You Should Read Jenny Lawson

BUY THIS NOW.

“Because you are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. And because there is joy in embracing - rather than running from - the utter absurdity of life.” 

― Jenny Lawson, Let's Pretend This Never Happened

When I wrote about all the books Becky and I were giving away at our wedding, I compared Chelsea Handler to David Sedaris.  For months now, I've intended to write all about the sexist literati who heap accolades on Sedaris while dismissing Handler as a vulgar TV star with some hit memoirs.  I put it off because my heart wasn't in it.  As promising a start as My Horizontal Life was, Are You There Vodka?  It's Me, Chelsea didn't measure up.  And I still haven't read Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang past that first tear-inducing (from laughs!) story.

My heart is behind Jenny Lawson.

You Should Read Carol Anshaw

Reading Carol Anshaw's "Carry the One" made me an instant fan.  Here's why:

Whatever element causes romance to flare was simply not present in the air between them.  This was a huge relief to Alice.  Romance no longer looked like so much fun, more like a repetitive stress injury - beginning with Maude, but now also including all the failed and pathetic attempts to replicate that constellation of emotions with someone else.  She could measure this past effort in all the underwear she had left behind in apartments, all the bottles of pricey wine she had brought to dinner, all the recitations of bad childhoods and adult disappointments she had earnestly listened to.  Sometimes she made lists in her head, little catalogs of experience.  The first list was, of course, all the women she had by now slept with.  Taken individually, they seemed, at their various times, to hold the possibility of lasting love.  As opposed to now, so far down the line, when they could only be looked at in accumulation, as one then another fool's errand.  An offshoot list to this was the figure for how far she had gone for sex.  (Thirteen hours on a flight from Chicago to Tokyo then back to Chicago the next day has held the top spot for quite a while; she might never better this.)  Books she had read to get into somebody or other's bed (The Four-Gated City.  The Fountainhead.  Linda Goodman's Love Signs.  Women Who Run with the Wolves.)  Terrible music she had listened to because it was someone's idea of a mood enhancer.  (Hall & Oates.  Holly Near.  George Winston.  The Carpenters.  Celine Dion.)  Topics in which she had feigned interest during the short term (Juice fasts.  Rugby.  Celtic Dancing.  Bikram Yoga).  The longest list was the kinds of tea she had drunk in moments structured around the pretense that tea drinking was the reason for being in this or that cafe (Pergolesi, Kopi, Cafe Boost.) or kitchen, or side by side on this or that futon or sofa or daybed, sipping.  (Earl Grey.  Lapsang Suchoung.  Gunpowder.  Rooibos.  Sleepytime.  Morning Thunder.  Seren-i-tea.  Every possible pepperment and berry.  Plain Lipton.)  There was a stretch of time when tea became fetishized for her for being so linked with sex and romance, so reliable a harbinger of one or the other.
     She could scare herself with the renewable ingenuousness implied by this catalog.  Still, the alternative - the development of an acidic cynicism - seemed worse.  

Anyone who writes like that, you should read.  Pulling it out of context like this might lessen it's impact, but I hope not.  Anshaw articulates the character's struggle to fight the ennui of beginning another relationship, in such a specific voice, and blends it perfectly into the run of Alice's thoughts before and after this passage.  It's masterful work.  I don't know how someone creates an actual novel without a narrative thread, how an author manages to create plot out of distinct pieces spaced so far apart, but it's something you should experience.

I can't wait to catch up on Anshaw's other books.

Here's more love for her over at The Heat Lightning.

The Girl with the Pigeon Tattoo: Meet Cloudette

In case you didn't know, there's something in publishing called a "book trailer."  It's like a movie trailer, except for a book.  Genius, right?  Readers don't need them and booksellers actively hate them.  Still, when moving 5,000 copies constitutes a hit, it never hurts to try to reach outside your core demographic for new readers.

