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. 

BEA, Baby! Part I

I have now been home one day from my stint at Book Expo America, and it's not quite been sufficient time to recover from the past week.  In other words, then, it was a typical BEA, full of fun and work in equally large measures! Now all I have to do is catch up from missing one week of work, get ready for my Perseus, PGW, and Simon & Schuster Fall 2012 buys, attend a staff party, do laundry, pack, and finalize the books I'll be taking along on vacation in t-minus-9 days.  But I digress--first, here's what happened last week in NYC:

Accommodation panic, for starters.  At first I procrastinated about finding a place to stay.  Then I lucked into a place to stay.  Then it fell through about one week before the show.  Then I checked online hotel prices and promptly fainted. I bided my time and booked my first night at Milford Plaza Hotel on the morning I left for New York.  It was a mixed bag. 

First room--heavy on the mildew

Nice to have two window shades

The second room with a smaller but cleaner bathroom

I stayed in two different rooms there, and the first one had a bigger bathroom and was more spacious in general, plus a nice view of the river from the 25th floor, but it had HUGE and NASTY mildew problems in the shower. The second room, on the 6th floor,  was a little larger and perfectly clean, but SO DAMN LOUD at night that I was awakened several times, even with earplugs.  I picked the Milford because it was on the complimentary BEA bus route and because the first night was only $139, but I doubt I'll stay there again.  I'm not so enamored of being awash in a sea of humanity that I'd want to be that close to Times Square again.  If you're dying to know more particulars about the hotel stay, you can find my review on TripAdvisor. 

L-R: Me (current), Marika (current), Emily (former), Joan (current), and Broche (former)

So...BEA.  Arrived late Monday morning, halfway through Richard Russo's plenary talk for indie booksellers, hosted by the ABA.  After that, we broke for lunch and bought remainders (known to civilians, perhaps, as bargain books), and posed for Odyssey staff photos along the way with current and former employees.  I miss Emily and Broche so much!

Monday night, Marika and I had a celebratory dinner--she had just signed with an agent for her first graphic novel that very morning!  She came with me to my hotel as I checked in and from there we walked around the neighborhood to find something we'd both enjoy.  We settled on Smyrna, a Turkish restaurant, where we hit paydirt, ordering a smattering of small plates that was each in its own way delicious: stuffed grape leaves (very different from the Greek style we both knew), a smoked eggplant salad very unlike anything we'd ever eaten, Borregi cigars stuffed with a Turkish feta-like cheese, and zucchini pancakes with dill & yogurt, which I think was our favorite of the dishes.

Tuesday morning was the first of a three-day marathon meeting with publishers from houses large & small.  Joan, Marika, and I did our best to woo the publicists and pitch our store in an effort to attract more authors to our store for events and to make sure that our little New England town doesn't get overlooked by all of the major media markets. 

Yay, Bellwether!

In between appointments, Joan and I made our way to the uptown stage to hear Barbara Kingsolver announce what new manuscript won the Bellwether Prize (now a PEN award).  Congratulations, Susan Nussbaum! Along with Kingsolver, we heard from Heidi Durrow and Hillary Jordan--I love them, and their books, too.

My husband's book is honored here: The Cheshire Cheese Cat

Then came the Celebration of Bookselling luncheon, where we heard lots of authors (who, not incidentally, were voted on by independent booksellers) speak for one minute about how much they love independent booksellers.  It was an odd combination of gratifying sincerity and slightly masturbatory fawning.  As far as I remember, only John Green acknowledged that awkwardness and made us laugh and proved why he is, in my opinion, the most engaging author for indies, second only to Ann Patchett...who showed her love by reciting the St. Crispin's day speech from Henry V.  I love that speech.  We few, we happy few, indeed! And if I happened to have tears in my eyes, what of it, I ask you? I kept hearing this haunting anthem from the Kenneth Branagh version of the film while she was up there. (Sorry, I don't know how to post a YouTube video here.  Help me, anyone?)

Meeting, meeting, meeting, and more meeting.  Then fun!  Sue from Milkweed invited me to Piadina Ristorante, one of her favorite eateries in the West Village, to where I foolishly decided to walk instead of taking public transportation.  Good thing I left the Javits at 5:00 to make the 6:00 dinner! I had a great time chatting with her about books, the state of publishing & bookselling, the beauty of the Berkshires, and the gentler joys of the midwest compared to our other homes (she and I are both native-born midwesterners, but Sue identifies as a New Yorker and I identify as a Southerner).

