At Printers' Row

At Printers' Row
Originally uploaded by mojosmom

What used to be known as the Printers Row Book Fair, and is now the Printers Row Lit Fest, was held this weekend in Chicago. As usual, I went. As usual, I came home with a bunch of books. Heavy (literally) on art books and memoirs. Herewith the haul:

Chicago's Left Bank, by Alson J. Smith
Passages from the French and Italian Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Tales of a Theatrical Guru, by Danny Newman (with a foreword by Studs Terkel)
Dear Genius: A Memoir of my Life with Truman Capote, by Jack Dunphy
Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the form of Nature
The Medici, MIchelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence
Edgar Miller and the Hand-Made Home: Chicago's forgotten Renaissance man
Richard Nickel's Chicago: Photographs of a lost city

It was quite a nice day to browse, cool enough for a light jacket but not cold. I love warm summer days, but carrying a ton of books around when it's mid-'80s and sunny isn't always pleasant.

I have to say that I was shocked to find that the fair is devoting less and less space to books. I don't mind that they're doing a lot more author events. That's completely appropriate. But the fair is now shorter by one block, and much of the space was taken up by the C-SPANmobile, a "reading lounge" (read: furniture sales), a mattress seller and a car dealer. Look, I know they need sponsors, but this was ridiculous.