FoB – S.E. Hinton

The final panel I attended at the Festival of Books wasn’t a panel. It was a conversation. Or maybe an interview…I forget the official title. Anyways, it was Jane Smiley talking to S.E. Hinton. And I was going to do a full write up, but you should really just go read this Jacket Copy post, because it pretty much nails it.

A few additional observations:

Jane Smiley and S.E. Hinton were quite the odd couple. I had serious doubts for the first 10 minutes or so that anything interesting would be said.

S.E. Hinton’s husband thinks she can write soft p*rn.

She does much more thinking about her books than writing them.

And, she always has to become her narrator. Which is exhausting for her.

This ended up being quite entertaining. S.E. Hinton has a fantastic sense of humor…it took a while to make an appearance, but once she got going, this was a fascinating interview. If you ever have a chance to see S.E. Hinton, I’d highly recommend it…she is nothing at all like I imagined. The Jacket Copy post has a picture, so you can see what I mean. Realistically, I knew she wasn’t twenty, but I still expected to see an edgy young author.

So there you have it…this brings me to the end of the Festival of Books. It was a fun, exhausting, long weekend filled with books and new friends and interesting authors. I’d totally go again…but only with fellow bloggers. Seriously. That is what made the weekend so much fun. I can’t imagine facing such a horde of people without having a fellow book lover or two or three or ten by my side.