contstantly also had to run back to watch my
table.
Dinner, quiz
Friday evening we had a dinner with organisers and invited authors, on
restaurant Victoria, just across the street from the hotel. Had pork filet with
potato stew. Others had fish or chicken. We had some music entertainment and a
quiz, and my quiz team managed to win the quiz! I think the deciding point was
that I from a Black Widowers story by Isaac Asimov remembered the Lorraine
Cross, which came in the last question. Prize was some books and a key ring
with a flashlight. Talked with eg Lotta, who's writing an original Wild West
story, which is a genre not very appreciated today. Kjell, at our table, is
however maybe the most famous Swedish Wild West author when he used to write
his Ben Hogan novels. A very nice evening, anyway.
Back at the hotel I spent some time fixing Bertil Falk's laptop. He's been
subject to the same problem as I have, ie some nasty spyware. Downloaded and
started some scanners that didn't really fix it - probably did some good,
though. Then I did the very simple thing of resetting to a couple of months
back to an earlier system status, and then it all worked. Computers these days
are a mess. Hundreds of configuration items, thousands of system files.
Microsoft aren't making it easy. System maintenance used to be a breeze ten
years ago. MS claim (=lie) they're maing everything more "user friendly" - but
they are doing the reverse!
Saturday was the cold and rainy day. Not too many visitors, because of it.
Sometimes I went up to the "green room" and had coffee and sandwiches. Got some
books by fellow writers, which only increased my luggage (my backpack in the
end resembled a sphere), but I will try my best to read it. I have already read
Irene's memoires. Began with that on the Stockholm Tunnelbana.
Have you seen watersmoke? It's a watery sort of smoke trailing cars on a
motorway. In Irene's car on the way back we saw a lot of it, because it was
raining constantly. She entertained with numerous stories on the way back, and
the return trip went well.
--Ahrvid
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förnöjelse...jättebra historier i mycket sannolik framtidsmiljö"! Nu som
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