My image, but not actually the bar.  This was on the corridor wall of my hotel. Odd, no?

After leaving Sue and securing a place to stay for the night (I hadn't booked it before then because hotel prices were astronomical), I met up with some friends down on the Lower East Side: David, my terrific sales rep from Norton; Jennifer, one of the hippest booksellers I know;  and Steve, a publisher/bookseller from Norton/McNally Jackson, whose acquaintance I made that night. Destination: Schiller's Liquor Bar, where I drank a pleasant little gin-gingery concoction that made me want to belt out inappropriate lyrics to the tune of that Chim-Chiminy song from Mary Poppins.  Luckily for everybody, I managed to restrain myself.

Next up: Part Two!

A Poo in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush?

Mr Hankey, from South Park Studios website

Let me give fair warning: some readers may find this blog post vulgar at best and offensive at worst.  So if you're squeamish about any of the words in the title, I'd advise you to come back and visit my blog another time.  Otherwise, read on, you sickos.

It's not every day that one hears a humorous anecdote about pooing in one's hand, so imagine my surprise when this past Thursday when visiting Jackson, MS, I heard about two separate and completely unrelated poo-in-hand incidents.  My husband and I traveled to Jackson to promote his newest book for middle grades, The Cheshire Cheese Cat, and we were pretty stoked to learn that our arrival coincided with David Sedaris's reading at Lemuria, one of the country's great bookstores, and the store in which I first plied my trade.

I had met Sedaris once before about 12 years ago at Lemuria for his Me Talk Pretty One Day tour, one hot July day when the power happened to go out in our building.  Trust me when I say you don't want to be stuck inside a building with no windows that can open at the height of summer in Mississippi.  It's the kind of thing that makes tempers flare and egos grow larger than the Grinch's heart after he hears the Whos singing on Christmas Day.  Sedaris, however, was as gracious as he could be to the store staff and the customers who braved the swelter to meet him, and though I hadn't read him up until that moment, I have now become something of a completist where his work is concerned, reading all of his essay collections and owning most of them on CD to enjoy regularly on my daily commute.

Last week, though, Sedaris's fame in Jackson had grown considerably since my visit with him and he read to a sold-out crowd for the paperback release of Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.  My husband and I got to play the former-employee-of Lemuria card, though, and perch on barstools with the rest of the staff at the back of the room.  After reading the titular story and an unpublished essay about what he'd do if he ruled the world, Sedaris started sharing some diary entries he'd written about outrageous stories people have told him through the years.  One of them was a bizarre little tale about poo.

Apparently somebody once confessed to Sedaris that when she was in a public restroom and in need of moving her bowels, she would poo first into her hand before gently letting the poo slide silently into the water, so great was her need to keep people in neighboring stalls from knowing what she was doing.  That's right; she pooed in her hand so that nobody would hear the tell-tale kersplash of her Number Two.  But that's not even the worst of it: Sedaris found himself relating this tale among friends and fans alike, with several people corroborating that they didn't think it was odd at all to poo in the hand instead of in the bowl--and in fact had either done it themselves or knew somebody who had.  Who are these people? And do we really trust them to wash their hands thoroughly afterwards?

Sedaris's delivery is uproariously funny (and even better in person than on audio) and my eyes were bright with unshed tears from laughing so hard.  But little did I know that two hours later over dinner with friends that I would be given the opportunity to say, "Speaking of pooing in your hand..." You see, my husband and I joined some dear friends for dinner after the reading.  Over dinner one of them casually mentioned a girl she knew who had to be monitored when she went to the restroom because she pooed in her hand.  Frankly, I don't think this segue to my talking about the Sedaris event could have been improved upon.

So you must see, dear reader, how compelled I was to share these anecdotes with you.  I mean, what are the chances that I would be treated to back-to-back poo-in-the-hand stories? The odds have to be astronomically high against, right?

I think I'll close with a photo that my friend thoughtfully shared with me that I think you'll find shows a certain synchronicity: it's a photo of that day's dessert in the cafeteria at school.  Tune in next time to read how I ate my weight in cheese grits and pulled pork sandwiches and caramel cake during my trip to Jackson.

 NB: Interested in winning a copy of  Pandemonium, Lauren Oliver's much-awaited sequel to Delirium? Click here!

