I went to #bea16: Adult Author Breakfast and Buzz Panel!

My last BEA post, I promise (what? I'm still excited).

I got up early Thursday to catch the shuttle to McCormick for the Adult Author Breakfast. The food was convention-standard continental breakfast - rolls, muffins, fruit, coffee that could strip the paint off a car - but the entertainment was stellar.  After several industry awards were given out, the audience got to hear from four authors.  Host Faith Salie - whose new book Approval Junkie came out in April - warmed up the room with some jokes about things she had heard about BEA in the 1980s.  Then Colson Whitehead spoke about his upcoming book, The Underground Railroad, that I have had on my must-read-when-I-get-my-hands-on-it list since it was announced - I am fully ready to have my mind fucking blown with a genre-bending, historical novel about a black woman's dangerous journey to escape the slave-holding South via an actual underground railroad (out September 2016).  Louise Penny spoke eloquently about her development of Inspector Gamache, who was modeled on her husband, Michael - there wasn't a dry eye in the room when she related Michael's struggle with dementia, one that he is losing (A Great Reckoning is out August 30).  Sebastian Junger finished up the presentations with his book Tribe, about how we as humans seek companionship and how sometimes those who have undergone a collective bonding experience, like combat veterans, find it hard to adjust to our current society that also places emphasis on individualism (out Tuesday, May 24).

Now, this is the craziest panel I attended - the BEA Adult Editors' Buzz panel on Wednesday night.  On Jenn's advice (and previous experience), Jenn, Michelle, and I were already planning to attend and then Riverhead tweeted out that they would have matching tote bags for Brit Bennett's book at the panel.  And we knew we had to get there early (we did - we sat down front on the end near a book table).

So, books.  EVERYTHING at this panel sounds amazing.

1) Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge, out October 25, 2016.  This is a history of a single day in America - November 23, 2013 - and chronicles the lives of the ten children who were killed on that day by guns (on average, seven children per day are killed by guns).  A necessary and heartbreaking title.
2) Darktown by Thomas Mullen, out September 13, 2016.  A historical novel set in 1948 Atlanta when the police department is ordered to hire black police officers - who are not allowed to arrest a white person, drive a squad car, or set foot inside police headquarters.  When a black woman last seen with a white man turns up dead, the two black officers suspect a cover-up by white officers.  Recommended as a Walter Mosley readalike.  (I believe this is also based in historical fact regarding the police integration - or lack thereof - in Atlanta.)
3) History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund, tentatively scheduled for release in January 2017.  A fourteen-year-old girl, who lives in what is the last vestiges of a hippie commune in northern Minnesota, becomes entangled in a family's life by becoming the babysitter to their young son.  And then shit goes sideways (basically - that's not what the rep said in the pitch, but that's what happens).
4) Little Deaths by Emma Flint, out January 17, 2017.  A true crime aficionado has written a historical whodunit set in 1960s Queens based on the real-life tale of a recently divorced mom, the murder of her two children, and the media storm that ensued during the trial.  Yes, will read, thank you.
5) The Mothers by Brit Bennett, out October 11, 2016.  Look at this gorgeous cover and matching tote bag.  The Mothers is a debut novel set in a contemporary black community in Southern California and follows grief-stricken teen Nadia and what happens after she makes a fateful decision.  This is narrated by a Greek-chorus of moms and aunties, from what I've heard, and it sounds so amazing.
6) The Nix by Nathan Hill, out August 30, 2016. A big, juicy debut with political overtones about a man who finds out that his estranged mother may not be the woman he thought she was with a hidden life.  This is set in Iowa (holla!) and Hill is an Iowan as well (double holla!).

And that's it for BEA 2016!  It was great and I really hope to go again in the future.

I went to #bea16: I found some comics!

I made sure to visit "comics row" (I think that's the official term for it) - Image, Valiant, IDW, and other independent comics publishers were grouped in a row together.  Weirdly, Boom! was down on the end of a different row next to Moleskine (eh?).


I picked up some singles from Image (I had been interested in Black Science but hadn't picked it up, yet) and their "Firsts" books (which I think I'll take to the store to share once I finish reading through them).  I chatted with the Valiant rep for a bit - mostly about how much I love Faith and the upcoming trade and (squee!) ongoing series - and about some other trades.  He recommended The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage and I think I'll really like it.

When I dropped by the Boom! booth I got lucky - the creator of Goldie Vance, Hope Larson, was signing issue one of the series.  Goldie is a sixteen-year-old living with her dad at a Florida resort in the 1960s - she really wants to be a detective and so when the real resort detective has a case he can't solve Goldie steps in.  Hope says this will appeal to fans of Lumberjanes (awww, yiss) but there are 100% less lake monsters and supernatural foxes (rats).  The trade will be available in October.

And finally, I'll just leave this here.  Berkeley Breathed, y'all.  New Bloom County.  What is life, even?

I went to #bea16: Middle grade and YA books!

