Four years ago now I wrote a post about my weekend at the Bristol Book Conference. We should have been back there in 2020, but we all know what happened in 2020 so it’s been four years before my second weekend of fun and frolics with other aficionados of Twentieth Century Books for Girls. As you saw yesterday I came home with a big old pile of books, but what else did we get up to?
Well the theme this time was Eccentrics, Oddballs and Misfits and as there are plenty of those in these books there was plenty to talk about! Gum from Ballet Shoes got a mention, and we had a whole talk on the basically insane Oeuvre of Rita Coutts – it sounded so mad I bought myself one to see for myself!
As you know my gateway books to the genre were The Chalet School, Drina and Sadlers Wells – which were the series that were still in print in paperback when I was about the right age. So one of the joys for me is discovering new to me authors that were already collectible hardbacks when I was little.
But also it’s talking to the people. There are not many people that I can make jokes about singing people better out of comas with, but this weekend there were nearly 100 of them! And they all want to talk to you about their favourite book or tell you why you’re wrong to thing that Professor Richardson (who single handed builds his own rocket to try to fly to the moon) is the most eccentric character in the genre…
Anyway, it was a wonderful weekend -even if my team didn’t win the quiz – and we’ve already made some suggestions for possible talks in 2024. Oh and I’ve got a new WhatsApp group of friends to chat to. Delightful.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
Glad you enjoyed it. Hope you enjoyed my friend Lisa’s talk 😀.