Tuesday, August 31, 2010

2010 Texas Book Festival vs. Bluegrass Weekend



The 2010 Texas Book Festival, as started by Laura Bush in Austin when she and George lived in the Governor's Mansion there, is fast approaching - and I am faced with a choice I never expected to have to make.  It turns out that the Book Festival is being held two weeks earlier this year than in 2009, the weekend of October 16-17, to be exact.  Well, guess what?  That's the exact weekend that what is probably the best bluegrass festival held in Texas every year will be happening up near Dallas.  Even though the bluegrass festival ends late Saturday night, there is no way I can get to Austin early enough on Sunday morning to catch even the second day of the book festival.

What's a guy to do when the art gods conspire against him?  I've been thinking about this for a week now and - get ready for this - have decided to go to the music festival and skip Austin this year.  The way I look at it, quality bluegrass music is harder to find in this state than are quality book events.  I still can't believe the two festivals are overlapping this way, though...never saw that one coming.

The festival organizers have posted a list of authors who will be at the festival and the first thing I notice is that the authors of my top two fiction choices of the year (as of my last update) are both on the list: Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone) and Karl Marlantes (Matterhorn).  Wouldn't you know it?  


Now, I'm going to try to put the festival out of my mind until October 2011.  Yeah, right.

5 comments:

  1. You could always come to DC's Book Festival end of this month...

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  2. You can't imagine how much I would love to do that...but it's the same old story of never having enough free time or cash to spare for fun things.

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  3. there is no way I can get to Austin early enough on Sunday morning

    It's only four hours from Dallas to Austin (if you don't stop for kolaches in West). Were you planning to waste time sleeping or something?

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  4. You're right...not impossible...and very tempting. The only thing that makes me hesitate to try it is thinking about hitting the office at 6:30 a.m. the following Monday morning.

    You just had to go and mention kolaches in West, didn't you?

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