When You Get to Asheville: Winter Institute, Part Deux

Behold the glorious Grove Park Inn.  They say it's haunted!   

Y'all, I'm pretty tired.  I had to work three 10-hour days in a row last week and I've got one coming up again tomorrow (today, by the time most of you read this). You may not have heard, but winter has not been particularly nice to New Englanders this year.  I'm cold all the frickin' time and so full of snow fatigue that I'm beginning to understand how cabin fever could be a justifiable defense in homicide. And really, the last thing I want to do is blog, but I've got 30 minutes before Downton Abbey comes on, and I'm trying really hard to stick to my two-blog-posts-per-week resolution.

Okay, enough whining from me.  I'm still sorta-kinda riding the high from Winter Institute, even if Asheville seems like a distant memory.  Here's a recap of my days (and nights).  You'll have to forgive the terribly blurry photos, but many times I couldn't be arsed to show up on time because I had things to do in between sessions, so I ended up standing up in the back on several occasions.

L-R: Larson, Corrigan, O'Nan. Sorry they're so tiny

Our mornings began with institutional breakfasts and plenary speakers, one of which was often better than the other.  You can guess which was which. One such morning, we had a last minute change of schedule, where Maureen Corrigan and Stewart O'Nan were led in conversation by Erik Larson on the topic of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the permanence of The Great Gatsby.  Larson allowed that he was more of a Hemingway fan, at which point I tuned him out, but I very much enjoyed what Corrigan and O'Nan had to say from their nonfiction and fictionish points of view.

This is the secret basement passage

After breakfast each morning, we'd dash from one side of the GPI to the other, trying to find the ballroom where our break-out educational sessions were held.  It was getting from one side to the other that I followed a fellow bookseller down what I dubbed the "secret passage." Almost everybody walked through the hotel on the lobby level, but there's also the option of using the basement passage, which is strategically lit and filled with the soothing scents of lavender and mint, since the spa is on that level. Lo and behold, when you get to the halfway point, there's an amazing waterfall right outside, so naturally I had to pause there to make a photo.

We also had speed dating lunches with publishers, where we sat at assigned tables and publishing folks would go from table to table, pitching their favorite/best/most interesting books for the upcoming season.  Here's the lovely Ruth Liebmann from Penguin Random House, as she pauses in the midst of a presentation. She was talking about the just-published short story collection from Kelly Link called Get In Trouble, which is fun and offbeat and flirting with the fantasy/horror genres without actually settling into them.

More educational sessions after those lunches, and dashing back & forth across the hotel. There were two days when the weather was quite pretty, so I tried to maneuver outside on those days.  I even managed to catch up with Joan on one of those dashes and an obliging bookseller took a snapshot for posterity.

I might have skipped the last session once (or maybe twice) in order to sit outside with a cocktail and reflect on all that I had learned so far.  That might sound coy, but really, sometimes there's a real feeling of sensory and information overload, and taking a moment to process it all is quite good and not at all a waste of time.  Especially on that one day where I was meeting with three different point-of-sale inventory system guys and listening to their pitch on why our store should change to their system instead.  A cocktail was definitely needed!  Plus, look at that sunset.  I'd be a fool not to be sitting there in contemplation of the sun's downward progression.

Asheville or Tattoine?  You decide.  Not sure why there's a second sun in this photo...

After cocktails came the author receptions.  One night was full of major publisher sponsors of Winter Institute, followed by a second night of indie publishers.  I don't waste time at either of these with the food or booze provided.  I spend my whole time in line, getting books signed for myself and for booksellers back home who weren't able to attend.  I met dozens of nifty authors but didn't make many photos.  Here are a few that were worth snapping:

These Star Wars characters are felted.  They were amazing!

 From the same guys who brought us the Cozy Classics series now comes the Star Wars Epic Yarns series.  I love these board books!

One author and illustrator team used photographs of their adorable dog as the illustrations for a children's picture book. It's only the second dog I've ever seen at Winter Institute, and she was just a gem.  Very chill, and not at all trembly like one might expect from a dog that size in a large crowd of strangers.

