Hi, I'm Ana and this is book spotting
This is my first ever video on this new channel that I started where I'll be spotting books
And I thought that as a first inaugural
Video, I will talk about the Edinburgh International Book Festival by the way, I should warn
I have cats and occasionally one of them might just drift across the the camera or you might hear you're a
Wild meow because I'm not currently paying attention to them
So just to let you know that it's not crazy ghosts
Anyway, so here to talk about the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which takes place over 16 days in August
And it's a complimentary festival to the Fringe which is known around the world
It's been going on since 1983 and it became an annual event. I believe since 1997 we get
almost a quarter of a million people coming to the Book Festival every year which is tremendous because Edinburgh
In Scotland, by the way only has about half a million people altogether
So that's we get half as many people
You know showing up just for books and as you can see there are tons and tons of events
There's even a separate section in this catalogue just for children. It's just it's fantastic
it's tremendous anyone that you can think of in the literary world has come here at some point or another so
I went to see a couple of events and I spotted some books
And so I thought I'd tell you about some of the books I spotted. So first one is
100 nights of hero by Isabel Greene birth now a little disclaimer
I did not actually make it to this event. I had tickets I got ill I couldn't go I still got the book
And so I haven't actually read this one yet. It's
Beautiful just like her
other book was her other book was
called
encyclopedia of early Earth
Just amazing
beautiful images and
it was about bird gods and
souls that get divided at birth and it was a
Fantastical world that I absolutely adored it is still it is one of my top
favorite books ever
And graphic novels definitely like probably
Either my favorite graphic novel or very close to it. So I can't recommend her enough even though I haven't read this
I'm sure it's amazing and
then
after that one I
went to see a double bill and
It was very science science-y, very geeky
Just like me and it was these two books. I'll talk about this one first
This is graphic science 7 journeys of discovery
by Darryll Cunningham and you can see
Right here
cute little
Autograph by him and this book is about 7
Let's say often neglected scientists in the Canon people that made some amazing discoveries
But that maybe the world
General it's not known as like part of general culture
Except he actually has one here has George Washington Carver and like pretty much every school kid in
America at some point or another learns about George Washington Carver
But I mean, this is this book was published in the UK, so I guess here maybe they don't know so much about him
It has people
antoine lavoisier Mary Anning and Nicola Tesla Alfred
don't know how to say his name
Wegner
Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Fred Hoyle along with Carver as I mentioned earlier. I think my favorite is probably Mary Anning
Mary Anning, let's see
It's great
images there she was kind of like the grandmother of
paleontology, she lived in the 1800s and she and her family were poor and
So to make ends meet she would collect
fossils
near where she lived and she would sell them to collectors and
Through all of her finds. That's basically how the field of paleontology began she was uneducated, but she provided
Great
She was an important person in the field of paleontology
So they're just like really beautifully drawn very sort of simple drawings
the text is also fantastic and
Basically, I think this should be a textbook in high schools. I think it's a great way of introducing some
very diverse scientific theories and
Discoveries to the general public. I think it's really great, but it should not be thought of as a children's book
it's this is you know for everyone it's just told in such a
Very easy to follow away that I think it'd be great for for kids
in high school and then at the same time there was this Ada Lovelace and
the making of a computer scientist and
The author 'cause there's three authors Christopher Hollings, Ursula Martin and Adrian rice Ursula Martin who was a professor of computer science
Was there to tell us all about it and it's based on I believe
manuscripts and such that were found in Bodleian
archives library, I'm not sure so it has like beautiful things like this diagram done by Charles Babbage and
Like some original
Letters like the letter from Ada Lovelace. And for those who don't know Ada Lovelace
is kind of considered like the mother of computer programming and
Also happened to be Lord Byron's daughter just you know
she was she's become sort of just as important as Lord Byron was for literature is Ada Lovelace to science and
After that I got to go and see a national treasure
and particularly a
crowd favorite and a local legend, which is who is Alexander McCall Smith, who is
Prodigious output of books. He just has stuff. I mean in the the Book Festival alone
I think he had like six or seven events
children's ones all sorts of things and
So far, I've only ever read one of his books
But I'll talk about the one that I haven't read first
So this one here?