But Hollywood has been making trailers for ninety-nine years; publishing has only made the effort since 2005.  The result is that very, very few trailers make one say, "Wow, I really need to buy that book."  I've enjoyed three book trailers in my life: Carolyn Parkhurst's The Nobodies Album (see the trailer in which authors are funny; now buy the book), Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story (trailer here, rife with cameos; now buy the book), and Kristen Schaal & Rich Blomquist's The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex (trailer with actual comic actors who are also the authors; now buy the book).  Caroyln Parkhurst made me laugh out loud but the book came out two years ago and I haven't read it, Gary Shteyngart amused me but I already owned Super Sad True Love Story before I saw it, and I'll never read The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex - way to go, trailer-makers!

And remember, those links represent the cream of the crop.  If book trailers are movies, you just watched The Godfather, Casablanca, and Citizen Kane.  Except, you know, funny.  Most book trailers look like something your local high school AV club made for their final exam sophomore year.


All that having been said, I love this trailer:

It perfectly captures the mood of Tom Lichtenheld's whimsical, witty Cloudette.

Buy me.  I rock hard.  Well, softly.  I'm a cloud.

My first Lichtenheld experience was Shark vs. Train.  All the the little asides in the Cloudette video ("tee-hee!" "hi!")?  Lichtenheld peppers his illustrations with those.  Half the fun of reading his books is seeing Dylan giggle over those asides - particularly the trash talk in Shark vs. Train.  Finding them, reading them, and getting the joke; it's like watching a pinball machine light up.


Becky met Tom Lichtenheld at his hotel when he came to Miami.  I dropped her off and waited outside in the car so we wouldn't have to pay the $20 parking fee.  Becky emerged about half an hour later.  We're fairly sure the valets thought she was a call girl.  Or a drug dealer.

To capture Cloudette's rough look, Lichtenheld used pencil before tracing over it with Sharpie.

We don't worry about lead poisoning when art is at stake.

Especially cute art.

Somehow, Becky convinced tattoo artist Dicky Magoo to open Tattoos by Lou not only on his day off, but early so she could get back to work.  I don't think Becky has ever heard the word "no."  

Dicky used an extra-fine needle to create the outline and shading.  What looks deceptively simple holds a lot of detail.  Tom Lichtenheld looked very happy with the result.  

For a minute, Becky wanted Cloudette tattooed inside her wrist so she could see it better.  But as we all know, The Very Hungry Caterpillar is the tattoo that started it all.  So imagine them chummily side-by-side on her arm.

Caterpillar fart?

Of course, one could argue that as she lays, Cloudette could be seen as en extra large chuff from Otis that got blown astray.  Nevertheless, we've had fun with Cloudette.  Like the time Dylan decided that Becky and I should have matching tattoos.  He whipped out a pen and went to town on my forearm.

Uncanny, no?

The Girl with the Pigeon Tattoo Gets a Tractor to the Forearm

Barack Obama's daughters loved Drummer Boy so much that when Obama wrote a children's book, he picked Loren Long to illustrate it.  The result is Of Thee I Sing:

Buy it, coz.

But toddlers couldn't care less about that.  When you need to entertain a five-year-old, you want something a little more funkengrooven.  You want a friendship between a tractor and a calf.

If that sounds dumb, it's because you're old and your heart is a brittle, numb thing.  It sounded dumb to me when Dylan requested it as his bedtime story, the first time I ever watched Becky put him down. When she read the gentle purring of the tractor's engine that lulls the little calf to sleep, Otis's putt puff puttedy chuff, I fell in love.  Being a family is mostly making things up as you go.  There are very few moments you feel you're getting it right, while they're happening.  That was one.

Also, when it comes to matters of the heart, Becky is my Otis and I am her calf.  In fact, when Loren Long scheduled appearances at Books & Books Bal Harbour and Coral Gables, I wanted to ask for the calf to go with her tractor.  It would have represented her saving me, us as a couple, and the father I became when she brought Dylan into my life.

But I didn't ask, so we'll have to come with another couple tattoo.


You know how this thing with Becky's arm works, right?

First comes the drawing.

While Mo Willems scribbled the Pigeon in about twenty seconds ("The thing is to capture the energy!"), Loren Long was meticulous.  He stopped several times.  He'd stand, step back, stare, erase, and start again.  "I wasn't this nervous for President Obama," he said.