Last but never least, here's my co-worker Elli signing books at the author reception.  We'll be launching her book at the store next week and it will be ever so exciting!

I was lucky this year to arrive at Winter Institute with two dinner invitations and receive a third one for the last night only moments ahead of time.  I had been looking forward to the parties for Other Press and Macmillan/Bloomsbury, but when somebody canceled at the last minute for the Grove/Melville House party, I was very happy to inherit the empty seat at the table.  All three of the dinners were great fun, but check out especially the location for the Other Press soirée:

Other Press hired a bus to transfer us all to the winery at the Biltmore Estate. We arrived after dark, so there wasn't much that we could see, but then somebody led our group underground to a beautiful room straight out of The Lion In Winter, complete with tapestries for hiding behind and plotting.  It was stunning.

This was the hallway to the bathroom. Or maybe to the dungeon.

There were three authors at the table, but the table was so massive that I only had the chance to chat with one of them.  The rest of the time I enjoyed visiting with my fellow booksellers and some of our hosts from Other.  The food was good, and even though I'm not a chocolate fan, I had to take a picture of this beautiful dessert:

My second dinner had an unexpected beginning: we rode to dinner from the hotel in what my group dubbed the Jurassic Park-mobile.  Macmillan/Bloomsbury hosted a dinner in downtown Asheville at Cúrate, a tapas restaurant:

Here we had three small tables, with one author per table, which made it so much easier to get to know the folks whose books I will be selling in a few months' time. The evening was just wonderful, and I particularly enjoyed talking with my neighbor, author Rebecca Dinerstein about the intricacies of learning Norwegian (she's fluent, and her first published book was actually a bilingual book of poetry). The food and the company were all superb.

Here's Rebecca with two booksellers

My third dinner, the last minute one sponsored by Grove & Melville House, was also a lot of fun. I was  lucky enough to be seated next to the author again, which was great, and with a couple of really neat booksellers.  The pièce de résistance, however, was probably this dessert, which I scraped up with my spoon and very nearly again with my tongue. Why, yes, those are bits of pomegranate and persimmon, with chopped pistachio, sitting atop two perfect rounds of vanilla panna cotta:

I was pretty exhausted by the end of our last day and ready to go home. Or at least ready to sleep on the plane!  As much as it all is, it's also on the hectic side.  Joan and I would leave our hotel room by 8:00 every morning, not returning there until after 11:00 pm each night, and one night it was closer to midnight.  Hard work AND hard play comprise the bookseller's conference, that's for sure.

One last shot from the Grove Park Inn

Book Review: Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

I'm feeling a little whiny today -- in the "writing books reviews is hard" kind of way -- but it's a good coping/procrastination mechanism for me.  It's been over three weeks since I last posted a book review, and the longer I go in between those posts, the more difficult it is for me to sit myself down and talk about a book.  I often wonder why that is, since I'm obviously comfortable working with books and talking to customers every single day about them as a means of supporting myself.  Part of it results from finding so many other things to do with my time on my precious days off, but let's be perfectly clear: most of it is the result of laziness and an utter lack of self-discipline.

So, I'm going to ease back into book reviewing with a book that I liked, but whose content has become a little vague because I read it five months ago on the train ride home from BEA in May. I'll preface it by saying that while I've read a handful of Jodi Picoult's novels over the years, I've never self-identified as a particular fan of hers.  She is, I think, a good storyteller but overall is a bit too commercial to dovetail more than occasionally with my own reading preferences. The first book of hers that I've ever read was My Sister's Keeper, and until now, that one was probably my favorite, despite my serious dislike of the book's ending.

With the publication of Leaving Time, Picoult has changed publishers, and therefore editors, and I think that, combined with the fact that her new book revolves largely around elephants, has created a new reading experience for me.  Picoult never has been, and perhaps never will be, a writer of literary fiction, but she has an easy style that moves the story along without getting in the way of itself.

A psychic, a private investigator, and a teenage girl walk into a mental hospital...

