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INSPIRE: Toronto International Book Festival, Part 3 – The Sites, The Sounds, & The Wrap-Up

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This weekend over at Book Riot, I put together a post on the literary tourism that could be done throughout the city of Toronto, including some of the best bookstores, libraries, festivals, and more. Part of the post I was able to put together because of the bookstore tour I took part of while at the INSPIRE: Toronto International Book Festival.

Since I couldn’t put all of the bookstores into that post, I thought I’d share them over here, along with some of the photos and highlights of each shop.

Before we headed out for the tour on a private bus (which was awesome), the bloggers met with Vanessa and Zena from Tourism Toronto, as well as Dominique, who was one of the Renaissance Hotel representatives and picked out a delicious breakfast selection for us. I’m a sucker for breakfast, so having it family style was even more enjoyable, since it meant sampling everything. The best thing, though, was what I ended up going back for on my last day in Toronto: banana bread french toast.

All of us international bloggers took a photo together before hopping onto the bus:

Left-to-right: Jane, me, MaryAnn, Gabi, Thea, Ana, and Liz in the back.

When we got to our first stop, Book City, we met with Michael Kaminer, who was our tour guide, and we also met up with a number of local Toronto book bloggers who joined us on the tour. Michael wrote about how Toronto is a great city for bookstores in the Washington Post last year, and he took us through several of the stops he made and which he wrote about in his piece here.

Book City reminded me a lot of the old Crown Books we used to have in the states. The set up and the way books were shelved felt like a used book store, but it isn’t — this is a new book store, though remaindered titles are left to sell through, rather than shipped back, so there is almost a wider selection of titles than many new bookstores have.

We got to meet with the manager here, who told us much of their customer base is older, and that they strive to provide really good service, meaning that if someone calls from around town, it’s not past them to sometimes deliver the book that the customer wants. I found their children’s and YA section to be fairly underwhelming, which made sense because of who their customer base was and what it was they happened to be looking for.

The second stop on our tour was to BMV Books, which is a used bookstore. They aren’t the kind of used store that takes anything, though. They, too, cater to their customers and in particular, they look for books that are harder to find and, in some cases, which are more collectible items.

This was one of my favorite stops on the trip, as it had a huge selection of titles. There were four floors to explore, including an entire floor dedicated to children’s and YA lit (where I saw a great variety of titles) and an entire floor dedicated to comics. I ended up buying a graphic novel here when we had time to wander around, and I spent some time enjoying the shelves on the first floor that were marked as “old novels.”

The next stop was one that Michael called one of his favorites: Ten Editions Books. When you think of used book stores, this is the kind of place you think about. It was packed from floor to ceiling with books. Then, the back of the store featured additional piles and boxes of books.

There were indeed ladders attached to the shelves, so you could climb up and pick through books. For some perspective on how tall the shelves were, the bottom right photo there is taken from above my head — I couldn’t reach the shelf below the one labeled “children’s,” and I’m about five foot two. This was a neat place, though not my favorite because I don’t find the smell of old books romantic or sensual at all. For those who do love it, though, this would be a paradise. 
We walked to the next store, Bakka-Phoenix, since it was just around the corner. This was, hands down, my favorite store. The entire shop is dedicated to science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction. The upstairs portion was new books, and the downstairs featured Star Wars/Star Trek titles. Bakka-Phoenix is where a number of well-known speculative fiction authors got their start as book sellers, including Cory Doctorow and Robert J. Sawyer, and Leah Bobet is currently one of their staffers. The seller who was there when we went was super nice, and she was so eager to talk about books and the tricky business of recommending books and getting to know your customers and what it is they may or may not like. We got to talk about book covers and how sometimes, the ugliest book cover can have the best story beneath it, and sometimes, selling the book with the ugly cover is a game of trust between seller and customer. 
When we were leaving the store, a customer was walking in and saw the crowd as we were heading out. The seller mentioned it had been a bunch of bloggers, and the customer mentioned how much he loved The Book Smugglers — and he got to meet them. Then he mentioned how he loved Liz B’s writing, and he got to meet her, too. It was a neat moment for a blog reader to connect with the bloggers he reads. 
The next stop on our tour was right next door, Caversham Booksellers. This is a specialty shop focused on mental health books — if there were a guide or a book you needed about mental health, this is North America’s largest store focused on it. They’re especially focused on Freudian/psychoanalysis. It was neat to see the inside of a very focused store like this, and when we were there in the middle of the morning on a Friday, it was quite busy. 
Following Caversham, we hopped back onto our bus and got to see another traditional used book store, Willow Books. Unlike Ten Editions, this store was more spread out, and while it, too, featured some great piles and boxes as display spaces, there was more room to breathe. The tour guide suggests this is like a messier version of The Strand or Powell’s books, which might be a little bit of a stretch in terms of size and selection, but in terms of how it was set up and unassuming, that’s a pretty fair assessment. 

