Sunday, September 21, 2014

Brooklyn Book Festival and the Worst Book Ever

I'd never heard of the Brooklyn Book Festival before, but apparently it's a thing.  So this year, I went with some friends.  It was pretty cool.

Literary t-shirts include "QUIXOTE 51" (pictured) as well as "VONNEGUT 5" and "ADAMS 42"
I'm not sure of the connection between 51 and Don Quixote, but most of the others made sense.  Even "DARCY 10."



We attended one panel discussion as well.  One author talked about her relationship with her favorite book, The Great Gatsby, while another talked about her relationship with Middlemarch (surprise - her favorite book!).  The third talked about reading her way from LEQ to LES over the course of a year - with an emphasis on the Worst Book She'd Ever Read, which she discovered on that library shelf.  The book she chose for this honor was Three Knots by William Le Queux.  (Her extensive description of this book was hilarious - in her telling, a hack writer who simply phoned it in!  I think a lot of folks in the audience took notes on the title, though I don't know how many will brave it for themselves.  Alas, Three Knots does not appear to be one of the multiple Le Queux offerings currently available on LibriVox or Project Gutenberg.)

Additional Brooklyn scenes from September:

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Temple Canteen & Queens Museums & New York Submerged

We went to the Ganesh temple canteen in Queens - it's located in the basement and is nothing much to look at, but offers huge servings of delicious food.  Afterward, we showed ourselves around the outside of the temple a bit.

Every house of worship should have one

Elephants 
Afterward, we went to Flushing Meadow Corona Park.  We checked out the Hall of Science, which was very cool.