Whither New York Is Book Country?

[sdelmonte]

So on the back page of the art secion of today's NY Times is an ad for this:

http://www.nytimes.com/greatread

The Great Read. A book fair in Bryant Park, with Barnes & Noble and Target as sponsors, with events and author signings, and with the NY public libraries benefitting from all funds raised by the event. On a Sunday in the fall.

Sound familiar?

I wondered, "what about New York Is Book Country?" So I Googled for it. And guess what? There is no New York is Book Country this year. (Their website offers no deatils at all.)

Has the New York Times killed this venerable event? Or did last year's deicision by NYIBC to move the event off Fifth Avenue to the Village and from a Sunday to a Saturday reflect an instability on the part of the event that the Times is now benefitting from? Or maybe this is just a reinvention of the event for one year to mark an anniversary of some minor note?

As some of you may recall, I posted a rant about how it was strange to move NYIBC at all, and to move it to Saturday. But I surely didn't want to see it cease to be. Hopefully, this is not the end.

But there is something not right about this. Which isn't to say that if The Great Read has the same kind of events and authors and booths, I won't go. I love books. I like the Times, more or less. And if they get PAD or Neil Gaiman or someone big from DC Comics to do booksignings, I will so want to be there.

I just wish that this event was still the one I loved all those years on Fifth Avenue.

Comments

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

And it was so often on a yom tov in recent years, so now that we have a September with no holidays, and we can all go, there's no NYIBC. It's all a conspiracy, I tell you, a conspiracy against Sabbath-observers!

[chlorrel.livejournal.com]

There's no more NY is Book Country? That makes me sad. My parents would take us there every year.

That's just really sad. It was always so much fun. And meeting authors and book signings and just everything? Really awesome.