Then comes the tattooing.

Dicky Magoo of Tattoos by Lou (seriously) loves the challenge of replicating other artist's work, trying to get the same effects in tattoo as they did in whatever medium they originally used.  He did Becky's first illustrator tattoo, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and returned to the scene of the ink for Otis.

Side Note: That last link is to the Los Angeles Review of Books, where Lisa Jane Persky writes, "Becky Quiroga’s “Very Hungry Caterpillar,” drawn on her arm by Eric Carle himself, is a piece of body art that soccer moms from Sandusky to Timbuktu would find it [SIC] hard to disapprove of."  But people see what they want.  The more ink Becky gets, the more strangers are wary of the badass tattooed chick.  Few look closely enough to see that they're pictures from children's books.


So it's a tattoo artist's rendering of an illustrator's actual drawing on Becky's arm, get it?  Stop saying, "I guess you'll never wash that arm again."


Becky was able to get Otis between Loren Long's first and second appearances, so he was able to see the finished product.

Pictured: Natural behavior.

Long was soooo nice.  He's the type of nice guy who's so nice that I walk away thinking, "Why can't I be more like him?"  Most people who meet me immediately think I'm an asshole.  Which is 1) not far off 2) why hand-selling books is difficult for me.  So this asshole thinks I should buy "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet;" whoop-dee-freaking-whoo.

The Otis tattoo made Shelf Awareness as well, on September 19th.  Yes, that's how topical I am.  More to the point, that's what Miami Book Fair International 2011 did to me.  It took over all three of my lives, the internet one, the writing one, and the breathing one.

With the presidential credentials on her forearm, can Maurice Sendak's Max be far behind?  Are you listening, Mr. Sendak?  Say the word and we're Connecticut bound.

Remember When I Said to Read "Birds of Paradise?"

If you don't, then here's a reminder.

Now I've gone and told you to read it again, at The Heat Lightning. 

If you don't read it this time, you might see the face I reserve for the printers when they mess up my orders.

"I said towels, you idiots! T-T-Towels!"

Proof that Becky and I know how to have fun in hotel rooms.

Bye Bye Borders: So Long, and Thanks for all the Books

To no one in the book industry’s surprise, Borders Books & Music is bankrupt.  On a blogger’s level, I’m very jealous of a person named Corey.   Instead of wringing his hands over what to post, editing, rejecting, shuffling, he’s posting every day about life in his Borders during the liquidation.  He’s got spelling errors, but his work is more visceral than mine.  It’s called abooksellerwithoutborders.  It’s an optimist struggling with occasional bitterness.  It’s a solid writer chronicling an important, historic moment in the book business.  It’s a condemnation of corporate bullshit, a celebration of the Third Place, and an examination of what happens when that place must close.  Feeling a little jealous, but I’ll get over it.

Borders was my introduction to the book business.  Chrispy had been there for five years when I started, but he was such a veteran it came across as a much longer stretch.  He told me 2000 would be his “last year working  a holiday in retail.”  When I left in 2004, he said the same thing.  He’s still there at our old store, #47 in Pinecrest (still Miami, just a snooty zip code), the one doing big business every day on US-1. 

Jorge (pronounce that George, please) is closing #47 down.  He’s worked for Borders for nearly thirty years.  In South Florida, he’s the the last of the old-school booksellers still working for Borders.  They were everywhere in my day, the ones who loved working for Borders so much it became their career, the ones with 15 to 20 years under their belts.   An email came down from corporate a couple years back.  For the few old-timers who’d watched Borders devolve and still held out hope that it would be a special place again, this soulless email was the final straw.  Digusted with what a job they once loved had become, the old guard departed en masse. 

Closer to where I work, a former Books & Books manager is closing the Borders at Merrick Park.  Working for him is Claus, a guy any employer would thank his lucky stars to have on payroll.  Claus was also in the Chrispy range of employment when I worked at Borders of Pinecrest, which means he’s also old guard now.  Claus is Danish.  Borders is the only place he’s ever worked in America.  

