Belfast Book Festival for book worms and book huggers

While I'm not sure that Sesame Tree's resident bookworms Samson and Goliath will be attending, Belfast's Book Festival does start its extensive programme of events next week, and there's plenty to look forward to.

Browsing through the programme a few events jump out. (Unless otherwise noted, the events take place in Belfast's Linen Hall library.)

John Banville fans will already have booked their tickets to hear him in conversation with William Crawley on Tuesday 24 February - the event is now sold out.

If you're feeling cookie, then Simon Dougan is coming out from behind The Yellow Door on Wednesday 25 at 1pm.

Copyright is on the menu afterwards at 2.30pm, with Roger Dixon and Clifford Harkness sharing their knowledge and offering authors guidance on how copyright applies to books, sound and moving image recordings.

Poetry really isn't my thing. But if you're looking for a free event, pop along to Central Library at noon on Thursday 26 to hear the Shalom Poetry Group reading Lifelines: Letters from Famous People About Their Favourite Poem. According to the festival programme, it's "fascinating and accessible even to those who think poetry is 'not really their thing'".

Emerging Irish talent Claire Kilroy's talking about her debut novel All Summer and more recently published released Tenderwire at 1pm on Thursday 24.

And if you didn't get your fill of poetry at noon, there's a recital of Ulster-Scots Poetry in the Shankill Library at 7pm.

For me Friday 27 has some of the most fascinating opportunities, with a (sold out) coach leaving Linen Hall Library at 9.45am to visit W & G Baird's printers to see how a manuscript gets turned into a printed and bound book.

And at 1.15pm in the University of Ulster in York Street, Charles Leadbeater will be looking at mass online collaboration and the themes from his book We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production.

If science fiction is more your thing, Toby Litt will be blasting off from Earth with his novel Journey into Space at 12.30 on Saturday 28.

There's lots, lots more - Gerry Anderson, Malachi O'Doherty getting into print, George Best, Dead Poets, films, and events for schools.