The best find at Willow Books for me was the glorious David Bowie Beta tape I found in one of the rows of books. I mean, I guess if you have a spare Beta player around, that might be something you’d need. And something maybe you’d be looking for in a store like this.

Our final stop on the book store tour was to Seekers Books. The store owner told us a little bit about the background of the store, which is located down a flight of stairs, below the main street, and focuses on esoteric, philosophical, occult, and spirituality titles. It’s a used shop, but it also has new books in it, too. The owner got inspired after majoring in psychology in college and meeting a professor who talked about spirituality and other topics that aren’t traditionally part of a major in psychology. From there, he decided a book store dedicated to these ideas was what he wanted to do.

More interesting than that, though, was his philosophy that people will find the right book for them. He often has people who come in and don’t know what they’re looking for, but because this shop offers such a unique mix of titles, they often walk away finding exactly what it is they didn’t know they were looking for. Seekers has a nice vibe to it, and the way its set up lent itself to browsing and perusing.

One of the most interesting parts of Seekers for me was the huge selection of middle grade and YA novels in the back room. This was something I hadn’t seen at many of the other stores, and it felt like an interesting selection to have in a store like this.

While the book store tour was such a neat experience, it was certainly colored by Kaminer’s perspective that indie book stores were the best places. It’s not a bad assertion, nor were any of his tour stops poor choices. Many of them weren’t necessarily of interest to those of us on the tour though, meaning that during browsing time, some of us were done pretty quickly and ready to move on to the next place. I wish we’d seen a wider variety of stores, and this was something that was asked on the tour, but wasn’t particularly well addressed.

One of the most interesting things said on the tour, though, was from Jane, who pointed out that nearly every book store we went to had titles that featured male fantasy books (think pulpy, guy hero saves a vulnerable and attractive female stories) and none of them had a romance section. What did that say about the tour we went on? What did it say about the types of readerships these books have? There’s a lot of food for thought in that comment and I’m not sure how to unpack it.

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I’ve talked at length about the highlights of the trip, the highlights of the INSPIRE: Toronto International Book Fest (TIBF), and the bookstore tour through the central part of the city. To wrap up this short series, I thought it would be worth talking about what worked for the event and what could be improved for the future.

TIBF Highlights


I think this was covered pretty well in my first two posts here and here. I think TIBF achieved what it set out to do, and I look forward to seeing what they have on tap for the future in terms of programming and panels.




What Could Be Improved


For the first year, there was a lot that seemed like it worked pretty well. That said, there were a number of things that definitely fell between the cracks.