...it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but this scenario actually plays a crucial role in Leaving Time. Jenna is said teenager who has retained the services of a psychic named Serenity Jones and a private investigator named Virgil Stanhope, both of whom are down & out, to help find her mother, Alice.  Alice disappeared one night after a traumatic accident in the elephant sanctuary where she worked, leaving her husband so mentally unbalanced that Jenna is left to be raised by her grandmother. This trio of unlikely comrades combs through Alice's journal and her papers on elephant research as a means of tracing her current whereabouts.

Along the way, the reader is treated to astonishing situations of elephant empathy, grief, and memory. Picoult's research for this book is amazing, and when I was invited to an author dinner with her a few months ago, she regaled our table with stories, including many that didn't make it into the book.  I have always loved elephants, and no doubt that is partly why this book resonated with me in a way that none of her previous books have.  But I'd also suggest that incorporating animal empathy into her novel gives it an emotional heft that is lacking in her previous books.

I mean, really. Look at that little tyke go.  

Picoult uses her trademark multiple narrative storytelling here, mostly to good effect, and there are the usual twists and turns along the way.  I anticipated many of the minor ones, and if I had been as enthralled with the human elements as much as I was to the elephant ones, I might have anticipated the major reveal at the end, but I did not.  I think it's pretty clear that if you already love Jodi Picoult, this book will renew your love for her, but if you've never read her, I think this book's depths may pleasantly surprise you. I admit that it took a goodly amount of suspending my disbelief to accept some of the plot at face value -- count me among the population who is skeptical about psychics, for example -- but in the end, my enthusiasm for All Things Pachyderm completely overruled my feelings for everything else.

It is my earnest hope that that this novel will do for captive elephants what the shocking documentary, Blackfish, has done for captive dolphins & whales around the world.  It is perhaps naïve of me to think so, but Picoult's readership is so large, and so international, that they could easily effect a social change in the way elephants are treated around the world. I hope that it becomes true. In the meantime, she educates her readers about the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, the only place in the US (and maybe the world? I'm not sure) where circus and zoo elephants can be rehabilitated (or can retire to), and for now, at least, this book has moved me to make donations to help sustain them.  Fuck zoos and circuses, and don't even get me started on poachers and the Asian markets that keep said poachers employed.  For them, my sentiment is more like, poke out their eyes and skull fuck them.  Not that I have strong feelings about these things.

The cute factor here -- I just can't even.

BookExpo 2014: Or, WOW, I REALLY LOVE MY JOB

I'm lucky to be an independent bookseller who lives within easy Amtrak distance of New York City, where BookExpo has been held for the last few years.  Last week marked my 5th (I think?) BEA, which is held in the soul-sucking Javits Center.  I'm told that it's the largest book convention in the world, but I'm not going to verify that for you.  Google away and find out for yourself if you so choose.

For those of you who've never attended BEA/BookExpo before, lemme 'splain. It's exhilarating. It's exhausting.  It's big on a scale that is hard to imagine. This is the biggest of all possible big things in US publishing, and in some cases, international publishing. It would make me wince, and then cry, and then maybe hide in a corner to know how much money the biggest publishers throw at BEA.  For example, I have a friend whose father owns a small, well-respected publishing house known for its literature in translation (mostly from Arabic) and with an emphasis on travel lit and Middle Eastern cultures. His single booth, about 15 feet long and maybe 6 feet deep, with one table and little carpeting, cost over $20,000. I don't want to know how much it costs publishers with multiple booths, with cushy carpeting, spanning rows and aisles of the Javits, with big drop-down signs hung from the ceiling that can be seen from anywhere on the tradeshow floor.

Inside each women's stall

On the outside of each stall in the women's room

Stair ads and ceiling ads

For example, here is some advertising.  Multiple women's bathrooms had advertising for one book inside each stall and across the mirrors.  In the other photo you can see that it was worth it to the publisher to sprawl ads for Carl Hiaasen's new book for kids up a set of stairs. And for Adi Alsaid and Jodi Picoult, whose huge banners hang from the ceiling. NB: I shot these photos on Wednesday, the day before BookExpo really opened, which is why you can see the stairs at all.  Otherwise it would just be a mob scene.