Writing this is depressing the hell out of me.  Here’s more misery for the sadness pile; Borders’ bankruptcy gives publishers who were already hardening their accounting practices more reason to be harsh, puts 11,000 booksellers out of a job, and completely eliminates physical bookstores in many small towns. 

If no one steps into these “smaller markets” with an indie, people will get their books online, and getting books online means one place.  It’s a great time for indies to open, but only under a very specific set of circumstances.  No one is going to invest in the Chrispy and Claus’s of the world opening their own stores, so any new bookstore owner needs deep pockets and an unusually high tolerance for going without profit.

Did you know that’s the goal at independent bookstores?  Every corporate job I’ve had looked for 4% growth each year, but independent bookstores consider a year without red ink a success.   

I’d love it if three stores stepped in to take the place of Dolphin Mall, Merrick Park, and Pinecrest.  I’d love to see Miami become as rich with indie bookstores as Philadelphia, New York City, or San Francisco.  Of course, I’ve been waiting for that to happen for years.  Those of us who could realistically make a go of it are too busy working for Mitchell Kaplan to apply what we know into opening stores of our own, and the booksellers whom Borders’ bankruptcy is putting out of business don’t have the means.  

When you spend twenty or thirty years in retail avoiding management, you don’t have a lot of capital to show for it.   

Here’s to booksellers left behind.  May they find something else they love as passionately as books.  Barring that, may they find something which throws gobs of money at them.  

And may a few lucky, brave souls open bookstores of their own.  

A Halloween Memory: You Should Read "Shock Value"

I had just turned six years old when my brother and cousins took me to see Halloween in the theater. 

At the time, you had G for General Audiences, PG for Parental Guidance suggested (“some material may no be suitable for pre-teenagers”), R for Restricted to folks with a a parent or adult guardian, and X for Midnight Cowboy (IE, no one under 17 admitted).  My adult guardians would have been my brother AJ and my cousin Shawn, who were 13 and 15 at the time.  They watched over my cousin Shane, age 13, sister Cass and cousin Shannon, both 11, and six-year-old me - the same age as young Michael Myers on screen, when he stabs his older sister to death for having sex and gets sent to a mental institution.

1978 = good times.  Try getting a group kids aged 6 to 14 into the next Saw and see how far you get.  

Having personal experience with a six-year-old has taught me that one thing they can’t do is distinguish reality from fantasy.  Sample questions along this line include, “Are vampires real?” and “What would we do if zombies attacked this house?”  I might as well have been watching a documentary.

Listening to John Carpenter’s synthesizer now, which he says is an homage to Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho, is a mix of nostalgic terror, judgment over its hokey creepiness, and genuine shivers.  Listening to the music, watching Michael Myer's white mask fill the screen, I was bathed in horror.

At one point, my brother leaned over and whispered in my ear.

“Isn’t this awesome?” he asked.

I felt like a silhouette, a piece of blackness in that dark theater.  He words entered my ear like light, found my spine, and exploded throughout my body.  I couldn’t speak.  I think I managed to nod, but I don’t quite remember.  

Jason Zinoman’s Shock Value has a chapter which deals with the question every horror fan must face at one point or another: “How could you watch those kinds of movies?”  Apart from a glowing review from Powell's, part of me probably picked it up to answer that question myself.

I can always use the excuse that I had no choice; I was indoctrinated early.

As far as the book, it’s fascinating if you’re a fan of any kind of film - Zinoman makes a compelling argument that most critically-lauded, Oscar-winning films of the day are shot by folks who grew up idolizing what many considered schlock when it was first produced.  

If you like horror movies, it’s required reading.  

It's Funny Because It's True

As read by Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson

You get frustrated with children because you make the mistake of thinking they’re miniature adults.  

Now that it’s summer, Dylan won’t sleep.  It’s suddenly months ago and he doesn’t want to sleep alone.  Putting him down is a chore, an horrific, horrible chore.  He cries fake tears but the confusion is real.  It’s easy to meet his churlishness with your own, to be another child, to get just as angry as he is.  

