We have arrived home from our weekend in Sydney which delivered varied weather while we were there but fantastic bookish and friend experiences!
The Sydney Writers' Festival is held in a wonderful location on Sydney Harbour - pretty much underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge - I snapped the photo above as we came out of our last session of the day.
Just being in amongst the atmosphere of the festival is great - I love being in a beautiful physical location where everyone around me is totally absorbed in talking about books - my idea of paradise!! I was also really lucky to be able to catch up with one of my close friends from school for lunch - a definite highlight of the weekend as although we don't get to see each other all that often we have a lot in common - including books and writing.
The highlight of the festival for me was listening to Yiyun Li speak about her new novel, The Vagrants. I had not heard of Li at all before coming to the festival - the main reason that I enjoy going to these sorts of events - I get to discover wonderful authors and books that would otherwise have passed me by. I also think that sometimes it can help to hear an author speak passionately about their work - it enables me to engage more easily with their books.
And of course I did come away with more books to add to my ever growing collection - but I will save sharing these with you until another day...
2 comments:
Hi Karen, Sounds like a great weekend. In this blog you've really expressed your love of books and sydney. Thanks for introducing us to Yiyun Li. Will you be reviewing The Vagrants?
Hi T - I will definitely be reviewing The Vagrants eventually - you should see the pile of books I have waiting for me to read at the moment!!
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