BookExpo is also a time for publishers to wine and dine their authors and in some lucky cases, their booksellers.  This year I was very fortunate to inherit an invitation to Simon & Schuster's 90th anniversary party, which was huge and star-studded.  I say"inherit" because the invitation came just one week before the party, meaning that somebody higher up on the bookseller food chain declined at the last minute and I got to step in.  This is not a criticism; on the contrary, I was delighted to accept. Would I rather get an early invitation?  Well, sure.  But getting a late one is infinitely better than not getting one at all. I'm happy to fill in!

Though I don't have the photographic evidence to prove it, I got to meet Anjelica Huston, Hoda Kotb and Cary Elwes that night, along with the authors Rachel Renee Russell, Lisa Genova, and Kresley Cole. Dinner was in an amazing space--a converted Episcopal monastery--and while the food itself was forgettable (to put it charitably), the company was delightful.  In addition to Genova and Cole, I had the  incredibly charming Ian Chapman, former CEO and currently chief executive publisher of S&S UK, India, Australia, as a table mate.

Rumor has it that the ceiling is four stories high

The ceiling really was gorgeous

That's Kresley Cole with me, with the minstrel balcony as a backdrop

Our last course wasn't served until almost 10:00, and with my walk back to the hotel I didn't get home until well after 11:30, but it was all worth it.  Even when I had to be back at the Javits Center the next morning at 9:00 to begin my first day of back-to-back appointments with publishers to pitch my store's First Editions Club and to convince publicists that my store can easily handle large-scale events of over 1,000 guests, so they should definitely send Amy Poehler and Jodi Picoult. (They really should!)

My celebrity encounters didn't end with the Simon & Schuster dinner.  First thing the next morning, I was able to spend a moment with Anjelica Huston when she stopped by the American Booksellers Association meeting room to sign some books. She even agreed to post with Hannah and me (Hannah's the delightful manager of my store's children's department):

The day just kept on getting better when I arrived at a publisher meeting room a few minutes early for one of my appointments.  In walked The Divine Jane Lynch.  I didn't talk to her or anything, but I kept quoting her lines from Best In Show in my head while snapping a quick pic. She was only ten feet away. I was able to play it cool enough not to walk up and bother her, but I couldn't not take this picture:

Then there was the Celebration of Bookselling luncheon for indie booksellers.  There was at least one author or illustrator at every table, and Anthony Marra, who wrote the terrific debut novel  A Constellation of Vital Phenomena was at mine. I was very excited to note in the program that Rainbow Rowell was there to win the Indie Award for best YA novel, Eleanor and Park. I snapped a photo of her onstage (it's blurry), but I was utterly starstruck when Hannah and I went up to talk with her after the luncheon.  I gushed a little bit, saying that I'd been reading her ever since Attachments came out, and then Rainbow and I both gushed together a little bit about how much we adore Alice from Reading Rambo. And then I swooned a little because she took a picture with Hannah and me:

I know why there are so many songs about Rainbows

I could have gone home at that point, completely satisfied with my BEA experience, but there were two celebrities yet to be encountered.

The night before I took the train down to New York, I inherited another last minute invitation--this time to meet former Secretary of State (and, I hope, next President-to-be) Hillary Rodham Clinton. I received the email invitation one hour before the RSVP was due, and again, this is not a criticism.  I was giddy with disbelief to be one of 100 indie booksellers who gathered to hear a short address about her new memoir and then have the chance to shake her hand and be in a photograph with her. I am thankful to all of those Republican indie booksellers (though I feel that there probably aren't many) who turned down the opportunity to attend so that my name worked its way up the invitation list.

The two things I most remember about her speech are the two most common questions she was asked when traveling around the world in her capacity as Secretary of State, and one of those questions shows *exactly* how far female leaders have to go to be considered with equal gravitas as their male counterparts: (1) How do you manage to do your hair when you're on the road? and (2) How can you work for the administration of the man who was your opponent in the presidential race?

I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Colin Powell aren't asked questions like #1.

Anyway, at the end, we all had about two seconds of face time with Ms Clinton and after our handshake, we were just turning to pose for the professional photographer when she glanced at my earrings, pushed a strand of my hair back, and asked, "Are those books?" I said yes, they were Jane Austen earrings and she said she liked them. (I can post the professional photo after S&S sends it out to us--they asked us to refrain from using our personal cameras during the meet & greet.)