You get frustrated because you make the mistake of thinking he’s a miniature adult, choosing to behave a certain way instead of just lashing out, reacting to his fear, acting out because he's exhausted.  But you have a choice.  You can be the adult.

He reaches for you and you pick him up, rock him gently as you carry him around his room.  You tell him you’re right next door.  You tell him you love him very much.  You tell him you’ll be there in minute if he gets scared in the middle of the night.

He drops off like a feather falling from a nest.  You are father of the year.

Then there are those nights.  Those terrible, terrible nights when nothing works.  Usually because you're too exhausted yourself to reach inside, find your gushy center, and rock him to sleep on it.    

It was after one such night that I read a PDF of Go the Fuck to Sleep and laughed until I cried.  The book was originally slated for a November release, but the PDF leaked and pre-sales made it the #1 book on Amazon.  Akashic, one of the coolest little publishers on the planet, got them into stores as soon as they could.  May GtFtS sales keep Akashic publishing Punk Planet and Kaylie Jones for years to come.  

Of course the book has detractors who read too much into it, most famously Karen Spears Zacharias, and less famously but more accurately Amy Sohn.  

Sometimes a book is just a book.  But when it can turn your frustration - which has nowhere healthy to go because the last thing you want is for your child to see it - into tears of laughter, it's also a gift.

I don't know how to put this but I'm kind of a big deal

When I opened my mail at Books & Books this week, I got a pleasant surprise: a promotional flyer for the paperback version of the mighty Brocke Clarke's Exley.  Let's have a look, shall we?

That's right.  Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times... and Aaron Curtis (oh, and The Washington Post).  Sweet Readers were the first to realize that I'm a taste-maker, but now the publishing industry has spoken.

Yet this flyer is served with a soupcon of shame.  I've mentioned Exley three times in passing here at SwF&F.  Well, five, if you include The Heat Lightning and the best of 2010.  But I've never recommended it all on its own.  I've also yet to review it on Goodreads, although I read it more than a year ago.

Call it Out of Sheer Rage syndrome; I loved it so much I didn't want to turn anyone off with a lame recommendation, so I ended up writing nothing.  But it's even worse than that.  Some people have a tough time blogging about friends and family.  I feel that way about books which have won a place near my heart.

So if I haven't been clear, you should read Exley.  You'll love it, and it might even win a place near your heart.

 

You Should Read Wildwood

Signed by the author and illustrator.  Estimated value on Ebay?  $52.6 kajillion.

My favorite Wildwood moment was reading the Bandit’s song.  In a flash I was nine years old again, reading the goblin’s song from Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

Bake and toast 'em, fry and roast 'em!

till beards blaze, and eyes glaze;

till hair smells and skins crack,

fat melts, and bones black

in cinders lie

beneath the sky!

So dwarves shall die,

and light the night for our delight,

Ya hey!

Ya-harri-hey!

Ya hoy!

My arms broke out in gooseflesh.  Of course, when you’ve written The Rake’s Song, a few bawdy rhymes aren’t as much of a challenge.  Still, for me, it was a moment which took the book from good to great.  There’s a lot to enjoy in these pages, but the most impressive feat is how Ellis and Meloy reference past Young Adult epic fantasies without being derivative of them.  The Dowager Governess is a villain as instantly timeless as the Queen from Snow White.  Somehow, in the context of the book, she even manages to be scary (this is coming from someone who’s loved Stephen King for almost thirty years).

I suggested you read Wildwood via The Heat Lightning and I mentioned the Wildwood Dinner in my BEA wrap-up but I didn’t tell you that the first person I met at the Harper Collins dinner was the book’s illustrator.  

I walked into the north dining room upstairs at the Savoy - the white linen tablecloths crawling with flowers and vines (and appetizers!), the plates set with signed artwork and Wildwood Irregulars buttons, the place cards featuring different images and quotes from the book.  I wasn’t intimidated, exactly, just humming with that awkwardness bookish types feel when faced with a pre-alcohol social situation.

