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As the first day of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books drew to a close Saturday afternoon, not one UCLA student had signed up for the Wine of the Month Club. Membership in this exclusive club costs approximately $25 a month, so this was not news to me. I inquired about student discounts at the club’s booth but was quickly rebuffed. No big deal – most students I know informally belong to the Franzia wine club, which sets back members about 45 cents per glass. If you are surprised that a column about the Festival of Books reads like a sommelier’s handbook, then you and I are on the same page. When I trudged over to campus on Saturday to write a think piece on the festival I thought it would be about delightful poetry and intriguing authors. But the festival offers much more than that. This was my first trip to the Festival of Books, and certainly not my last.

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The first noteworthy thing I saw at the festival was the cooking stage, which was the place to be around 2 p.m. on Saturday. A sea of eager Tex-Mex aficionados watched with baited breath as chefs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken of the Food Network’s “Too Hot Tamales” fame gave a cooking demonstration. There was a lot of talk about blanching vegetables, and the affable chefs kept the masses happy with tongue-in-cheek tales of dropping acid in high school and tips on the best brands of canned peppers. “That’s another thing about being a great cook: you keep stuff in your pantry,” Milliken said. Trust me Mary Sue, I know. But then one of them started talking about fire-roasted poblano peppers and I had to get out of there before they started making aioli.

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Adjacent to the cooking stage was the Canada Tourism Commission’s booth. I was pretty surprised to learn that Canada (the country) had a booth so I decided to check it out. Inside, visitors were offered free samples of Clearly Canadian (presumably the national drink) and the chance to watch a video clip of actor Alec Baldwin extol the virtues of Canada. It was there that I ran into my friend, UC Berkeley fourth-year student Aaron Schmidt, who was born in Canada. “I’d say this clearly represents my people,” Schmidt said. “We are interested in celebrities and beverages.” I was completely unaware that countries had booths at the Festival of Books, but it certainly was a pleasant Canadian experience. And get this, inside the booth, I bumped into a woman and she apologized to me. Those Canadians are so polite. Not to be outdone by Canada, the South African Consulate-General had a booth. “We have no Mounties around us,” Consul Alan G. Moore said. “Our purpose is to draw attention to South African literature.” (Yes, they sent their consul to the Festival of Books.) I asked Moore for his opinion of the Canada booth. “I served in the South African consulate in Montreal, Canada, in 1991 and 1992 and I am not familiar with Clearly Canadian,” Moore said.

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At the top of Janss Steps I found two UCLA graduates – Art Shepherd (Class of 1957) and Jim Howard (Class of 1949). The two come to the festival each year to see how the campus has changed. “We came back to reminisce about the old campus,” Shepherd said. “It looks fantastic – it looks so much bigger. All these paved walkways used to be dirt.” “And we used to tie up our horses over there,” Howard said.

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Of all the authors I met, Dianne Linderman incited the most interest. She has written the book “How to Become an Entrepreneurial Kid,” and makes over $1 million annually – something she told me several times. She also said that her 7-year-old daughter Alexandra makes around $25 a day selling flower pens and her 9-year-old son Luke makes $150 a day. I told Linderman I make the same in two weeks and she told me to buy her book. Luke makes all that money selling pocketknives. “I had to let him do it – that’s his passion,” Linderman said. When I was 9, I thought knives were pretty cool but I was mostly into kickball. After speaking with Linderman I checked out the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, whose representatives were appraising festivalgoers’ books on site. Southern California chapter President Gordon Hollis said that earlier on Saturday someone had brought in a suitcase of books filled with many treasures. The suitcase contained first editions of “Vanity Fair” and “Jane Eyre” and Hollis said the books in the suitcase were worth a total of $200,000.

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Before leaving I stopped by the booth of author Alice Glasser, who has written a book of humorous stories entitled, “Where Can I Be Decaffeinated?” There, I spoke with her husband, UCLA professor of surgery Jesse Thompson, who told me about a festival exhibitor I had to see. “I saw a booth where all the books were blank,” Thompson said. “It was the USC booth.”

E-mail Miller at dmiller@media.ucla.edu.