{Books} LA Times Festival of Books

In the beginning of 2017 I made a simple goal for the year: Do more shit.  With this in mind, I've been searching for fun & relatively inexpensive things to do in LA this summer.  While reading an article about the best festivals in California, one in particular caught me eye; The LA Times Festival of Books. Festival...OF BOOKS.  I wasn't entirely sure what exactly this festival of books was, or what it was going to cost (free!), but it didn't matter. I was going.

After doing a bit more reading, I began to fall in love with the idea & what it stands for.  According to their official website, "The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with one simple purpose: To bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them." Swoon.

Located on the USC campus, it was a 2 day event filled with poets, writers, artists, musicians vendors, food & book signings (complete list here)  After spending only a few hours scouring the booths with one of my fellow bookworms, I understand why it is considered the largest festival of it's kind in the country. Over 150K people attend the festival each year!  We definitely got lost a few times & I'm still not 100% certain we made it to all the booths...but overall, I think we did pretty damn good.

Little Free Library! One day I will have one of these in front of my house.

My favorite part of this whole day, besides scoring some awesome loot, was learning about the many independent book stores located all over our large city.  So often I rely on ordering books off Amazon or B&N, but after browsing so many different indy book store booths, I will be making a renewed effort to spend more time at these little gems.

There was also some really fun book related goodies. These items in particular gave me a good laugh.

Well ain't that the truth.

Someone should probably correct my grammar on my blog posts.

Props to Hulu for this one...

Sadly, I had to keep my spending in check, but I am really excited about the books I got.  I'm also pretty obsessed with these postcards. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but they were too awesome to pass up.

The LA Times considers this event their "Gift to the city of LA" & well, I gladly accepted it. All around it was such a fun day & I'm already going to start saving my pennies for next year! (Note to self for next year: pay attention to just how hot it's going to be & plan accordingly)