This year it was yet again a new venue.

Now we have to trek out to Stepney to Queen Mary College. The venue was OK though.

I sometimes wonder is the Anarchist Bookfair worth the effort of trekking to London for.

90% rubbish with the odd little nugget to make the trip worthwhile.

Those nuggets though are getting rarer and rarer.

Indymedia had an even wider range of DVDs on offer. The pricing though needs to be re-thought.

Four quid for one DVD is maybe OK, but after that it should be three for nine quid, five for fifteen quid. Indymedia UK would have shifted far more DVDs and made more money.

Two DVDs they did not have which I recommended: The Generation Game by Mike Lane which is an expose of the Pathfinder programme destroying tens of thousands of Victorian houses in order that developers can make a fast buck, the other was Favela Rising filmed in the slums of Brazil.

The Anarchist Bookfair is one of the rare places to find Zapatista coffee. I think it was Active Distribution who had it on their stall. I should have asked them where they get it from.

 http://activedistribution.org/
 http://www.cafe-libertad.de/

For anyone who has not tried Zapatista coffee, it is the best you can get. And it is Fair Trade.

If your local deli or wholefood shop does not stock Zapatista coffee, ask them why not.

Notes from the Borderlands should carry a health warning, 'Do not believe any of this crap'. Sadly there are though a few gullible souls who take in this bunkum hook, line and sinker, giving truth to the age old adage that fools and their money are easily parted.

I was reminded of the semi-autobiographical novel by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, Vernonika Decides to Die. The mad live in a lunatic asylum, but they prefer to live there where their madness is the norm.

 http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5476539

If Borderlands is the asylum, the inmates must be released one day a year to man a stall at the Anarchist Bookfair! Maybe it is part of their therapy!

A few interesting leaflets and pamphlets picked up here and there, four DVDs from Indymedia UK, a DVD from SchNEWS.

One book I picked up well worth reading was A Hundred and One Days by Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad, and that I picked up not from the bookfair but from a second hand bookshop in Charing Cross Road earlier in the day.

 http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5598185

Two other books I found in the same bookshop and well worth having were The Bookseller of Kabul also by Asne Seierstad and The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

 http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5598191
 http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5598188

I'd highly recommend We – the unauthorised Arundhati Roy, one of the DVDs I picked up from Indymedia. Less about her, more about her words. A useful complement to The Ordinary Person's Empire, a collection of her essays and speeches, which ironically I picked up on a previous trip to London from the same second had bookshop in Charing Cross Road.

 http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5598200

That from Indymedia is the Australian version of We

 http://www.resist.com.au/we-arundhati-roy.php

there is also a US version with extras

 http://www.weroy.org/

Maybe should be shown at this year's Beyond TV International Film Festival down in Swansea.

I've not yet had time to view the other DVDs.

I did though, as last year, from the Rising Tide stall, pick up a couple of copies of the cartoon booklet Funny Weather by Kate Evans. The book, which the booklet was published to publicize, is even better!

 http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5598218

Later in the day there was a party in the evening at RampART.

 http://www.rampart.co.nr/
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/383652.html

A long trek by foot, but somehow I found it, even though I did not have the faintest idea where it was or where I was going.

An interesting place. I thought I'd look in as I have never been there before.

RampART, in Rampart Street, Whitechapel, East London, is a squatted semi-derelict former warehouse. Use of the facilities it provides is free, with the proviso that in turn you do not charge, though a donation may be requested.

The party was a fund raising benefit for No Borders.

 http://www.noborders.org.uk/

The food and drink good, but the rap music bloody awful.

Films were showing. I liked the cartoon one on how money worked. It would have been useful though a little sign or programme saying what the films were.

I found a good selection of books. Had I known, I would have happily donated a few books.

In keeping with the RampART philosophy, I would suggest that everyone provides what they know to be a good read, and registers the book on BookCrossing, with RampART as a BookCrossing zone

 http://www.bookcrossing.com/

I did not stay long as had to get home.

No idea where the nearest tube was, but somehow found Aldgate or was it Aldgate East, only to find half the trains were not running and Sod's Law it was the direction I wished to go.

Welcome to Third World Britain, where if you are lucky the filthy expensive public transport may be running.

I somehow managed to catch the last train out of Waterloo.

It was a slow train, but I did not mind as I settled down to read A Hundred and One Days.

Anarchist Bookfair 2004

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/12/302216.html

Anarchist Bookfair 2005

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/10/326418.html

Anarchist Bookfair 2006

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/354183.html

websites

 http://www.anarchistbookfair.org/
 http://www.rampart.co.nr/
 http://www.noborders.org.uk/
 http://www.bookcrossing.com/