Sunday Salon: UCF Festing

Good morning my friends!  I am back today to post about our third annual UCF Book Festival that I attended yesterday.  For a relatively young event, they have done a great job of recruiting well-known authors, organizing a floor of vendors, and organized it like a well-oiled machine.  For a town with no indie bookstores, it is heartening to have such literary presence in the community.


Once again, the bloggers were provided a suite where we could set up shop, drop our bags (What?  Book shopping?  Not us!), and take a break in between panels.  We had a solid blogger presence...Heather (Raging Bibliomania), Heather (Book Addiction), Michelle (My Books. My Life.), Jenny (Take Me Away), and Anita (A Woman, a Wife, a Mom) were all in attendance.  


   

There were 21 panels to choose from, so there was much debate and gnashing of teeth in trying to decide!   We started off the day listening to Jeff Ashton (prosecuting attorney against Casey Anthony) promoting his book "Imperfect Justice".  Imperfect indeed.  This was a fascinating one.  I doubt there is a human being in this country that doesn't have an opinion on that trial, so the entire audience was very interested to hear how this guy REALLY felt about it all.  And he told us.  He was very engaging.  


I also attended panels that included Joshilyn Jackson (the woman lights up a room I swear), Karen White, Sheryl Needle Cohn, W. Scott Poole, Allan Wolf, Ellen Hopkins, Jessica Martinez and Ty Roth.  Then of course there was a panel featuring all of these beautiful talented ladies below...Lisa Wingate, River Jordan, Rachel Hauck, and Marybeth Whalen.  Love.
 

 It was a full and fabulous day.  The bloggers ended the day with a dinner at Macaroni Grill, where we all reveled in the impending birth of Michelle and Ben's baby at the end of May, and basically caught up with each other's lives since we all got together a year ago.






Beyond that, I'll briefly just tell you my reading has been on the slow end of things.  I did finish Jon Krakauer's "Where Men Win Glory" on audio, and have just started John Green's "The Fault in Our Stars".  I finished "Looking For Salvation at the Dairy Queen" in print for Books, Babes and Bordeaux, and have started Jo Nesbo's "The Leopard".  Who knows how long it will take me to read this bad boy.  You may be hearing about it for awhile.  For the record, it is 1 1/2 inches thick and 611 pages long.  Oy vey.  Good thing I love him.


I also had a golf tournament (yes another one) this week, and two volleyball games.  And Andre for myself and the kids.  It isn't a week without him.  


Oh.  And one more week to Easter by the way.  In case you forgot.  I have not.  I'll be drinking mimosas by noon on Easter Sunday, and will probably be fast asleep by 3:00. But in all seriousness, I have found that except for our vacation in Charleston, I didn't miss the tipple all that much.  It is a good lesson learned.  I miss pasta and cheese more than I miss alcohol. 


Hope you all have a relaxing Sunday, and we will see you around next week!