This weekend is the Brooklyn Book Festival and if you’re here and looking for something to do, I highly recommend making a visit to Downtown Brooklyn to check it out. The festival itself is on Sunday, September 20, but there’s also a full day of events on Saturday, September 19, called Children’s Day, and other events this week. Some events are indoors but a lot of them are outside on Cadman Plaza — easy to get to from Manhattan or elsewhere in Brooklyn!

I don’t write about bookish events too often on my blog because when I go to them it’s usually as part of my job, and I try to keep my writing life and work life mostly separate. But if I make it to the festival this weekend — and I hope to! — it will be all fun and no work. I’ve been to the festival a couple times and what I love about it is that you can do as much or as little as you’d like. If you want to experience absolutely everything, check out the website, see what all the different events are, and make a list of the ones  you want to attend. If you’re just looking to pop in and pop out, there are booths to check out and enough events that there will always be something interesting happening when you arrive.

You might hear an author you love speak, or hear from someone you’ve never read anything by. You might come away with some great book swag, or just a list of books you really ought to check out. If you’re me, you will almost definitely run into people you know, but that’s okay too, because everyone you’ll see there loves books and that makes them automatically pretty great people. And if you get tired of the crowds, you’re not too far from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade or Brooklyn Bridge Park. Take a ramble, grab some pizza, sit with a book and enjoy Brooklyn.

Have you been to the Brooklyn Book Festival? What are your favorite bookish events?