Never going to be festival material

I love books. I love reading them and collecting them and hoarding them, using them as a bulwark against the brutality of the world. I love library books and bookstores to an emotionally unhealthy degree. I like the joy of trying out new authors, and the immeasurable comfort of reading something new from an old favourite. I read books every day, and spend just as much time thinking about them and the things they inspire, as I do reading the actual things.

But by God, I never want to go to a writers festival event for as long as I live.

Partly it's because the people who fill the crowd at the interviews and presentations at these things are just not my people. The smug is smothering, and even worse, sometimes it's horribly familiar - I feel very seen, very exposed, and very mediocre.

I don't know which particular Q+A broke me, every one of them is full of all the clichés - the dude who has a comment more than a question; the raging sycophants who just want to say 'I love you' without  adding anything of worth.

I love connecting with people over shared reads, but I always think of reading as a solitary thing, and every time I've been to a writer's festival, I've always felt out of place, even when discussing works that resonate on the atomic level. 

I can still cherish the opportunity that I got to tell Terry Pratchett how amazing he was, back in the mid-90s, but these celebrations of literature are never really my thing.