The Virginia Festival of the Book gets better and better every year. I just love it. This was my sixth year of attending this event and each time my trip gets longer and longer as I want to spend more time there. This year I arrived on Thursday in time to have dinner with some friends at one of the terrific restaurants on the Downtown Mall. Cuisine is an art form in Charlottesville, which always surprises me for some reason. There's great food at amazingly affordable prices at least by New York standards.
One of the nice things about attending book festivals is that I get to see parts of the country that I might otherwise not venture to. My trip two weeks ago to Columbia, South Carolina for the South Carolina Book Festival was an illustration of that. The event was held downtown at the convention center just a few blocks from the state capitol, the building that you may remember got a ton of press in recent years as it still flies the Confederate flag though these days it's positioned in front instead of atop the dome.
Tell us about the books you’ve finished reading with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars. During the contest period from January 17th to January 31st at noon ET, three lucky readers each will be randomly chosen to win a copy of GOOD DIRT by Charmaine Wilkerson and MORE OR LESS MADDY by Lisa Genova.
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Coming Soon
Curious about what books will be released in the months ahead so you can pre-order or reserve them? Then click on the months below.
January's Books on Screen roundup includes the series premieres of CBS's "Watson" and Netflix's "Missing You"; the season premieres of "Will Trent" on ABC, "When Calls the Heart" on Hallmark Channel, "Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches" on AMC, and "C.B. Strike: The Ink Black Heart" on Max; the season finales of STARZ's "Outlander" and Apple TV+'s "Silo"; the continuation of "Dexter: Original Sin" on Paramount+ and "The Irrational" on NBC; the films Dog Man in theaters and The Jane Mysteries: A Deadly Prescription on Hallmark Mystery; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of The Return, Here and Venom: The Last Dance.