Erikka Askeland: Book your place with the current in-crowd

‘BOOKISH” would be the way I would have been described in my youth. Particularly when the adjective took a pejorative tone, as was the case when the person – who in the interests of familial harmony will remain unnamed – would tell me: “Get your fat ass off the sofa and play outside, you are too bookish”.

Of course, attitudes to the desirability of being bookish amongst my family varied with each individual’s level of esteem for such things as education, conversation and wit. I am sure I am not alone when I admit that not all members of my family share my own, deeply-held appreciation of these values, which I believe are superior to wealth, sporting prowess and knowledge of who Kim Kardashian is. I can still recall how my uncle and I once carried on a postprandial debate about social welfare, while some of my cousins sat wide-eyed, surprised that people would: a) remain at a table after eating and b) maintain a conversation for longer than, “what kind of car do you have?” and “so, do you hunt?”. (The necessarily brief answers I could give to these would be, respectively: “Don’t have one”, and “No.”) Obviously, they probably think I’m a snob. And perhaps a bit fat. But these differences are the reason why we look beyond our family to other groups to nurture what is important to us. And the sense of this is no more apparent than at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Being a hack, rather than an author, I had the great honour of being asked be involved with this year’s festival by chairing an event. And while some of my cousins would have shrugged, and then perhaps wiped their noses with the back of their sleeve, on hearing this news, others in my chosen circle were even a little impressed.

The scene at the Book Festival on the Monday afternoon I had my gig was clearly quite distinct from the wider Fringe festival. Whereas last Saturday I took an afternoon break from seeing some shows to drink an indifferent Chardonnay on a pub terrace packed with “hens” decked in fluffy pink deely-boppers and festival escapees watching the Arsenal match, the book festival was comparatively placid, yet still buzzing with activity.

A friend once admitted to me that the smell of a second hand book shop often made her want to urinate, as the slightly musty odour given off by old books relaxed her. And while my own bodily urges remained more or less in check, I recalled this as I walked around Charlotte Square. “These are my people,” I thought, feeling strangely peaceful and at home.

Though the book festival atmosphere was cerebral, the tents were packed. Even my session on global economics and tax havens, which could have appeared dry, was full to capacity and the question and answer session lively, as the audience seemed almost bursting with the desire to grapple with recent global events that affect us all.

And while I love the Book Festival, I haven’t yet cracked how to buy the tickets for the readings that are clearly going to be a big hit. The recent exchange of a Facebook friend bordered on unseemliness – even resorting to the “do you know who I am?” style tactics as she put out a plea for a ticket to see Caitlin Moran, whose book How to Be a Woman seems to have replaced Sex and the City as the new way women of a certain age get their kicks.

It might be unfair to add the observation that my crowd in the tent were probably a little older, on average, than those I saw at the at the pub the previous Saturday. But I think it would be possible to link the rise of the book festival as mass entertainment to the aging of the population, for whom a sit down and a good barney about, well, any subject that can be put between the covers of a book, is the height of good fun.

There are now more than 130 book festivals in the UK in Ireland. You wonder if there are enough authors to go around to feed this hungry maw of the book-loving audience. But this also proves something – maybe my cousins were wrong – and the bookish shall inherit the earth.