CWC South Has Booth,
Raffle Baskets, Essay Workshop,
More, at Riverside Dickens Festival
February 24-25, 2018
The Riverside Dickens Festival – in its Silver Jubilee 25th year – will show off its Victorian best with live music and stage performances, debates and speeches by celebrity authors Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells and others, Queen Victoria (portrayed by talented tribute artists), a Pickwick Pub Night, costumes and vendors, all located in Historic Downtown Riverside February 24-25, 2018.
The CWC South booth, open both days, will have educational information about Dickens contemporaries in California, and handouts about membership and branch events. For the Pickwick Pub Night fundraiser, CWC South will provide two raffle baskets containing such notable items as an Arthur Conan Doyle interview on DVD and a CD of the classic Orson Welles radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Additionally, CWC South will present a half-hour essay-writing workshop for teens, on Saturday and again on Sunday.
Merriam-Webster Announces
Word of the Year
Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski revealed that lookups for the word feminism spiked by 70 percent over 2016. Runners-up, in no particular order, are: complicit, recuse, empathy, dotard, syzygy, gyro, federalism, hurricane, and gaffe. Interestingly, some common computer spell-checkers do not recognize the word recuse, even though usage dates back to the 14th century and dictionaries have listed it for centuries-plus.
LA Times Festival of Books
Returns to USC Campus
April 21-22, 2018
The perennially popular LA Times Festival Books addresses bibliophiles’ unfulfilled cravings over the April 21-22 weekend on the USC Campus near Exposition Park. Hundreds of booths will cover the grounds, many with book signings. Speakers and panelists include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Margaret Atwood, Michael Connelly, Bryan Cranston, Samantha Dunn, Mary Roach, Rebecca Solnit, Susan Straight, Nguyen Tran, and dozens of bestselling authors. While the festival is free, indoor Conversations require tickets – free with a $1.00 service charge. Check schedules, review the line-up, order tickets online, and/or volunteer to help promote literacy and reading, at events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks.