Do you have a book that changed your life? Want to share it with a stranger? Now you can at the Books, Brews & Beats Festival, which will hold its second event in downtown Honolulu this Saturday.
The Oct. 10 event is slated to run from noon to 6 p.m. at 1000 Fort Street Mall near Pickles at Forté, and will include more than 20 vendors and musicians. See the full line-up, here.
Attendees can bring a book that they enjoyed and trade it for another thoughtfully chosen read, while sipping single-origin coffee or ceremonial grade matcha and listening to ambient musical sounds.
“The Books, Brews and Beats concept was really just a passion project that stemmed from a love for reading and wanting to incorporate that with cafe culture,” said Maia Mayeshiro, the festival’s founder, who is also a Honolulu-based singer, DJ and ʻukulele virtuoso.
“Essentially, I wanted to create a book exchange that also celebrates single-origin coffees — bringing local business, reading, and live instrumentation together,” she said.
For the first event, held earlier this year in April, Mayeshiro approached one of her favorite local cafes, Drip Studio HNL, and asked if the coffee shop would be open to a curated book exchange and staying open for a few extra hours while she was the DJ and played ʻukulele.
“And I just put a poster up and said, ʻBring a book to exchange for another book, and come connect with people over a love of reading and coffee and music,’” she recalled. “The turnout for that was way bigger than I expected, which was awesome. … This next one is that same concept, but I'm making it an outdoor local market, as well.”
“It was a six-hour-long event, and the whole studio was packed the entire time,” she continued. “And there was a line outside.”
There is no fee to participate in the festival, so the only cost is that of the book the reader wants to share with a stranger, she explained.
“If you want to buy a coffee or matcha, you totally can, but it's not required,” Mayeshiro said.
This also isn’t a book exchange to get rid of books, she added. In fact, the musician and reader has been visiting vintage stores and local bookstores around Oʻahu to collect books she “genuinely found interesting or would want to share with a friend,” she said.
Music is also instrumental to the festival. The line-up of what Mayeshiro likes to call “healing frequencies” includes pianists Christina Sochor and Noah Hull, violinist Duane Padilla, and sound healer Ashley Nguyen. It also features Red Nova, an avant-garde experimental improvisational jazz group, and Godai, which is a collaboration of the artists Max High and Floteson. Mayeshiro will also perform as Shizue.
Mayeshiro hopes to turn the event into a quarterly gathering. One of her goals is for the event to spark community.
“I want people to feel like they're connected to one another,” she said.
Click here for more details. Follow @Books_Brews_Beats on Instagram for updates about future events.
Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
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