Booktown Boogie

Booktown Boogie

The booktown boogie is a new wave dance craze that looks set to take the nation by storm. To re-create a batch in your home town just take a mixed bunch of punters, from yuppy mummies with doll-like toddlers riding vintage trikes to old dears wearing colourful crocheted blankies on electric scooters and add a splash of hippy eccentricity and some owlish nerds to the mix then pour on a shipload of books and leave to set.   Welcome to Booktown!


The weekend we spent in Clunes soaking up the vibes of this good old boogie mix tape is still as vivid in my mind as the first live concert I attended at the MCG in an ancient era that will remain nameless, suffice to say that we all wore big hair, tight black jeans, frilly shirts and a hell of a lot of black eyeliner.

But on this occasion, instead of shaking our permed and stiffly hair-sprayed heads off we spent hours sorting through piles and piles of secondhand books and chatting to some of the friendliest people we've ever met.

We also managed to fit in a few delightful writers sessions such as a panel of newly birthed authors, Leah Swann, Balli Kaur Jaswal and Jane Rawson discussing their positive publishing experiences with such small press gurus as Affirm Press and Sleepers Inc. that effectively took their "personal expressions and turned them into a gift for the reading public". Chaired by the coolly enigmatic Sam Cooney editor of online lit mag,  The Lifted Brow http://www.theliftedbrow.com/
His well crafted questions created a chatty style forum which entertained the small audience in the massive bluestone church so well that we all staggered out into the bright sunshine filled with a renewed inspiration.

After a smorgasbord of treats from the international food stalls spread throughout the town, and maybe just a small sample of the book buying fun, we lined up for the next session. We were equally entranced by both that famous author Kate Grenville and her Publisher/Editor, Michael Heyward http://textpublishing.com.au/ as they discussed their long and very successful literary relationship. As well as revealing all the pain of drafts, tough-love editing and re-writes that you would expect they also spoke of the joy they'd had in developing a manuscript and working together to bring this country's history to life through the eyes of the real characters who lived it. Kate concluded with some sound advice to budding writers, "step back and let the story tell itself" and the crowd applauded as Kate thanked us all for reading her work, while Michael felt that we could all display our true appreciation of her skills by buying more of her books!

Most of the crowd took him up on his cute but crafty sales pitch and headed out to queue up and get a pre-signed copy of a volume or two. But we stayed put and soaked up the liltingly familiar voice of ex ABC broadcaster, Ramona Koval. As she'd interviewed so many authors and reviewed such an incredible amount of books in her career as well as publishing her own works she was a fine source of some very amusing information about this funny old writing life.  Her energy was even more captivating in person than it had ever been on radio and once again were all left with sore cheeks from laughing as well as loads of inspirational advice to take away.

Ramona left us with a question, "does reading about life, explain the meaning of life?"
For me, the answer is clear : yes-indeedee-do, oh my lordee yes!! 

And her own motto "Reading is a great recipe for living!", is just about as good as any I've heard and also gives me a great excuse to keep reading, reading, reading...'cause I aint exactly found that true meaning yet.