Our intrepid CEO Steve Bercu is currently in Russia attending the Moscow International Book Fair. He’s sending along entries from his travel log. Stay tuned for more transmissions from Russia as Steve’s adventure unfolds:
September 6–more Moscow
This was a day of sight seeing. We have hit some incredible weather in Moscow. It’s sunny and in the mid 60’s–perfect walking weather. Ginger and I walked for about 10 hours. We started at the Treytyakov museum. It has a spectacular exhibit of icons and Russian art from the last several centuries all housed in a building that was worth the visit itself. We got into St. Basil church to see the frescos and stumbled upon an a capella choir singing inside in a spot that had amazing accoustics and made their already wonderful voices even better. The music was haunting and hearing it in that location just added to the experience.
We finally stumbled back to the hotel to meet the group to head out for dinner at a little restaurant nearby. After a few hours of eating it was time to try to sleep and get ready for another day.
September 7–First day at the book fair
We were picked up at the hotel in the morning and driven out to the convention center grounds about an hour away on an edge of Moscow. The park is a giant Soviet construction filled with oversize statues of Soviet youth in grand gestures with flags, pointing at the future, etc.
The halls are more or less like BEA but the booths inside are not. The book fair is a consumer fair so the vendors and publishers plan to sell books to the public. It looks more like an immense school book fair than what we are usually accustomed to seeing. The stalls range from just 3 or 4 feet wide with a little table to sell from to “large” booths that are probably 30 or 40 feet long. The show was going to open at noon so we had a little while to look around before the doors were opened. Noon brought a short speech outside the main doors and then people began streaming in. The Read Russia group went to the International Lounge where we will be on panels for the next three days. After that I wandered the floor for an hour or two until the opening of the International Lounge at 2:00 pm.
Some of the other members of the Read Russia group here showed up just before the 2:00 pm opening. There were Peter Mayer, president of The Overlook Press, Steve Rosato, director of BEA, Rudiger Wischenbart, BEA international, George Slowik, president of Publishers Weekly, Peter Blackstock from Grove Atlantic, Michael Barron, editor at New Directions, Mark Krotov, an editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, John Silbersack from Trident Media Group and Peter Kaufman from Intelligent Television and the leader of the Read Russia Advisory Board in the United States. They represent a wide range of expertise that they will present to our Russian colleagues over the next few days.
After the first panel we continued the discussion until it was time to return to the hotel and get ready for the evening. Our evening was planned around attending the Book of the Year award at the Stanislavsky Theater. I had no idea what to expect so I was thinking about the book award ceremonies I have attended in the US. We sat down in the wonderful auditorium and suddenly something quite different started. The show opened with a band playing big band music and then a lot of Las Vegas style dancers came out and pranced around the stage for a while in skimpy costumes that looked like Christmas ornaments and flamingos doing kicks. The emcees took over and started annoucing some of the winners in different categories. The winners were broken up with more performances (an operatic singer, a group of about 10 women singing and dancing). The show ran on for about an hour and a half to the grand climax of the Book of the Year.
The show was followed by a reception in what was probably a ballroom (big). Somewhere in the reception our Russian host, Vladmir Grigoriev showed up. He is deputy minster of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications and a big bear of a guy with an engaging laugh and smile that immediately wins you over. He had arranged a special extra reception for us in a private area of the room where he and some others could engage in the national pastime–smoking. So we ate and drank more in a smoke filled room that reminded me of life in my childhood.
It was all in all a terrific day and great start to the book fair part of the week.
BookPeople 