Rolled up rugs, ticket stubs and other literary festivities

A few months ago I stuck up my hand and volunteered to help out at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival.

An act of altruism? Yes, well sort of...

An act of miserly cunning motivated by the desire to hear some people I’d heard of and admired (if not yet actually read) as well as some I hadn’t heard of but hoped to admire, without paying for a ticket? Yes, well sort of…

Motivation aside, the festival rolled round two weeks ago. I’ve had an enjoyable fortnight taking ticket stubs, picking up authors from hotels, passing microphones round rooms full of eager audience members, pointing out the loos, finding out where the loos are in order to point them out, putting up banners, pulling down banners and writing and issuing poorly spelled receipts for on-the-door tickets.

And an even better time… hearing Emma Donoghue talk about her research techniques (rolling her five year old up in a rug to see whether he could escape), sipping coffee listening to Amitav Ghosh’s thoughts on the Opium Wars, environmental destruction and whether his kids have read his books, flagging Jeffery Archer to hear Craig Silvey and Brian Castro at the Australian Consular General’s stunning (and difficult to find) Repulse Bay residence, and hearing Ex-Aussie PM Kevin Rudd’s daughter Jessica talk about why the label chick-lit doesn’t offend her.

Oh yeah, and all this means I’ve added the following to my gots-ta-read list:

1. Room (wasn’t going to do it, but if Ms Donoghue’s son is really putting all that effort into making sure his Mum’s stories are properly researched then I’ll give it a go – plus it sounds less Flowers in the Attic and more, umm, charming than I was expecting given the subject matter. Hooray)
2.  Burying the Bones – Hilary Spurling’s biography of West Virginian born, China-raised Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Pearl Buck whose 1931 novel The Good Earth changed the way many Americans thought of China and the Chinese
3. The Good Earth – I have it on good authority (Hilary Spurling’s) that it’s as wonderful a read today as it was in 1931
4. Rhubarb and Jasper Jones – both by Australian author Craig Silvey. Silvey is one of those rare people who just knew what they wanted to do when they grew up. He shunned University and age 19 sat down to write. He’s been awarded the prizes to suggest he definitely did the write thing…
5. When a Billion Chinese Jump – part travelogue, part environmental missive. Terracotta Warriors and the Great Wall? Nope. When Jonathan Watts toured China he sought out evidence of the environmental degradation the country’s rapid industrialization has wreaked on its landscape. The book examines the environmental issues facing China as well as the intriguing line-up of characters Watts met along the way.