  • The convention center had no wireless internet. They did not even have an option to pay for a day of service. There was spotty public wifi located downstairs in the convention center, if you found the right corner, which made it impossible to live tweet or blog about any of the events. The green room, which was open to media, didn’t have wireless, either. If the goal of bringing in bloggers was for media coverage and if the goal of bringing international bloggers was to do that, this was a big failure. I didn’t turn on my data, and I didn’t have an option for wireless in the building, so I felt no reason to do any writing at all until after the event. 
  • More YA panels. There was very little YA presence at TIBF, and the names they had were fairly well-known. I would have loved to see more local authors and more local YA authors. Toronto and the GTA, as well as Ontario more broadly, have a ton of YA presence, so tapping that would have been great. 
  • One of the things that Ardo mentioned in her own write up on TIBF was that there was almost no outreach to local bloggers. That…seems like a pretty big missed opportunity. How great would a local advisory committee have been? I know I would have loved to get to know the local bloggers better, as what conversation we did have was on the tour bus between book stores. It seems like they have a great community, and I wanted to hear more about it. 
  • It was impressed upon us that part of why they wanted to bring in international bloggers was to not just cover TIBF, but to also talk about the city itself. That’s why we got passes to check out some of the attraction for free, as well as why we got to do this book store tour. However, no time existed to do this. I took an extra two days for myself on this trip, but because of the flight change, I didn’t get time to explore Toronto, either. If we were to visit any of these places or to talk about the city, we should have been given more time to do so. This isn’t a criticism of being given the opportunity to attend — that was amazing — but rather, one of the goals wasn’t achievable because of the time table. It’s hard to tear yourself out of a book festival to go to a museum when you want to attend sessions. It was fortunate that Ana, Thea, and I could get to the CN tower on Friday evening, thanks to their being open late and being right next to the hotel we were staying in. 
  • Better advertising. This was an event I could have envisioned a lot more people enjoying, but there was little word about it. Even when they reached out to us bloggers, it was early to mid October, which isn’t enough time to request time off work or save money for many people. Hopefully, if this happens next year (and I hope it does), there’s more lead time to advertise it. And, hopefully, they tap the local scene better. 
  • One of the most interesting things I noticed was that there were very few people in my age demographic at the event. It could have been different when I didn’t attend on Saturday, but on Friday, it was primarily kids (it was a day for kids and that was a day they had off school) and on Sunday, it felt like an older audience. There were few 20- and 30- somethings in attendance. It was mentioned part of why bloggers were brought in may have been to fill this gap, but I think the lack of advertising and lack of tapping the local scene may have impacted this, as well. This is an audience hungry for events like this. 
  • Maybe the biggest thing tying almost all of these issues together was this: the TIBF didn’t make it clear what they were hoping to do. This is insight we got before the fest opened on Thursday, that they wanted this to be a consumer facing event, meant for general readers and a general interest audience. It wasn’t for professional reasons and it wasn’t a trade show, and because there’s not something like this in this part of the world, there wasn’t an easy way to advertise and tap the appropriate markets. Trade shows are a very different world than consumer shows. If there had been wifi and live tweeting and a more tapped local scene, then the show could have hit more radars after the first day of those in the greater Toronto area, bringing in more people — many in that 20- to 30- something demographic — and generating more interest. 





Overall Verdict


As I mentioned in my other posts, I’d absolutely consider going again. I really like Toronto, the prices for a trip during this time of year — as unpleasant a travel time as it is — were reasonable, and the event itself was fun. Even the hiccups and criticisms are minor and in no way really impacted the fun I had. In fact, this was the first time in a while I walked away from an event feeling energized and inspired to write and engage with books in new and thoughtful ways.

INSPIRE: Toronto International Book Festival, Part 2 – The Event

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Onto the second part of this multi-part series of posts about the INSPIRE: Toronto International book Festival, I’m going to talk about the event itself. Later this week I’ll wrap up with writing about the outside activities and sites I visited, then end with a post on what worked and what could be improved to make this a really knock out event.

The INSPIRE: Toronto International Book Festival (TIBF) ran for three days, from Friday, November 14 through Sunday, November 16. It kicked off on Thursday night, though, with a launch party. Prior to the launch, bloggers who were invited to meet with a handful of the event creators and facilitators, which gave us insight into how TIBF came to be what it is and what the vision for the event is. Unlike BEA, TIBF is meant to be a consumer-facing festival, meaning that the goal isn’t to bring in the industry but instead, to draw in the general public. In other words, it wants to be more like what Book Con would hope to be, and the purpose isn’t to talk up or get buzz going for upcoming titles. It’s on selling readers what’s already out there and encouraging reading in whatever form it takes.