That means that I've got one more celebrity to meet at BEA.  You may have heard of her. Publishers Weekly refers to her as one of six "Go-To Book Bloggers." I'm speaking, naturally, of Alice from Reading Rambo. I'm utterly baffled at my lack of photographic evidence from our time together, but trust me, it was fun.  We met up at the Peachtree booth where my DH and Carmen Agra Deedy were signing copies of The Cheshire Cheese Cat. Alice and I agreed that Carmen is worth keeping our options open for.  And anyway, I don't have my own photo, but Alice does, so I'm copying it here:

Photo credit here

That about sums up my BEA.  I spent lots of time hanging with Hannah, plus other folks from Odyssey: Joan, Ann, and Garrett. I wore my most comfortable shoes so that I wouldn't collapse after three days.  I saw my mentor and favorite father figure, John Evans, from Lemuria Bookstore. I saw two impressive-sized Lego figures.  I even drank a delicious passionfruit beverage that looked like it was covered in tadpole eggs.  I'll be sure to let y'all know if I'm to be the proud mama of some frogspawn.

BEA 2015 will need to be at the top of its game if it wants to beat BEA 2014.  And that's all I'm saying. 

More Bookish Things, or Why I Love My Job

Cedric at 826 Boston's Night of One Thousand Stories

Oh, y'all.  I will never, ever get rich in the traditional way. I don't have a 401-K and I will probably have to work until I am so old that I can no longer stand up without assistance. But I have a job that I love, one that provides me with free books and opportunities to meet and know (and in one specific case, fall in love with and marry) authors and illustrators.  Yes, I work in a bookstore, but it's not just retail.  I'm fortunate to work in a place with interesting people, all of whom value ideas and literature and art and the force for good that they can all bestow on the world.  I present you today with two recent and one not-so-recent bookish events that make me love my job, despite the long hours and the not-precisely-rewarding pay.

I loved the Scrabble tile centerpiece on our table

So, back in June, Bob Werner, my sales rep for Macmillan, invited me to a posh shindig in Boston because Tom Perrotta, one of Macmillan's authors, was being honored by 826 Boston for his contributions of time and talent to the organization. I didn't know anything about 826 before that night, but now I am enthusiastic admirer of what they do, which is to encourage literacy and develop writing skills for public school kids, ages 6-18. Macmillan sponsored a table for the 826 award gala and fundraiser and thus it was that I got to attend an event that is seriously above my pay grade.  Thank you, Bob and Macmilan! The other booksellers at the table and I had a grand time and it was fun watching the live auction fundraisers.  I even put in a few bids, safe in the knowledge that I could bow out well before the bidding stopped.

One of the fancy hors-d'oeuvres

Here I am with Bob

Bob and his friend Cedric invited me to ride out to Boston with them for the evening, so not only did I have a great time at the gala, I had the pleasure of being in the company with two fabulous fellas, with lots of book talk and discussions about teaching, urban living, travel, and that inner call that Cedric and I both occasionally hear to move back south (he's from NC, I am from MS).

Tom Perrotta and Cedric

More recently, just over a week ago I attended the NEIBA (New England Independent Booksellers Association) fall conference in Providence, RI.  Though it runs for three days, I was only there for one day and evening, but in my opinion I was there for the best parts of all: a day of education, a speed-dating book session over lunch, and the author cocktail reception. It's also the time when I get to reunite with other New England booksellers whom I only see a couple of times a year at such gatherings.

Hannah and Marika, two of the finest children's booksellers I've ever known

Here I am with Marika and Hannah

Odyssey Booksellers, Unite!

It also happens to be the place where I put my foot in my mouth for the second time with an author I quite admire, and for the second time, he proved himself to be The Most Gracious Author In The Entire World. I speak of Wiley Cash.  I generally acquit myself with a shy kind of aplomb when it comes to meeting & greeting authors.  I'm not the most gregarious person in the world (by a long shot!) but I generally feel comfortable in small groups with authors and illustrators and other bookish folk. But for some reason, Fate would have it otherwise when Wiley's and my paths cross.

