RIASS visits the Buenos Aires Book Fair

First things first: I promise I didnt plan my honeymoon around the Buenos Aires Book Fair. But since were here, and the BA Book Fair (known in Spanish as the'Feria Internacional del Libro de'Buenos Aires) is the pre-eminent book fair of the Spanish-speaking world, why not?

Since the book fair is currently in its third week, the husband and I were expecting things to be fairly quiet, so we had a solid sleep-in before hitting the Subte (subway) at around midday. Unfortunately, thanks to a kind pickpocket, our trip took two attempts, the second without my mobile phone (all those photos of book covers lost!).

Needless to say, given our late arrival, we werent expecting this:

(By the by, the best way to navigate lines such as this is with a hearty chorizo in hand. Sadly, our port-a-lunch was finished well before we found the end of the line.)

(I also wasnt expecting to be shat on by a pigeon, but hey, whats life without a little adventure?)

Still dont have a sense for the size of the line? How about this?

Finally, we made our way to the front of the line, picked up our passes, and wandered inand found ourselves in Borges Library of Babel. Or something close enough to it:

These photos are just a few of those takenthose taken using a second camera and focusing on cover design and childrens books will be uploaded at a later point.

Many, many hours were spent wandering the trade halland even then we only got through about half of the exhibitors. There was also all manner of talks and presentations going on, but given our rudimentary Spanish, we thought it might be better for all that we passed on these.

Still, my embarrassingly poor Spanish didnt prevent me from picking up what is quite possibly the worlds smallest edition of The Little Prince:

Next up, we found ourselves at the Random House Mondadori stall (oddly enough, Random House is just down the road from our hotel. How very random), where we pondered sitting on a throne made of Valyrian steel, and then chatted with a marketing exec about a new e-reader product being released to the Spanish-speaking market. The e-reader will feature all manner of classic and modern fiction in Spanish. (Im arranging an interview with the company to learn more about it, so stay tuned)

A huge feature for The Hunger Games'and a bit more e-book love:

Some of the foreign publisher stands (and yes, that is a real person posing like the Statue of Liberty. All. Day. Long.)

Photos of authors, a huge David Grossman exhibit, and something involving colourful tubes and whispering that Ill have to google when I have more time:

The Victoria Ocampo exhibit:

Why yes, that is cheese being cooked with a blow-torch:

And what better way to end the day than a book cafe?