A redheaded woman who looked not unlike a Bizarro World Martha Plimpton held out her hand.

“Hi, I’m Carson,” she said.  

I gave her my name and told her I was from Books & Books in Miami.  This doesn’t often get a reaction at book conferences, but then I offered the name which always does - our owner, Mitchell Kaplan.

When she didn’t mention her store, agency, or publisher, I chalked it up to a book-lover’s gawkiness.  When she didn’t react upon hearing Mitchell’s name, I should’ve known instantly that she was not in the book business, so the only thing which could bring her to a dinner for Wildwood is that she’s THAT Carson - illustrator Carson Ellis. 

Well, the penny didn’t drop.  We stood there grinning at each-other and looking around the room for someone who looked chatty enough to fill the space we’d reserved for painful silence.  When the waiter put a glass of wine in my hand, my nerves leapt from my body, wrapped him in a hug, then dove inside the glass.

After we’d ordered but before we’d gotten dinner, Carson Ellis and Colin Meloy got up to talk about the process of creating the book.  Listening to them, I realized that the four of us - Carson, Colin, Becky and I - could have been great friends if we lived in the same city.  We’d run in artsy fartsy circles and drown in an orgy of music, art, and books.  During the talk and while they sat with us, they blew me away with their book knowledge.  

About the highest complement I can pay to any reader is this - Ellis and Meloy could have been booksellers.

I also wanted to crawl under the table because I didn’t recognize Carson Ellis when I walked in.  Not that she expected me to recognize her or anything, but to paraphrase Matthew McConnoughey’s character in Dazed and Confused, it would’ve been a whole lot cooler if I did.

I would have told her that of all the Best American Nonrequired Reading covers, that 2007 was my favorite.  I would have asked if she had any advice on how I could support Becky as an illustrator.  I would have told her how every author site in the world links to Amazon but the fact that she chooses personal conviction over commerce by linking only to independent bookstores, is uncalculably badass.

Oh, well.     

What else?  Colin Meloy was bearded and burly.  It looked like the two of them had a great relationship.  I sat with two cool people from Harper Collins, the editor who worked with Margaret Cardillo on one of Miami’s favorite titles, Just Being Audrey, and Emilie Polster, who put the whole amazing dinner together.

Polster also happens to be working on the next offering from Maurice Sendak, who she insists is not as misanthropic as The New York Times would have you believe.  She also thinks he’d dig contributing to Becky’s arm.

Getting Maurice Sendak to draw Max for Becky to get tattooed?  Name the time and place.  

You Should Read Birds of Paradise

Buy all things Abu-Jaber.

I think my story is not something to wrap up with a bow and hand over.  Not to you and not to anyone.

If you’ve read Diana Abu-Jaber in the past then you’re anticipating Birds of Paradise like the rest of us who are already fans.  If you haven’t read her before then I envy you; you’re about to discover your next favorite author.  

Well, in September anyway (I got an Advanced Readers Copy at BEA, remember?).

Abu-Jaber uses imagery like a poet.  She puts phrases together that are as delicious as the food she describes.  She creates with words as few writers can, making you smell the backyard foliage, feel the clammy air on your skin, nestle inside the setting.  

It gets so hot out there, the sun melting the thick bright air into orange honey, she just wants to curl up and sleep out her life.

For some authors, a gift for lyricism means the story is lacking.  With Birds of Paradise, Abu-Jaber gives us a compelling story in the Muirs, a family living in the “aftermath” of a crisis - daughter Felice ran out when she was thirteen years old.  But Felice refuses to disappear completely, which means that even years later the crisis is ongoing, and the degree of pain her family feels depends on the week.  Birds of Paradise reopens old wounds, examines mid-life struggles, and invites us to watch as the Muirs address wrongs both real and imagined. 

Abu-Jaber presents her character's doubts, dubious choices, and self-defeating behavior without judgement.  It makes them all the more real, and sympathetic, even when their choices drive you crazy.  Abu-Jaber's deft touch with their shortcomings gives the Muir's struggles for grace a humanity and beauty that you don't often find in fiction.   