It's called The Unbearable Lightness of scones and it's very punny and it's in the series of the 44 Scotland Street
series and which is actually what he talked about at the event because he has a new one coming out and he's
Serializing it in The Scotsman the local newspaper, which is something that he's done with a lot of the novels from this series
Which I think is just charming
That he's sort of continuing
like an 8 a late 19th century
tradition like Dickens, but he's doing it nowadays in 2018, and he is just
Charming and funny and just lovely so affable just fantastic, so I haven't read this yet
But I've read I've heard really really good things about it
The one book that I have read of his is this one and it's called Portuguese irregular verbs and the reason I picked this up
Shamedly I guess
was because
Every time I would look things up on Amazon related to Portugal or Portuguese things
this book would keep on popping up and
I should say I would look for things like about Portugal because I am from Portugal and occasionally
You'd just be looking for guides or other things like that. And so this is that absolutely nothing to do with grammar
It's about professor. Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of romance Philology  and
It is just a very funny book it's made up of
eight chapters
um
Really
they're individual stories that you can just read and and you would get a good feel for what's going on is they basically kind of
Hold up as individual short stories, but overall it is just it's funny
it kind of skewers academia, but in a very sort of
light-hearted
not mean way in any way and it's a just a funny funny book highly recommend it and
then the last person that I went to see that I'm going to talk about today because there's other people that I'm
going to see still was Chelsea Clinton and she of the clintons as in President Bill Clinton and
Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, and she has become well known in her own, right?
She's written a couple, actually quite a few books. I didn't realize how many books she actually has written
Up until I went to this event. She wrote one called she persisted
13 women who change history and that was all about
Women in the US. She's now done a follow up called she persisted around the world together with
illustrated by Alexandra
Boiger. I'm not sure how to say that and it is just this
beautiful book
just
Lovingly illustrated with these great women like the great Marie Curie that we all learn about in school
but also people
Like Mary Verghese
and
One of my favorites here was
This one here with Sissi. Sissileide Lima do Amor from Brazil. Um, who when she was a little girl
Apparently I did not know about this and I actually thought that maybe it's exaggerated
But this is completely true when she was a little girl
There was it was against the law for young girls to play football or soccer in Brazil. And so she used to make
Just to make footballs
Out of other toys, and she was amazing. She was really really good and eventually that law got
overturned and she ended up becoming sort of like the grandmother of
Brazilian women's football and it's just it's a lovely book it has people just to show
One more, it's just such a beautiful one of my favorite illustrations in this book is about Malala
and of course it has JK Rowling in here and
the theme is you know, she persisted and she's taken this Chelsea Clinton from a now
infamous
line from Mitch McConnell
regarding senator Elizabeth Warren
Where he is
Saying that nevertheless she persisted and so Chelsea Clinton took that line and many others have taken that line too
If you google it
you can find it on many t-shirts and many mugs and pins and things it's become sort of a rallying cry for
You know women who will not be told what to do, by cantankerous old men
So anyway, this book was fantastic
She was really really great
The event was a little bit strange
They chose somebody to ask her questions. That didn't seem very well-prepared
But I thought miss Clinton really managed to save the occasion if you will by
Yeah, she just saved it. It was fantastic
They ended up asking questions of the audience as most of these events will do but they said right away that it would be
children who would get the first
go at the questions and
And then maybe some adults and there was no time for any adults and there was some great questions asked by
The the children present and I think it was just a really great event and I can highly recommend
This book so that brings us to an end to this first video about the festival. I
Have already gone to see another event that I hope to talk to you about next time
and I have a few more so it'll be a smorgasbord of
Various authors as you've seen, you know, there's been a little bit of everything like children's books and
Humor and
Science and graphic novels and then also
Behemoth graphic novels and that's kind of how I roll and
So next time I hope to talk to you about
Quite a few other events that I'll be going to including one with
Jim Broadbent. Yes that Jim Broadbent the actor and
So, yeah, I hope you'll come back and then you can see what-what. I went there to see
the rest of the festival
Again, this is Ana and this has been bookspotting, bye!
