A Weekend in the Markets

by Celia Hayes

Several markets, actually – beginning with the super-gigantic NEISD – PTA book sale, which is held every year in April at the Blossom Athletic center basketball stadium. This is the nirvana of book sales to a serious aficionado of same, both because of the flat rate involved: 50 cents for softbound, one dollar for hard-bound, no matter what the size or original value of the book involved, and because … well, there is nearly half an acre of books, and all of them roughly organized by category, and I have been able to replace many of the books that my parents had in their house when it burned to the ground in 2003; books and serious publications like Horizon and American Heritage, which I consumed as…

Evening With the Authors

by Celia Hayes

That was a wonderful time, although I didn't really get to meet any of the other authors. Readers of books and local supporters of the Eugene Clark library got to purchase books and talk to the authors, while sipping wine and nibbling on a scrumptious array of finger food, cheeses, sweets and whatever, provided and served by students from the Austin Community College Culinary Arts program. Each of us authors had a table with chairs around it, scattered through an artfully planned garden at the back of one of Lockhart's' stately ancestral mansions. Shade trees alternated with spaces of lawn, and pavilions trimmed with icicle lights – which sheltered the buffet line, the dessert table, the booth where wine…

Road Trip: Sun City Book Fair

by Julia Hayden

On the road again, last week for a book festival at Sun City, Texas* . . .  which is out on the sun-baked flats of grassland lightly sprinkled with woods, away on the edge of Georgetown, about half an hour's drive north of Austin. We have heard dire things of Austin's rush hour, so in order to get there in time, Blondie and I arose at the crack of dawn  . . .  actually 4:00 AM, plotting to have at least a couple of cups of caffeinated beverage in us and be ready to roll at 5:00 and thus be well-through whatever hellish traffic jams that Austin offered in the morning rush hour. With our luck, we could have given it another hour, for we arrived just before 7:30, to set-up my table in ten minutes flat,…

Created Sunday, 19 September 2010 13:

Books, Burgers, and Bun'n'Barrel

For a household wherein the last time we packed out from an overseas assignment and the movers had a pool going on how many cartons of books they would finish up with - the count eventually topped out at 65 - we have an unseemly greed for more. We do not disdain any opportunity to explore second-hand bookstores, rummage sales, Half Price Books, the massive yearly PTA book sale at the Blossom Athletic Center, and the regular sales at our local San Antonio Library branch. The management there very kindly puts out a banner at the well-trafficked corner of Judson and Nacogdoches, and I have scored some lovely book bargains there in the past, notably when it came to Texiana.

Yes,…

West Texas Book & Music Festival

Abilene, Texas September 20 - 25, 2010

By Julia Hayden (In person at festival Sept 25.)

The West Texas Book and Music Festival is coming up in September, an excellent excuse to party hearty, eat hearty and check out the local literary scene in beautiful downtown Abilene. It's sponsored by the Friends of the Abilene Library and the Abilene Reporter News, and focuses almost equally on local Texas authors, and excellent music and food. Most of the events will be either at the main library, or in the Abilene Civic Center - that's where I'll be on Saturday, September 25th; in the Hall of Texas Authors, behind a table - or strictly speaking - half a table, with a pile of…

Books and Munchies at the Old Pearl Brewery

By hook and by crook and a great deal of determination, the once semi-industrial area around the old Pearl Brewery in San Antonio, TX is gentrifying; renovate the buildings, slap in some top-grade landscaping and bring in the right mix of retail stores, eateries and offices, schedule something like a regular farmers' market on Saturdays, and the yuppie herds descend in droves. I do not mean to sound snide, by the way - I just appreciate the effort, believing as I do that a neighborhood ought to be yuppified enough to be safe, but still scruffy enough to be interesting.

The neighborhood around Josephine and Grayson, just off 281 pretty well hits the mark, with…

The Twig - Planted in a New Place

If you call San Antonio home and love books, and cherish independent bookstores, want children to love books - then of course, you know the Twig Bookstore and it's twiglet offshoot, the Red Balloon. They were on of Broadway, north of the HEB Central Market, but now they are in new and roomier quarters in the Full Goods Building at the Pearl Brewery. I always loved the Twig - especially since I had done signings for my books there - but the premises they were in on Broadway always seemed a bit cramped, three eccentrically shaped rooms with the shelves of books crammed in wherever they fitted. At the Pearl, they have one large, airy room - and it didn't seem to be the least…