I loved this book.

You Should Read "Blood, Bones, and Butter."

Still got one or two signed ones left.

At her event with Books & Books, Gabrielle Hamilton claimed that as much as she would like to write a novel, she could not see herself writing fiction.  I've no reason to doubt her, but my wish to read more of her voice makes me refuse to believe it.  It would be a loss.

Vegetarian blogger Ellen Kanner wrote a great review for the Miami Herald.

I gave it 4.5 on Goodreads, and also mentioned here at SwF&F how the book helped me propose to Becky.

There are many things to love about Blood, Bones, and Butter.  The stories, the writing style, her lack of pretension, Italy, Greece, New York City, the way she effortlessly deflates the worship of celebrity chefs.  I pull this quote because I like what she does, flirting with run-on to help communicate that feeling of being forced from bed and into life before you're ready, culminating in my favorite metaphor for grogginess that I've ever read:

He was not yet awake when I called at seven thirty and had that funny sleeper's defense where you pretend that you are wide awake in spite of having just been roused and you want to sound like you know exactly where is where, who is who, and what is what when in fact you are still wearing a narcotic brain helmet of cement and foam.

Read it.  There are a lot more riches where that came from, I promise.

Book Expo America 2011: Thanks for the Memories

BEA is the biggest trade show in the industry.  Bookended (ha-ha) by training and workshop days with IndieBound and the Independent Booksellers Consortium, you've got three days where all the heavy hitters and wannabes come to wheel, deal, and talk up their latest offerings - be they books, t-shirts, or software.  

There are also special events around the city.  From Random House Children's Books' party aboard an aircraft carrier, to breakfasts with authors, to cocktails at Ground Zero with Globe Pequot, there are dozens of things to choose from, often four or five a night.  They used to feed us at these things, but industry belt-tightening means a scattering of appetizers and plenty of booze.  This is the time for a lot of naturally bookish folks to cut loose in the big city; Booksellers Gone Wild.

I've stopped doing author "breakfasts."  I can deal with a boxed wrap and a can of soda for lunch, but a pile of stale pastries in the center of a table and all the coffee you can drink does not a breakfast make.  Sure,  BEA "breakfasts" have the best book giveaways, but until they bring back bacon and eggs, or change the name to Coffee Author Chat, I'm done.  They are not breakfasts.  NOT!  BREAK!  FASTS!

Ahem.

If you're lucky enough to work for a major independent like Books & Books, the events come to you.

Norton invited me to a lovely dinner at Tarallucci e Vino with Diana Abu-Jaber.  I just finished Birds of Paradise last night and it was damned fine, five stars, but more on that later.  Apart from it being bookstore related, Diana and I couldn't remember when or how we met.  I've always felt privileged to know her because she's a great writer and a nice person.  I've also felt a kinship with her because she grew up in Syracuse and she takes heat for not looking Arab enough, while I grew up in Syracuse and take heat for not looking Indian (or "Native American" la-dee-freaking-da) enough.  The meal and the company - Norton folks, Diana's agent, and some other booksellers - were delicious, and I hope that Birds of Paradise is a huge success.

My other big dinner was thrown by Harper Collins in a private space at the Savoy to celebrate Wildwood, a gorgeous, rollicking romp written by Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy and illustrated by Carson Ellis.  I'm only partway through but so far I'm loving it.  I'm such a huge Decemberists fan that I recognized neither of them, and I keep combining their names into "Carson Meloy" when I talk about the book.  But wine did flow, and good times and deliciousness were had by all.

Everyone at the dinner knew Becky - the Girl with the Pigeon Tattoo - and I couldn't help but feel that she should've had my seat.  The folks from Harper introduced Betsy Bird as a future author, so we spent the whole time she sat next to me talking about her upcoming titles.  When I got home, the magic of Google told me that Mrs. Bird is the most powerful children's book blogger on the planet ("You don't mean Fuse 8, do you?" Becky asked me.  "Oh my God!").  If I was such a force, I'd announce it with every handshake.  But that's me.

