THE FESTIVAL IS UNDERWAY

I am just back from my first two sessions at the Festival.

Yay, great excitement.

The first thing you notice on arriving at the Aotea Centre is the huge bookshop set up by two of NZ's finest independents, Unity Books and the Women's Bookshop. Enormous piles of books by the authors appearing at the Festival.

So far I have only bought two books but this is only the beginning of the four day Festival!

After completing CLOUDSTREET by Tim Winton last night and enthusing about it on my blog earlier today I decided I should buy his very first novel, an open swimmer, (Penguin Books NZ$25) which won for him the Australian Vogel Award way back in 1982.

The other book I bought was THIS IS MODERN ART by Matthew Collings (Weidenfeld & Nicolson NZ$40) and this was bought after being wowed by Collings at the Festival's opening event, Talking the Talk, which also featured NZ art writers/commentators Justin Paton and Hamish Keith.

Collings , who is in NZ to attend this Festival and last weekend's Art Fair, is a major star in his home base of London, and was responsible I susp[ect for the crowd of perhps 400 who turned up for the event.

OK, more from me tomorrow, time to jump on my Vespa and head back to the Aotea Centre for the next session.

Ciao.