Festival of Books: highlights and my haul

[nolly]

The bus ride up was fun, entertainment by new mytery author Jeff Shelby.

I left Conzilla bookmarks with MG, but they didn't think they had space for COnjecture bookmarks as well.

Best giveaway:
32 oz tetrapak of a yerba maté chai concentrate

My haul:
RQW #2, plus a t-shirt
A new fedora
Samurai William: The Englisman who opened Japan, Giles Milton
Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha who bewitched the West, Lesley Downer
The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, Rudy Rucker
(these three were all at ~1/3 cover or less)

NFT guides for San Francisco and LA
You know the resource sheets we have at most cons, with the nearest food, office stores, etc.? Imagine that, for a city. It's not complete, of course -- that would be the yellow pages grossed with a Thomas Bros map, and too big to use -- but if you're at point X, and need to find a gas station, a bank, coffee, a drugstore, a supermarket...this looks like the guide to use.

Also, lots and lots of flyers, catalogs, samplers...a couple of pens, a notepad...

Just had a chance to look at the flyer for Crime Rhymes -- the sample given was fun to solve.

There's apparently a movie about crossword puzzles coming out this summer...

The Sony eBook reader looks pretty sweet, and they say it can use PDF, text, etc. files. Didn't ask a lot about DRM.

I successfully dodged both Scientologists and signing up with the hypnosis people.

Saw a booth for my mom's employer, but her group wasn't represented. (It was a small booth; most of the company's lines weren't there.)

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I've been intrigues by the eBook reader. There's one out by Phillips or someone like that that seems a bit more unencumbered. How heavy was it? Does the display really look pretty much like paper?

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

Thank you for taking the Conzilla bookmarks to the fair!

[allaboutm-e.livejournal.com]

And for dropping them off with us! :)

[allaboutm-e.livejournal.com]

From the promo material, it didn't look all that different to previous similar products. Biggest asset I could see was the adjustable font size...

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I didn't get to hold it, so I"m not sure about weight. Screen was a bit less bright than most color PDAs I've seen, but clearer and brighter than B&W PDAs -- and I think there's adhustable brightness/contrast, though I found it readable as he had it, and didn't think to ask.