Books at a Taipei Exposition

     On Sunday, Feb. 18, 2018, I went to the Taipei International Book Exhibition near the 101 Building. I met Garrow at the ticket booth after waiting fifteen minutes after our one o’clock appointment. He saw me and went in together. We had met on Facebook last July when he liked a poem I had posted on the Taipei Writers Group page. Garrow is interested in creative writing and often goes to their "Critique Meet".
      I suggested we go eat lunch, as I had indicated in text messages, but Garrow said he had eaten already; the food at 101 was overpriced. We went straight in, forgoing lunch, and marched around for four hours. Afterwards we stood outside talking on the corner noticing a neon light a block away. I suggested we walk towards it and we discovered a convenience store and local restaurants on older city streets; we went in and got pork chop rice and continued chatting until it was time to leave to go back to Taipei Station for the HSR connection.

      The Book Expo was fun for 100 NT and not that crowded, especially in the non-Chinese section. The Israeli exhibit looked exciting stumbling upon its entrance of bazaar-type fruit and nut stands but the fruit and nut was not for sale, if it was real at all. The selection of books in the thirty-foot gallery was meager and mostly in Hebrew. Rabbi Shlomi, Taiwan's resident Lubavitcher, must have placed  the Schneerson volume on the display rack. I would have liked to have seen a volume or two on the Jews of China or at least how Chang Kai-Shek welcomed Jewish refugees from Europe during WW II. Nothing. There had been on Wednesday, “Jews in China”, a talk by Mark O’Neill was given at Red Salon. I found more interesting books about Judaea on a rack in an English-language booth stall and almost bought one about treatment of

Jewish characters in movies; another volume comparing Jewish and Palestinian aspirations and history; I purchased neither. Nor did I purchase two simplified adaptations of Hardy Novels Tess and Mayor. Garrow and I walked and talked and had a great time. After passing by a large book stocked with French literature, we ambled over to the Taipei Writers Group (TWR) booth meeting Chad and Curtis in addition to the facilitator of the Critique Meet, Pat Wood. He remembered me from one had I attended. I had read the group's collection of short stories on Kindle and had met some authors. 

     At the Book Expo, I was looking around and spotted a bilingual book I had seen recently in Eslite, The Mapping of Taiwan (1500NT) I looked at the empty stand and saw a sign that said the author, Jerome F. Keating, Ph.D., would autograph the book purchased. I lamented to Garrow that the books were sold out when a white-haired elder turned and said it was he who authored the book and would find another copy in the booth for me to buy that he'd sign. We walked to the cashier talking about my interest in the book and then about how I was looking for a publisher to publish manuscripts I had. He handed me his card and suggested I get in touch about it. He also mentioned that he would be speaking at the Tainan Library where I had first seen a collection of maps about Taiwan in Chinese; he would speak about Esperanto there on March 14^th. I’ll be back in time from Pittsburgh to go. Meanwhile, back at the TWG booth, Pat Woods was gone but I spoke with Josh and Curtis who, under the pen name, Connor Bixby, self-published a collection of his own short stories called Under the Neurotic Hood. A dozen lay flat on what otherwise would have been empty display stands in the booth. As a fellow Taiwan writer, I purchased a copy from him for 250 NT and he signed it. In my mind, if I had been a regular at the TWG’s Critique Meet, my books could have been displayed there, too, but I wouldn’t have been able to be in Taipei for five days to help out at the booth and hawk them, or am I just being neurotic? I may start going to Critique Meet again when I get back from Pittsburgh, so I must start thinking about what I'm going to say when I get there.