Last weekend, the annual Books of Russia fair ended at the All-Russia Exhibition Center. The event took place amid warnings about the decline of literacy and the crisis of Russian publishing, but on the whole, it marked another successful year for publishers and booksellers. The opening speakers included -- among other distinguished guests -- Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party and an increasingly popular showman.

The fair's slogan, "Find Your Book," echoed on several levels. One of the featured events, the "Small Homeland" competition, stressed the importance of local interest. Small publishers from provincial towns won prizes for guides, atlases and history books about their respective regions. Meanwhile, the other end of the spectrum -- the trend toward globalization -- was represented by a news conference devoted to Russia's future status as a special guest at the Beijing International Book Fair, the largest books event in the Asia-Pacific region, due to take place this fall. China is one of the world's largest consumers and producers of books, and Russia's interest in its neighbor and competitor is understandable.

For the sixth time, the Abzatz anti-prize was distributed to honor the worst books published in Russia. The word abzatz means "paragraph" in Russian, but it is also used figuratively to indicate a fiasco or FUBAR situation. With this in mind, prizes were handed out for the worst translation, to Igor Boikov for his messy rendition of French surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire; for the worst editing, to the Eksmo publishing house for its work on the novels of detective writer (and Moscow Times columnist) Yulia Latynina; and, for the worst book overall, to the creators of a pirated edition of the latest Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, who rewrote chunks of its text at the expense of the great Colombian author. Also, a special prize was given this year to Ulyana Shilkina, the director of a television mini-series based on "The Golden Calf," the mega-popular satirical novel from the 1920s. The series, as everyone agreed, was a complete flop.

The upside of the prize was that, for the second year in a row, no suitable candidate was found for the "worst proofreading" nomination, perhaps indicating a growing awareness of standards and good practices within the Russian publishing community.

Finally, Bookcrossing, a project launched in the West a couple of years ago that recently reached Russia, attracted the attention of the fair's participants. The project involves books being left in public places for subsequent readers to enjoy. Five stalls at the fair displayed books that anyone could take for free -- on the condition that they be redistributed to other readers later on. Whether this concept of sharing survives the Russian mentality remains to be seen.