LAT Festival of Books, and Jane Smiley's Moo

Michael and I spent the weekend at the LA Times Festival of Books - gathering free stuff, checking out books we want but are too cheap to buy, sharing info on where to get the good free stuff with friends, and also going to several panels. We had underestimated the popularity of swarming Ticketmaster for the (free) tickets to panels, so by the time we made it there last Monday, many of our top choices were sold out. We still did pretty well, with 4 panels.

Three were political: Interrogation or Torture: Human Rights After 9/11, Brave New World: Monopoly, Media, & the Right to Know, and Are We Making the World Safe for Democracy? Each had one token conservative, and perhaps one moderate. Facing an audience that was overwhelmingly liberal, this may have been a good percentage, but it was also kind of sad. Facing a hostile crowd, conservatives were faced with the option of insulting the audience by saying they were unpatriotic and "reviled" the troops (Max Boot), announcing that the LA Times was a far-left newspaper that many people in California were rejecting (Hugh Hewitt), or reading your piece as unpassionately as possible and hoping the crowd didn't really notice you (Charles Kesler).

Next year, however, I want to see and hear more about actually writing a book. Our fourth panel was Jane Smiley in conversation with some historian named Zachary Karabell (who was kind of this odd combination of Josh and Toby from The West Wing with a little of The Actor's Studio guy thrown in. here's a picture on a page that suggests he's also a big-shot econ guy). This was great, a very entertaining hour that combined politics and fiction writing and reading.

In honor of our Jane Smiley panel, I began reading Moo on Saturday morning. I gave myself twenty-four hours to get a feel for the author before I saw her speak. Now that the panel's over, I could put the book down, but I'm enjoying it. She is apparently quite catholic in her tastes, so perhaps it's too bad that the only novel of hers that we own is one that satirizes university life, as so many have done before. But what I like about Moo so far is that she's cast her net wide, and takes us into the minds of a wide array of professors, administrators, students, and even a very fat hog.