Festival Faves – WORD Christchurch

A few of my favourite things at WORD:

  • Cover of His Whole LifeCanadians. Who would win the nicest people in the world smack down? Us or them? I think them. I'm going to read every book Elizabeth Hay ever wrote. And I might start reading a poem a day at breakfast time just because she does.
  • Ted Dawe's shirt. Possibly Rata flowers and leaves, perhaps Pohutukawa. Either way very pleasing to look at.
  • The 'question' at the No Sex Please We're Teenagers session that began "I've watched a lot of porno tapes..."
  • David Levithan's inspirational Margaret Mahy Lecture. "We raise our voices, not shouting but singing".
  • When writers I like like other writers I like. DCover for Another Dayavid Levithan likes Francesca Lia Block. And Feed is his favourite Young Adult novel.
  • When writers I like dislike writers I dislike (even better). Paula Morris just couldn't get over kids reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven for school. I'm with you Paula; we're going to Hell in a hand-basket.
  • Pondering on matters like why so many great writers are called Margaret: Atwood, DrabbleLaurence, Mahy,
  • Watching Toby Manhire have the measure of Bromhead at peak "I'm so loveably irascible" schtick.
  • Seeing Alex Casey who does The Real Housewives of Auckland power rankings for The Spinoff. A thrill. And good to resist the impulse to come on all fan-crone and tell her what a good writer she is.
  • Adding lots more books to my For Later shelf. 1108 and counting.

My least favourite thing at WORD:

Those who cannot tell the difference between a question and a statement. You know who you are. Or perhaps you don't. Think about it people. Does the question take longer to ask than to answer? Then don't ask it.

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