By The Book

Readers, this one's for you.

In the bumper crop of festivals that fills Austin's autumn calendar, most serving up pleasures to lovers of music and film, here's the one that celebrates the written word and the delights of absorbing it. The Texas Book Festival is back, and once again, it will pack the Capitol grounds with a superabundance of authors, talks, panel discussions, interviews, readings, and books being sold and signed – all for free! This year's two-day event – Oct. 25-26 – will feature 275 authors, the largest number ever, and the Chronicle has worked to provide some guidance as to who will be here and what they'll be talking about, not only in these pages – look for additional coverage in the Food and Music sections – but also online at

austinchronicle.com/texas-book-festival, where you can find recent author interviews and reviews of books for two dozen TBF 2014 authors. And we'll be supplementing what's there now throughout the week. (For the full schedule of events, visit www.texasbookfestival.org.)

So read on, readers, and then go dive into a good book festival.