An Orgy of Readers

If you've been reading Paris Play for more than, say, a week, you know we are bibliophiles. And that may be putting it lightly. Of all the possessions we moved to Paris, the majority were books. Even then, we had to give so many away, and leave so many behind. It was like severing digits.

Luckily, they LOVE books here. Just to prove it, every March Paris has a Salon du Livre, a book fair, which resembles the BEA (the old American Booksellers Association convention, now called BookExpo America), except that it's wide open to the public, too.

 

For the equivalent of $13, anyone can come.  And everyone does.

Not only that (this is the really joyous part), students are allowed in free.  So the giant convention hall crackles with the energy of thousands of enthusiatic children and teenagers, consuming everything from manga and The Simpsons, to Anne Frank, pirate tales, and Descartes (the latter in the original French, of course).

 

It was the first big event we went to here in Paris last year, and we were delighted to attend the four-day Salon again last weekend with cameras, and to see so many readers. Radio France broadcasts live from the show floor, and there were long lines for author signings, and cash registers. And to fire the imagination, there were costumed creatures and blow-up manga heroes to emulate.

 

Of course, various technologies were demonstrated, from old-fashioned printmaking to the newest way to offer up that marvelous search for lost time.