Bookworm: Best of the Bookfest

WE’RE only half way through, but already the Edinburgh book festival has produced a number of compelling contenders for Bookworm’s own literary awards:

Happiest audience member: The woman at the RJ Ellory event who told him that she’d “only wandered in by mistake - but I wanted to tell you it’s the best mistake I’ve made all year”.

Most persistent author: RJ Ellory. Not just one novel in the bottom drawer before his publishers said yes. But twenty-three?!?.

Scariest moment: Being male and in the front row of the Main Tent when Pamela Stephenson-Connolly was looking for a tango partner.

Best audience question: (To Pamela Stephenson-Connolly) “Could you, firstly, talk about the oddest sexual problem you’ve had to treat and, secondly, could you do so in the voice of Janet Street-Porter?”

Best book recommendation by an author: Audrey Niffenegger on Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. “The circus she describes is a place you’d just kill to go to. I was in such a snit that she’d written it and I hadn’t.”

Scariest performer: The Gruffalo, sighted by a colleague’s nephews on the opening day. They weren’t particularly scared by the whole costume. But when the Gruffalo took off his costume head, revealing his human one – that was a different matter entirely....

Best deconstruction of fairy stories: Neil Gaiman on Hansel and Gretel. “We don’t learn anything except Hansel is fattenable and Gret is smart”.

Best front-of-house staff: Unfair question – they’re all great. But until Maggie O’Farrell’s event Bookworm didn’t know that 20 years ago she used to be one of the girls with the microphone for the audience Q&A.

Most disappointing audience: The Main Tent just a third full for TC Boyle’s wonderful reading – his first ever UK book festival. Only about 50 for Hari Kunzru. Spare tickets for Tobias Wolff. Wake up, Edinburgh!