Other countries throughout the world hold large consumer book festivals, but something similar in scope doesn’t exist in North America, aside from the Gudalajara Festival. TIBF wants to fill in that gap, and the hope is that by being located in Toronto — which is quickly accessible to a large population — it can do just that.

I’d say for the inaugural year, it didn’t do a bad job.

The Metro Centre, where the event was held, was so much more pleasant than the Javitz, and I think a large reason for that was it was much smaller and because this event wasn’t as huge as BEA, there was more room for spreading out and making it an experience for attendees. When you went upstairs, where the exhibition and event floor was, attendees were greeted with a really neat display of old printing presses:

All of the programming stages, save for one of the multicultural ones, were on the same floor, meaning it was easy to go from program to program and dip into the different discussions without feeling like you were being a distraction. More, it never got too loud: the sound from the main stage didn’t bleed into the smaller stages. There was enough space between the vendor booths and the stages, too, that it wasn’t hard to hear in booth nor on stage. 
Some of the exhibitors took the time to create really great booths, too. At BEA and at ALA, the booths are pretty standard: you get so much space, and you use it to pack in as much stuff as you can. But again, because this was a consumer event, the idea is less about the stuff and more about the experience. The best booth was, hands down, the Simon & Schuster Canada booth, which was set up like a cozy house, and each of the rooms had books that fit the theme. Cookbooks were in the kitchen, children’s books were in the play room, and so forth:
There were eight stages/feature areas, including an entire stage area dedicated for a First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Literary Circle. I didn’t get a chance to attend any of the sessions there, but I dropped by to grab a picture of it, and I also stopped by the accompanying bookstore, where I spent the bulk of my book money. I’ll talk a little bit more about this in a final post, including a link to the store for anyone interested in browsing or buying books that could be extremely difficult to find otherwise. 
What the event coordinators told us about this specific element of the TIBF was that rather than go out and curate their own program for the First Nations stage and run the risk of appropriating culture or making huge missteps, they contacted the connections they had with members of the groups and asked them to create their own lineup of programming. They were given money to bring in their speakers and given money for those same people to get an honorarium for taking part. Though this is something a general attendee wouldn’t know, this spoke volumes to me. From the beginning, the event was meant to include a diverse array of voices, and they put their money where their mouth is. 
If I have any regrets about what I didn’t get to do at TIBF, it would be that I didn’t get to spend time here. If I go back in the future, I’d want to spend a few sessions, if not an entire day, listening in to the programming here. 
On Friday, after the bookstore tour, most of my energy was zapped, but I did manage to make it to a session that I’d been really looking forward to: “I Don’t Give A Damsel: Writing Strong Young Women,” featuring Meg Wolitzer, Gayle Forman, Sarah Mlynowski, and E. Lockhart. The session, as the title suggests, was meant to explore what a “strong female character” was and why and how these particular YA writers develop strong females in their work. It was hosted by Lainey Gossip, who kicked it off by asking each of the panelists what was meant by “strong female character.” I snagged a short video of their responses (and yes, I was sitting near someone who was taking their sweet time opening a can of pop):

At times, especially during the Q&A, I felt like the panel went a little off the rails and became too self-conscious and directed at adult readers of YA, rather than YA readers (I even heard one of the panelists comment that a “real YA” was asking a question — which was odd, since I thought most of the audience looked pretty young). It wasn’t bad, but I ended up sneaking out before the end, since I thought the meat of the discussion happened early on, with questions like the one above.

I skipped out on the event Saturday — the only regret I have about that is missing Margaret Atwood — but on Sunday, I hit up a number of really interesting panels.

The first was called “Books By Their Covers: Redesigning Classics,” featuring Elly MacKay (who redid the Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon covers for Tundra), Debbie Ridpath Ohi (who redid the middle grade covers of the Judy Blume books), and Cybele Young (who redid the covers for the Kit Pearson books). This session was fantastic — all three of the artists talked about “getting the call” and being asked to redesign covers for these hugely iconic books and what their design process was. How did they choose the images they did? What sort of mediums did they work with?

