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Reading Between the Lines at Event

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Times Staff Writer

By midmorning Sunday, Allison Schow already had filled a backpack and stacked high a wheeled cart she’d rigged specially to haul books -- enough material to keep the Salt Lake City flight attendant occupied for months.

“I’m a book-aholic,” said Schow, who made the trip here to attend the 10th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, “and I love to feel the wonderful energy on this campus with all the people who are reading and love books.”

For the record:

12:00 a.m. April 28, 2005 For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday April 28, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 49 words Type of Material: Correction
Book festival -- An article in Monday’s California section about the L.A. Times Festival of Books said former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright was the first woman to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In fact, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick held the office from 1981 to 1985.

Schow, who attended with her mother for the second year in a row, was among thousands on the UCLA campus for the event. Under sunny skies, attendees browsed at hundreds of booths, stood in long lines to get books signed by their favorite authors and listened to speakers talk on subjects that varied widely. Examples: “Are We Making the World Safe for Democracy?” and “The Life and Legacy of Julia Child.”

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Throngs lined up to get the autograph of California’s first lady, Maria Shriver, who came to talk about her new book, “And One More Thing Before You Go,” a 62-page collection of advice for young women.

“It’s always a delight to be among so many people who like to read, since I have four children who don’t,” said Shriver, who was a television news correspondent until her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was elected governor.

Shriver emphasized that the book was “little,” but she also reminded the crowd that it’s “cheap,” at $13.95, and small enough to slip into a purse. The slim volume, she said, urged young women to spend less time looking at themselves in the mirror and instead to get involved in helping people less fortunate.

Another popular draw Sunday was former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who spoke to a crowd in a packed campus ballroom -- once she finally found the place. Albright, author of the recent memoir “Madame Secretary,” arrived late after some trouble negotiating Los Angeles’ sprawling roadways.

“Secretary Albright has a lot of power and clout in this country, but not enough power and clout in this country to find a driver who knew where UCLA was,” explained Samantha Power, a Harvard lecturer and human rights activist who interviewed Albright in front of the audience.

“I’ve been to Torrance,” Albright said to gales of laughter.

“She’s not kidding,” Power added, before launching an hourlong discussion.

Power, who won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for her book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” asked Albright about her new memoir, U.S. foreign policy and her experiences as a woman in a field traditionally dominated by men.

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Albright, the first woman to run the State Department and to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said she felt that even after she ascended to positions of considerable power, she was more inclined to self-doubt than a man would have been.

“You have to prove the negative in many ways -- try to prove you are not moody, overly emotional, too concerned about feelings.... You’re constantly out there on that,” said Albright, noting that “certain aspects of doubt are part of our DNA.”

At the same time, Albright had strong criticism of current White House policy -- comments frequently interrupted by applause. She said she was “repelled at the moment” by foreign policy issues “being framed in such completely black-and-white terms. It requires a look which is more understanding of what’s actually happening on the ground rather than trying to put your own fix on something and make up the facts as you go along.”

She also criticized the Bush administration’s approach to the Darfur region of Sudan, where an ethnic cleansing campaign has left tens of thousands dead and an estimated 2 million people displaced. Albright said the lack of more decisive action by the U.S. government “is beyond my understanding.”

The two-day festival featured more than 95 authors and 400 exhibitors.

“I think it’s the best in the country,” said Lucille Enix, a retired magazine editor from Dallas who flew in for the festival, “with such a variety of people engaged in writing and publishing.”

One of Enix’s main goals for the weekend was to get Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, to autograph her newest book for one of her friends, a high school student who is an “aspiring young writer” in Texas.

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Among the panels of interest to hopeful authors was one entitled “What’s Hot: Agents Discuss the Changing Literary Marketplace.”

Georges Borchardt, the president of a highly regarded literary agency that bears his name, warned listeners that “what’s hot” can be ephemeral. One of his authors, Ian McEwan, currently is atop the Times bestseller list for “Saturday,” his novel about a neurosurgeon in post-Sept. 11 London. But Borchardt noted: “We have been representing him since him the 1970s, and when we took him on, he certainly wasn’t hot at all.”

He told those gathered that what becomes hot is not always what publishers think they want. The hottest book on his list, he noted, is Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” a semi-fictional account of the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s teenage years in Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

The book -- originally published in French in 1958 and in English in 1961 -- sells about 400,000 copies a year.

But he said that when they first tried to sell the book in the U.S., no one was interested.

One publisher, Borchardt said, sent a note telling him: You are wasting your time with Elie Wiesel. He will never find an audience in this country.

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For Schow, the flight attendant from Utah, the festival was a chance to become inspired, learn about new books and to hear successful writers talk about what they do.

“I am studying writing at the University of Utah,” she said, saying an added bonus to the weekend was seeing parents “sprawled out on the grass reading with their kids.”

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