The Chinese proverb "A book is like a garden in the pocket" was the ethos of this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival. The light, airy tents surrounding the square of grass (or all too often mud - it is Scotland, rain is natural) that is Charlotte Square provided a fertile ground for discussions that brought delight to both readers and writers.
Wandering around gave the opportunity to bump into authors and stop them for a chat, or to listen to the children screaming with delight at their favourite authors in their book tents.
It is strange to consider that there were three more festivals going on outside. The Book Festival feels far removed from the frenetic Fringe taking place in the surrounding streets. If you can get past the leaflet touts at the Assembly Rooms, through the student productions and the many people in costume, then you may congratulate yourself with a drink with some writers in the newly arrived wine bar. If you can push your way past them, that is.
Writers of fiction are claiming a conspiracy which over the past 20 years has forced them into publicising their lives over and over again, sometimes talking more about themselves than the books they write. Thankfully, this hasn't scared them off and at this year's festival many authors were on full display. Book festivals are, after all, usually filled with book lovers, not gossip-mongers.
That didn't stop festival stalwart Doris Lessing snapping at a member of the audience who had the audacity to mention autobiography in the same sentence as fiction. "What is the point of this? What would you learn if I said 'this is real, this isn't?' " It is, it appears, a very touchy subject.
One way or another, Lessing had a lively festival following her widely publicised comments at the very start of the event about men being the new silent victims in the sex war, demeaned and insulted by women, plus, plus.
The story elicited such wide reaction that we will no doubt be hearing about it again and again in the coming months.
"I'm the last person to ask about truth," claimed Michael Ondaatje, talking about his book Anil's Ghost, which mentions the political situation in Sri Lanka.
"It's all lies - fiction writers lie," A.L. Kennedy agreed while giving this year's PEN lecture.
What is it about great authors? Are they all just barefaced liars? No, but they do all make up stories. That, of course, is why they're authors. In her lecture, Kennedy pleaded for fiction and imagination to be seen as important in their own right and not as an adjunct to non-fiction. "Fiction," she claimed, "gives dignity." It shows "the articulated potential, the spoken dream".
"Right now," she claimed, "human beings are imagining the refinement of torture. They are creating fictions that will justify their actions."
This beautifully encapsulated the Imprisoned Writers' strand where at 5.30 p.m. every day authors donated their time to give readings written by imprisoned or tortured writers and the audience listened in an earnest, helpful silence.
"Celtic Writers for Breakfast" was a daily treat of hilarity, poignancy, poetry and prose, all with coffee and a pastry. You can even have a ballad sung with your morning coffee if you are lucky enough to share it with Patrick McCabe and his Emerald Germs of Ireland.
The reason for Kennedy's plea for fiction to be taken on its own merits was amply demonstrated by some of the funny, sad, lyrical and impassioned readings given throughout the Festival. Peter Carey's atmospheric reading of his book, True History of the Kelly Gang illustrated beautifully the illiterate language he used to write it and transported the audience to the bush, while Ondaatje's poetic prose whisked us off to a more ethereal, ghostly world. That transportation is the joy of fiction.
I also sat with an audience ranging from eight to 80; all giggling uncontrollably as Anthony Buckeridge read from his Jennings books. Buckeridge drew on his experiences as a teacher for Jennings - "Being an adult like Mr Wilkins and listening to boys like Jennings was very funny." Science-fiction writers looked into the brave new world, enjoying a strand at the Book Festival for the first time. Apt, given that it is 2001.
This fortnight is a book lover's delight as Michael Ondaatje and David Malouf discovered one night when they discussed lost classics while the rain battered down on the tent above. When asked about whether he enjoyed reading about other writers' lives, Ondaatje reminisced about reading about a novelist who wrote a book on his honeymoon, causing Ondaatje to worry that he had the wrong spirit for a writer.
Debates raged about dumbing down. The publisher John Calder has a conspiracy theory that government, media, industry and commerce are trying to do just that. Reading from his autobiography Pursuit, his stirring reminiscences of his writers' conference in Edinburgh in 1962, touching on the issues of homosexuality and strenuous arguments between leading authors such as Hugh MacDiarmid and Alexander Trocchi, certainly made some of the debates here seem a little tame. But then, the idealism of the 1960s has vanished. Or has it? Doris Lessing said that anti-globalisation is a new idealism. She also talked about the current situation in Zimbabwe.
Certainly, there are conspiracies out there. Sit through any session with humorous journalist Jon Ronson and his book Them: Adventures with Extremists and you will be looking for them under your bed later. Especially when Gore Vidal also tackles the subject in relation to Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh. "We're all conspiratorial minded in America because there are so many conspiracies," he said in his charming, urbane manner to his sold-out audience, with a little smile that left us wondering whether he was pulling our leg or not. They, whoever they are, are out there. Unless they're here in the tent. Watching us.
Or, Ronson said, there could be no conspiracies. It could be that there is nothing and no-one organising our lives. Thankfully there was someone organising the Book Festival and new festival director, Catherine Lockerbie can congratulate herself on a book festival as brimming with talent and entertainment as always.