The most interesting take away from this was how Elly MacKay does her art. If you look at the top picture, you can see her hand placing the tree in the image. She illustrates and paints, then she cuts out her work and puts them inside a box, where she can rearrange them. When she’s arranged them the way that she likes, she’ll photograph it. You can get a closer look at all of the covers on her website. I’m regretting that I didn’t pick up the Emily set now (though I did, thanks to the exceptionally attentive and helpful folks at the Penguin Random House Canada booth, pick up the first book in the Kit Pearson series, which features the design above).
The second panel I went to was “Comedy…? What’s Funny in Funny Books?” and it featured Ryan North, Kate Beaton, and Chip Zdarsky. This panel was, as you’d expect, a complete riot. I know very little about humor or funny books, so I really enjoyed hearing about the process behind how funny writers come up with their jokes. 

Aside from a stomach that hurt from laughing so much, the biggest takeaway from this panel was that even funny people know it can be weird and uncomfortable to try something new — and sometimes something series — and that the only way to grow is to go for it if you believe in it. The audience who doesn’t like it will skip it and those who do will only encourage you to grow your art and style. There was great chemistry on the panel, and the way they were all able to play off one another made it even funnier.

The final panel I went to was at the end of the day on Sunday, and it was “Diversity, DJs, and DIY,” featuring Greg Frankson A. K. A. Ritallin, Kayla Perrin, Stacey Marie Robinson, and Leonicka Valcius. Right before taking the stage, I got the chance to meet Leonicka, who I’ve been following on Twitter for a while and who has some incredibly insightful thoughts on diversity in publishing and the book world more broadly, and it was a treat to hear her talk about it on a big stage.

Something I found interesting — and troubling — was that there were so few white people sitting in the audience for this session. Maybe it was because the session was at a really bad time (it was one of the last of the entire event, on Sunday evening and came on the heels of Maggie Stiefvater talking on the main stage) but I suspect there’s still some belief that a diversity panel isn’t “for” white people. If anything, after this session, I feel completely opposite that. This was a session I needed to go to, even though I’ve heard some of this discussion before. Aside from insight into what publishing is or isn’t doing to bolster the voices of marginalized writers, the biggest take away I got came from Robinson, who talked about why she chooses to self-publish her work and how she thinks that self-publishing is one of the most interesting avenues for marginalized voices and stories right now.

This is something I hadn’t thought about before, and Robinson opened my mind to thinking about self-publishing in a bit of a different light. Like New Adult got its biggest audience via self-publishing, I suspect this is and will continue to be the case for diverse writers. More, it’s not about going this route because it’s the only option; rather, it’s going this route because it’s a way to subvert the gates that are hard to break down and even harder when you’re not white.

Leonicka talked about how publishing itself remains so white because it’s difficult to break in when you don’t have privilege to do so. In other words, going to college, getting an internship in the industry, then taking on a job that doesn’t pay enough to cover the bills — those are things people from marginalized backgrounds can’t often do in the same way that white people can. It was impossible not to look at those two discussions in tandem.

Another really interesting takeaway for me was how the Canadian landscape is different than the American one when it comes to reading and publishing. Perrin, who writes for Harlequin, talked about how in her first books, she was asked to change the setting of her stories, since American readers would be more reluctant to pick up a story set in Toronto than they would be a story set in Chicago. There was a good conversation about how black voices are represented and understood when they’re from Canada, as well — Perrin noted that her readers are sometimes surprised she’s Canadian.

I wish more people were in the audience to hear this panel. Perhaps in the future, a similar panel could be put on at a better time or, even more radically, maybe it could be a main stage event or not be competing with a large main stage event.

TIBF had so many other sessions I wanted to go to and didn’t get the chance to, either because they were scheduled against panels I wanted to see or because I was so drained from other events, I couldn’t get myself there. This is the kind of event, though, I would be interested in attending again — when the schedule goes up for next year, I’ll definitely be looking to see if it’s worth the trip. Toronto is closer, cleaner, safer, and so much more appealing to me as a visitor than New York City. While mid-November is kind of a crummy time to travel north, it didn’t bother me much: there aren’t huge tourist crowds, hotels and airfare tend to be cheaper (I stayed in the nice hotel for an extra night on my own, and it was under $100 with taxes which I consider more than a fair price), and this was a nice time to get away before the holidays consume everything. While I didn’t have to pay for my pass to attend the event as a member of the press, the cost of $25 for the opening night party and three days of events is extremely reasonable.

