Book Smart

Spencertown Academy Bookfestival

by Amy Lubinski, August 26, 2008

If you have any resemblance to bibliokleptomaniac Stephen Blumberg, you have an intense love for books. Blumberg’s obsession led him to multiple arrests in the 1980s and early ’90s for his theft of over 20,000 rare books from over 140 universities in 45 states and Canada, and to custom-build 86 bookshelves that extended over windows and into the backs of closets to house his collection. Though Blumberg’s case is extreme, to many nothing can compare sharing their home with their favorite authors and characters, breathing in the distinctive smell of worn paper, and turning each individual page as the words seemingly float away into space. If you’re looking to surround yourself with books like Blumberg (through legal means), or just searching for some new titles to curl up on the couch with, grab your biggest tote bag in preparation for the third annual Spencertown Academy Arts Center Books Festival, which will be held over two weekends, from September 5 through September 14.

Over 10,000 donated new and gently used books will fill the building. “The important thing about the number is that they’re 10,000 quality books,” says Mary Anne Lee, executive director of Spencertown Academy. “We get rid of the junk and the pulp novels and and the bodice-rippers. They are all very well organized and it’s easy to shop.” Though Lee explains that all genres and books for all age groups will be available, and that event organizers have a strong collection of art books, biographies, political nonfiction, and paperbacks in contemporary literature.

Keeping with the tradition of planning the programming at the festival around a theme, the theme chosen for this year is “Exploring the Immigrant Experience through Literature.” “It’s a hot topic that’s of interest to people generally, and has things being said about it in all genres of books: poetry, memoirs, fiction,” explains Lee. “It was a theme that was broad enough enough for us to have a range of voices all reflecting on the same issue.”

Some of the authors participating in panel discussions and reading from their books this year include Russell Banks (author of The Reserve, Dreaming Up America, and Cloudsplitter) and Mary Gordon (author of Circling My Mother, Final Payments, and The Shadow Man). Also, authors Da Chen, Rigoberto Gonzalez, and Sadia Shepard will lead a key panel discussion on the immigration theme on September 6. Chen, author of Brothers, China’s Son, and Colors of the Mountain, grew up in southern China during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, in which families, including his own, were forcibly placed into re-education camps by the emerging communist government. Gonzalez, foremost known as a poet, has also written memoirs, including The Butterfly Boy, about his experience as a double outsider: as both an immigrant in the US and as a gay man in a macho Latin culture. Sadia Shepard’s The Girl from Foreign recounts the Pakistani author’s discovery of her Jewish heritage.