I figure doing a big three is good, so I'll mention the mighty Hillary Jordan's When She Woke.  I realize now that while I've sung the praises of Mudbound in other places, my only mention at SwF&F is this squib.  Criminal.  So here's a segment from the opening chapters of Mudbound which shows you why you should read it:

     When I think of the farm, I think of mud. Limning my husband's fingernails and encrusting the children's knees and hair. Sucking at my feet like a greedy newborn on the breast. Marching in boot-shaped patched across the plank floors of the house. There was no defeating it. The mud coated everything. I dreamed in brown.

Here's hoping When She Woke is huge.

Other memories of BEA include passing Flava Flav, meeting Laurent de Brunhoff, and Hellfire.  You're not supposed to talk, tweet, blog, or take photographs at Hellfire, but I can't resist; Josh Ritter bought me Budweisers!

Don't believe me?  Here's proof:

Thanks for reading.

Awkward Moments with Authors Come in Twos

This week Mitchell introduced me to two authors.  Both men, both well-respected, prolific writers whose work I have at home, but neither are authors I've read.

The first conversation went like this:

ME (on the way to clock out): How's it going, Mitchell?

MY BOSS: Good, good.  You want to meet Fred Savage?

ME: Not really, no.  

MY BOSS: Hey, Fred, I'd like you to meet someone.  Fred, this is Aaron.  Aaron, this is Fred.  Aaron is one of our buyers.  He's a big, big fan of your work.

ME (grinning hugely): Good to meet you!  Wow, great stuff this time!

FRED SAVAGE* (not buying it for a minute, not even a little):  . . . 

ME: So. . .

FRED: I like your tattoo, Aaron.

The second encounter went like this:

ME (on the way out): S'up, MK?

MY BOSS: Hey, how's it going?  Do you want to meet Idi Amin?

ME: No, I'm good.

MY BOSS: Idi, this is Aaron.  Aaron, this is Idi.

ME (holding my hand out): Hi, it's good to meet you.

[IDI AMIN** stares past the proffered hand, saying nothing.]

ME (still holding hand out): Uh.... I'm one of Mitchell's buyers.

[IDI AMIN continues to ignore ME's hand, saying nothing.  ME's hand falls, his smile wilts.  A fissure opens up in the ground, and ME steps inside.]

This is why I'll be avoiding my boss in the future.

As further proof of the world of awkward twos, two authors offered to memorialize themselves on my ass.  This is a first for me which managed to happen twice in just a few months.

The first was the mighty Brock Clarke, who I've written about once or twice.  He was in town for the early release of his third novel, Exley.

I'm fucking awesome; buy me.

We drank the night away before I realized he hadn't signed my poster for An Arsonist's Guide to Writers Homes in New England, a brilliant piece of marketing with quotes from the book set up as rules to follow when torching historic homes.  I was thinking it would look lovely with my signed posters for Choke and Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.  Plus, I was going for an even fifty for things I need to get framed.

Two am was a distant memory.  Brock was understandably reluctant for me to run across the street, open the locked store, grab the poster, and run back.

"I'll be back for Miami Book Fair.  I'll sign anything you want, I promise."

Seeing my lack of enthusiasm for this idea, Brock offered his Ace in the Hole.

"I'll sign your ass," he said.

I worked Miami Book Fair, but my ass and Brock's pen somehow missed each-other.

A few months later, this happened:

PHASE 1: This will be awesome - wheeeee!!!  Thanks so much, Lane!

PHASE 2: She realizes she is the most ticklish person who currently exists.

PHASE 3: Lane discovers how hard it is to erase wavy Sharpie Lines from skin.

(and if you haven't already, buy It's a Book now)

After mortalizing the bibliophile monkey inside Becky's biceps, Lane Smith was on a high.  When he found out Becky and I were a couple, he turned to me and said, "How about one for you?  I could put it right on your ass."

Here's what he suggested:

That, of course, is Stinky Cheese Man.

Oh Lane Smith, my favorite jackass***, you know me so well.


* Not.
** Not, either.
*** His words, not mine!