While the event’s attendance seemed like it waxed and waned — on Friday, for the Kid’s Day, there seemed to be far bigger crowds than on Sunday, though the event competed with the city’s Santa Claus parade that day — it never felt packed and unbearable. I could wander the booths and could always find a chair for the sessions. One of the things I mentioned to a couple others was that the set up lent itself to browsing, mingling, and sitting. The last one seems like it’s not important, but it is: there were seats and chairs and lounging areas throughout the convention center, which made it nice to collect yourself, your stuff, and to just browse through the books you bought.

One of the very last things I noticed at the fair, and something I thought was just a nice touch, was that there was an entire gallery of children’s books illustrations to browse. The event celebrated the entire landscape of the book world in a really accessible and fun way. Also, thumbs up to the publishers who took the little extra steps to make finding books about certain topics easy to find, both through labels (like below) and through being eager to talk about them.

 

INSPIRE: Toronto International Book Festival, Part 1 – The Quick Highlights

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There’s not any possible way to boil down the last few days in Toronto for the INSPIRE: Toronto International Book Festival into a single post. Between the tour of bookstores, the festival itself, quality time with fellow book bloggers, and some of my own explorations, this was a really special and exciting experience. For the first time in a while, I walked away feeling refreshed and so excited to talk about books and reading.

Rather than try to cram everything I want to say or think about into one massive post, I’m going to spread it out over the next couple of weeks. I’ll hit some of the sites I saw, the events and talks I attended, and wrap it all up with a big post on what INSPIRE did right and what could make it even better the next time around.

Today, though, I thought I’d do a quick run through of the highlights of my trip.

Wednesday 


I’ve never flown internationally, so it got me a little nervous. I know going to Canada is no big deal, but I got to the airport early and everything worked out just great. Since I had gotten there so early, I stopped into the bookstore at Milwaukee Airport, Renaissance Books. The store is outside the security gates, so you can really only stop in if you plan ahead for it or don’t go through security really early. Renaissance is different than most airport bookstores in that it’s all used and rare books, rather than new or best seller-y titles. I took a picture of the Cherry Ames nurse novels for girls, which I’ve only ever heard about and never seen. You’d never find this in another type of bookstore in an airport:

My flight only had 21 people on it, meaning that there was plenty of room to stretch out and actually enjoy the one hour trip to Toronto. When I got to customs, I had my first book interaction — the customs agent asked what I was doing in town, and when I told her I was covering the book festival, she immediately asked me for book recommendations. I asked her what she liked reading and she pulled out Megan McCafferty’s Perfect Fifths from her bag, and we bonded over our shared love of the Jessica Darling series.

My original flight into town was supposed to give me the entirety of Wednesday to myself, but the week before, it got changed. Rather than landing at 10 am, I wasn’t getting in until almost 10 pm. I’d booked a room in Chinatown at the Super 8, thinking it would be an ideal spot for wandering, and it would have been, had the flight worked out. But when I got there, the hotel upgraded me to a huge suite. That, coupled with the free continental breakfast, made up for the loss of a day.

Thursday


Part of why I decided to stay in Chinatown was that it’s not far from downtown. But the walk from the hotel to the Renaissance, which is attached to Rogers Stadium and next to the CN tower, would have been easier and smarter when it wasn’t cold, snowy, and I had a 40 pound suitcase to drag with me. Alas, it was an excellent workout and reason to room service a second breakfast:

Thursday evening was when festivities began, and I got to find out all of the other bloggers who were invited to attend INSPIRE. It was a small and amazing group of women: Ana and Thea from The Book Smugglers, Jane from Dear Author, Liz from Strange Horizons and Tor, and mother-daughter team Mary Ann and Gabi from Chapter by Chapter. We got the chance to meet the founders of INSPIRE and hear why they created the event, as well as what their vision of it was.