Wiley Cash, aka The Most Gracious Author In The Entire World

Still reeling from my first foot-in-mouth episode from a year ago, I cheerfully determined to make it up to him this time.  So when Wiley and I ended up at the bar at the same time, I offered to buy him a drink. He demurred, I insisted, and all was well.  That is, until he quipped that he probably needed alcohol to make him more interesting.  To which I laughingly replied, "Oh, come on. Nothing could make you more interesting." [awkward pause, in which we both realize what I just said actually means the opposite of what I intended.]

Ahem. My face now the color of my shirt, I try to stammer out an apology/explanation/ retraction, but Wiley was the very portrait of graciousness.

Naturally I ended up sitting next to him at the dinner following the reception. Naturally. HarperCollins sponsored a dinner for six of their authors and it was pretty amazing.  Wiley was there, plus debut author James Scott (who incidentally is practically my neighbor), the non-fiction writer Simon Winchester, and Christopher Moore, on whom I now I have a total reader crush.  They were all terrific, telling the stories of their books and how they came to be published, but Christopher Moore reminded me palpably of my high school classmates from MSMS, the Mississippi School for Mathematics & Science: bright, funny, articulate, a little geeky, and the slightest undercurrent of introversion. He made me feel like I was among my people again, and I'm not sure there's a higher compliment I can pay. (How I managed not to snap photos of him or the rest of the other authors, I have no idea, especially since I apparently thought the desserts demanded documentation not once not twice, but three times. Totally my loss.)

Well, okay, this dessert does look pretty fabulous

The last bookish event that I'd like to mention was the night before I left for vacation last week, so it happened in a bit of a panicked whirlwind.  That same day, I had to schlepp a car full of books down to Springfield to sell at a conference for the Center for Human Development (how's that for a vague name?), then rush back to the store to prepare for the author event.  There aren't a lot of books that I re-read--Jane Austen, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings comprise most of the short list--and it's pretty rare that I would read a book twice in the same year, much less three times, but that's exactly what I did with The Rosie Project by Grame Simsion. This book is funny, y'all.  Seriously funny.  Laugh-out-loud funny. Smartly funny.  It's easy to do dumb-funny. Humor is pretty cheap, after all. But smart funny? That's damned difficult to find.

This is my fancy DNA-inspired book display

Graeme Simsion is from Australia (and incidentally was the second author from Oz that my little bookstore hosted in as many weeks) and while it's already a best-seller in his homeland, The Rosie Project is on the cusp of being an international sensation. He's sold the rights in three dozen countries, as varied as Brazil, Latvia, Israel, and Japan, and a film is already in the works.  What he's done is written a 21st century romantic hero, and while the idea of opposites attract is as old as love itself, what he presents to the reader is an entirely fresh and tantalizingly funny take on that meme. Don Tillman is a geneticist on the Asperger spectrum--he's bright, loyal, and handsome but possessed of behavioral quirks that most women find off-putting.  He's been on dozens of first dates but no second ones; longing for a life partner, he puts together an insane questionnaire with the sincere but misguided belief that scientific method will succeed where traditional arenas for dating have failed. Then along comes Rosie, who totally fails the questionnaire: she smokes, she drinks, she works in a bar, she's habitually late, she wears makeup and dyes her hair, she's vegetarian, and she's in need of Don's help to identify her birth father through DNA testing. You know where the book will end, but what you cannot possibly predict are the delightful and poignant moments you pass through on the way there.

Graeme Simsion and me

L-R: Joan Grenier (store owner), Simsion, me, John Muse (rep from Simon & Schuster)

In less careful hands, Don could have been a caricature of himself, but instead Simsion's kind and generous handling of the character renders a remarkably real and rather tender portrait of a man searching for love. I think this is a book with an appeal that is as close to universal it gets.  To have a book with universal appeal AND for it to be so funny it will make you snort is a rare thing, indeed. My mom, my husband, and my three coworkers (with quite divergent tastes, thank you very much) all fell in love with Don and Rosie, and I think you will, too.

Just read it. You can thank me later.