Chocolate covered bananas. Yum!

Book Blogger Hop: Do you stalk authors? Or their books?

It's been quite a while since I participated in the Blog Hop sponsored by Crazy For Books, but this week, the question and the amount of time I have to spend answering it seem to jibe pretty well, so here you go:  

If you find a book you  love, do you  hunt down other books by the same author?   

Funnily enough, after some reflection I discovered that the answer is "no."  I certainly used to as a child.  Growing up first in a small, dying mill town in Wisconsin and then in a tiny town in rural Mississippi in the 1970s and 1980s, the libraries had some pretty slim pickings.  So when I discovered an author I loved, I not only read everything I could find, I read all the books over and over: Encyclopedia Brown books, Beverly Cleary, C. S. Lewis, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madeleine L'Engle, the Trixie Belden series, the Anne and Emily books by L. M. Montgomery--if I liked one book by any given author, you could trust me to devour the entire oeuvre. Interlibrary loan became my special friend, for while the local librarians couldn't always make great recommendations for me, they were certainly adept at hunting down all available books by an author I did discover!

     I am not sure what changed.  Perhaps the amount of free time I had to read declined as school became more demanding.  Perhaps it was my access to more and better books as I went off to high school and then college and beyond. Perhaps I begrudgingly acknowledged that not all books by any given author were equally worth reading.  Now I work at a lovely independent bookstore and I can get just about any book I would like for the asking (I have good relationships with my many sales reps), but for that same reason, I feel obligated to read more widely.  Spending time tracking down books by any given author I love would simply take away from the time I have discovering wonderful new authors.  There are, of course, many authors whose new books I will always prioritize reading because I like them so much (Jhumpa Lahiri, Barbara Kingsolver, Abraham Verghese are three recent ones that come to mind) but I don't have the time or the inclination to retrofit my library with favorite authors' previous works. 

What about you?  How do you handle this?

Want to win a signed book of your choice?  Read all about the chance to win here. 

What I'm reading now...

So at Wi4 I picked up a lot of galleys, both for myself and for my colleagues. I mean a LOT of galleys. Enough that I filled an empty suitcase full of 'em, packed up a box to ship back, and still had a few that wouldn't fit and thus got left behind in my hotel room. The hard part about going to Wi4 is actually ranking the books: which ones to be read immediately, which ones to stack in my windowsill, which ones to go on my nightstand, which ones to stay downstairs in the kitchen, which ones get stacked in the front hallway, which ones to stick in my car, which ones to leave in the bathroom...you get the idea.

One galley stuck out for a few reasons, among them the bright yellow cover and how likable the author seemed at the reception when he signed my book and mentioned that Mt. Holyoke College, the campus across the street from where I work, makes a cameo appearance in his novel. This book was hilarious! For Steve Hely, there's nothing sacred in the publishing world. How I Became a Famous Novelist is about this guy named Pete Tarslaw who wants to write a best selling novel in order to impress an ex-girlfriend who has just announced that she's getting married. By doing field research at a Barnes & Noble he concludes that his book must follow certain formulae to become a bestseller. And that in order to reach the largest possible audience his book must include "murder, secrets, mysterious missions, characters whose lives change suddenly, women who've given up on love but turn out to be beautiful...descriptions of delicious meals," and characters of "unusual racial backgrounds [who will] garner at least pretend interest from all readers." What ensues is a total send up of the publishing industry, more-serious-than-thou novelists, self-help DIYers (not a redundancy, apparently), memoirists, and even readers. It's fun, it's clever, it's tongue-in-cheek, it's snarky. It's also a paperback original from Black Cat books (part of Grove Atlantic) due in July, so it will be a great summer vacation read.

There's something else that impressed me about this book: Mark Twain was referred to throughout the book as "Mark Twain." This might not seem like a big deal, but to me it is. You see, Mark Twain is a pseudonym for Samuel Clemens and thus should never be referred to as simply Twain. Kinda like how Leonardo da Vinci should only be shortened to "Leonardo" and never to "da Vinci", but thanks to Dan Brown and his editors, millions of people will now never know the difference. Anyway, most writers and even many editors these days wouldn't catch that mistake, so I was quite pleased to see the Mark Twain thing done properly. Even if the author did use the newfangled definition of "namesake" instead of using "eponym."