After we toasted to it, all of us bloggers were invited to explore the show floor before the event opened. We got to see the booths, as well as enjoy some finger foods. One downside, though, was that our night of exploration involved no complimentary drinks — free food, but no water or anything to wash it down. When Liz asked how much a cup of pop would be and we heard $6, Ana, Thea, Liz, Jane, and I decided we were going to go grab drinks and food at the Library Bar, just down the street. Interestingly, I read another blogger’s take on opening night and discovered people got free drinks when they entered. That wasn’t the case for us.

The Library Bar is what it sounds like: a library-themed bar. It was here I enjoyed a Douglas Coupland Pop Culture cocktail, as well as my first poutine. Despite having been to Ontario a few times, it was my first time trying the dish, and it was . . . okay. Maybe if were a bigger fan of gravy, I’d have felt differently, but I am glad I gave it a try.

Friday


It was an early morning on Friday, as we met with Dominique, our hotel representative, as well as Vanessa and Zena from Tourism Toronto, for a welcome breakfast. The breakfast was delicious and included eggs benedict, banana bread french toast, bacon, fruit, potatoes, and more. We got to hear about the restaurant itself, which overlooks Rogers Stadium and from which you could watch a Blue Jays game.

When breakfast ended, we loaded into a small bus for a tour of Toronto’s bookstores. The tour guide was writer Michael Kaminer, who wrote about these stores in a piece for the Washington Post last year. I’ll talk about this in more depth in a later post, but it was neat to see inside so many stores, though by store 4 or 5 of 8, I reached bookstore burnout.

We were dropped off at the Book Festival after the tour, wherein I went to one panel before deciding it was necessary to crash in my hotel room for a bit. As it turned out, the other bloggers did almost the exact same thing, so we hopped onto Twitter and made some more plans.

That night, Ana, Thea, and I were hitting up the CN tower, then meeting up with Liz and Jane for more drinks afterwards. The trip up the tower was great, and it was absolutely beautiful to see the city all light up on a clean night from that vantage point.

Going back for drinks was maybe one of my favorite parts of the night. I was so exhausted, but listening and talking about blogging, about books, and about what we are doing and thinking when it comes to those things was so nice in such a small group. There’s been a lot of strange things going on in the blogging world, and having an opportunity to talk about it in a small setting with knowledgable, thoughtful people was great.

Saturday 


I skipped out on the festival on Saturday to instead take the train to Kingston and see my friend. We had a wonderful day of bookstore shopping (it’s hard to be burned out with good company), playing glow-in-the-dark mini golf (I am terrible at it), and enjoying some peanut butter cheese cake after dinner.

It’s probably not fair to point to something as my favorite part of a trip, especially when it wasn’t part of the trip’s purpose, but this was my favorite part of the trip. It’s always refreshing and energizing to spend time laughing with people you know well and who know you equally as well.

Sunday


My entire day, sans an hour or two when I went to the tea shop, were dedicated to the sessions and events at INSPIRE. I got to sit in on some really excellent panels and I bought a pile of books, all of which I’ll talk about in more depth in the next couple of posts. Here’s a peek at what I ended up buying:

After a full day of panels, I went back to my hotel, ordered room service, then fell into a deep sleep after writing down some of the things I walked away thinking about and wanting to think about some more.

My Monday morning, prior to my flight home, involved returning to the hotel restaurant for a full order of banana pancakes, then tracking down a cafe from which I could do some writing.

Interestingly, I did almost no reading while here. I decided before leaving home I would pack only two print titles, as well as my ereader. I knew I’d buy some books, and I didn’t want the added weight. This ended up being a smart move, since I had no time or energy to read anyway. The walking, the dining, the conversations, and the event itself zapped me of leftover energy everyday, but in a really good way. The hotel was comfortable and I got solid sleep — something I tend to have a problem with when I travel.

This was an experience I really appreciated and cannot believe I had the chance to have. It was nice to put faces to names I knew and to do so in a way that allowed us to talk about INSPIRE as much as other book- and book blogger- related things.

Stay tuned next week for an in-depth look at INSPIRE, the bookstores of Toronto, and more.