Book Conference 2024

As I mentioned yesterday, last weekend I was at Book Conference, and now you’ve seen the new arrivals, you get the write up of what I got up to at my third trip to The Bristol Conference for Twentieth Century Schoolgirls and their Books.

Once again we were at Wills Hall, which is part of the University of Bristol and has a pleasingly boarding school air to the old parts of the site. And this year’s theme was Mothers, Mistresses and Other Role Models – a reminder that in this context mistresses means teachers – but there were other topics on the menu as well, including my friend’s talk “Cantering Towards Christ – evangelical pony books” which we came up with at the 2022 conference and she’s had to do all the reading for. It was amazing – and came with commemorative magnets too.

As this is my third time at conference there were a fair few familiar faces now – but actually quite a lot of new ones too. And as I’ve said in my posts about the previous conferences, there is such joy in spending time with other people who are into the same stuff that you are – especially when its something so niche. Everyone gets it when you make a joke about good girls getting a doctor to marry, or singing someone out of a coma. And you get such good book recommendations too. Aside from my friend’s talk, my other favourite was the one about timeslip novels. Time travel or timeslip books are one of the areas where I can never figure out what I’m going to like and what I’m not very easily, so it was really great to hear someone talk with so much knowledge about them and with such love.

And then as well as buying books, I did a bit of selling too. There’s a participant book sale on Sunday morning and I went through my shelves to figure out what I thought the other people at conference might want to take off my hands. Two years ago I didn’t quite get it right – mostly because I took my duplicates and if I’ve got a duplicate of something they probably already have it too. So this time I went for the Girls Own stuff that I’m not going to want to read again (some of which I bought at last conference!) and then adjacent stuff that I’ve seen sold at conference (and indeed bought myself) – so adult novels set in boarding schools, crime, mystery and some literary and women’s fiction.

And I did quite well. I took four boxes of books to sell – and I only bought two boxes back. But more to the point, I made back in sales what I had spent on the books I bought! Which is quite the achievement. And now all the stuff I’m happy to get rid of is sorted and in boxes it makes it easier for me to sell it (the Girls Own stuff) or donate it (the other stuff). I just need to pull my finger out and sort that – although I’d rather be reading the books that I bought!

Have a great Sunday everyone