The hottest category of books at BEA seemed to be YA/teen fantasy and middle grade.  I didn't brave the in-booth lines for Victoria Roth, Melissa de la Cruz, Leigh Bardugo, Kendare Blake, Sabaa Tahir (which was crazy), and Tahereh Mafi (which was completely bonkers, yikes).  But I did have tickets for some signings in the autograph area (and found a few surprises).

High on my list of middle grade books coming out this fall was Raina Telgemeier's Ghosts.  I loved her memoirs Smile and Sisters and the novel Drama.  Ghosts follows a tween after her family's move to the California coast for her little sister's health (she has cystic fibrosis and the coastal air will be better for her lungs) and the possibility that her new town might be haunted.  It comes out September 13, 2016 - I paged through it briefly and the colors are just gorgeous.  (There were some super-cute #goraina totebags in the Scholastic booth later on, but I didn't manage to snag one.)



I got to meet one of my literary idols at BEA - Ann Martin.  ANN freaking MARTIN.  She of the BSC and so many other books. I almost cried on her.  Ann (I'm just going to call her Ann) was there promoting her reboot of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series that follows Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's niece, Missy Piggle-Wiggle.  So I got to tell her how much I loved the BSC, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, AND that my nickname was "Missy" until college.  My Venn diagram is basically a circle for this book. *muppet-arms* Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure will be out on September 6, 2016.  (When Ann asked if I wanted it inscribed, I just blubbered that I couldn't decide if I would like it inscribed to my nieces, who are ten, or to myself, because she's ANN MARTIN and I lurrrve her - so she just wrote "Happy Reading!" *dies*)

I used my front-of-the-line pass at the Marissa Meyer signing (which meant I got to be about number 25 in line because a lot of us saved our passes for that one). This one was important to me because not only do I love the Lunar Chronicles series, I wanted to tell her how much teens and parents at my store love her books.  The heroines of the Lunar Chronicles are all smart and strong girls - they're mechanics and farmers and hackers first and fairy-tale heroines second and everyone loves to read about them and root for them.  So much.  Marissa was signing ARCs of her new standalone, Heartless, which is a backstory for the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, and that will publish on November 8, 2016.  (Gorgeous ARC production)

I lucked into this next book.  Shannon Hale tweeted about Squirrel Girl ARCs so I pottered on over to the Disney booth to ask if they were doing a galley drop.  It turns out that's what Shannon and Dean Hale would be signing that day!  So I hopped in the line (there were about 20-25 people already there) which led to the weirdest signing line wait.  The people who got in line behind me immediately started complaining about the wait (eh? it wasn't bad or long, so I don't know who peed in their Wheaties that morning), then they started complaining they didn't know what the line was for, and then after I explained 1) who Shannon Hale was and 2) what Squirrel Girl was they said it sounded dumb and then stayed in the line.  WTF? I got busy reading American Gods on my nook before I tried to strangle them.  (Also, at the same time, there was a thriller writer at a small press hawking her book to those of us in the signing line and a self-help publisher trying to interest us in a book about conflict resolution in marriage...probably not much overlap with Squirrel Girl fans.)  But then I got to the front of the line and geeked out with Dean Hale about the issue of SG where she convinces Galactus not to eat the Earth and *high-fived* and got super-cute squirrel ears.  The Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl: Squirrel Meets World is scheduled to publish on February 7, 2017 (*sad trombone*) but it looks adorable and I can't wait to read it.

And this last one was truly a surprise - on Friday, I was taking a break to have a bit of caffeine intake and a scone and people-watch when I saw a few familiar faces heading to a little out-of-the-way table in the autograph area.  Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton and a rep with a stack of books. Eeek, I thought I had missed their signing.  So I quick gathered up my stuff and scampered on over to the table to be nosy - turns out that they were finishing their signing and had moved out of the booth area because of someone else's signing (Leigh Bardugo's?) being sort of nuts.  So I got completely lucky and got a signed copy of Tiny Pretty Things (and a pin!) and got to chat with two awesome authors that I tweet with online (spoiler: they liked my twitter handle).  The next book in their series, Shiny Broken Pieces, publishes on July 6, 2016.

Next post: comics!

I went to #bea16: Books that found me there

So one of the crazier things about BEA - that I knew in theory but was still unprepared for the magnitude - was the number of books that I hadn't heard of that either crossed my path or were shoved into my hands by reps and publicists.

Books.  They just find me, you know?

My first surprise came in the form of a Shirley Jackson biography I practically stumbled over while asking about Bolshoi Confidential at Liveright.  Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin is scheduled to come out in September 2016.  From the blurb, it seems to be more of a biography of the work and how Jackson uses domestic horror (which may be why she doesn't seem to be in the "canon" unlike Hawthorne and Poe).  I love me some Shirley Jackson, so this is going in the stack.  (Interestingly enough, Ruth Franklin wrote the forward to Penguin Classics 2013 re-release of Jackson's The Road Through the Wall.)


Another biography that found me was Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire by Julia Baird.  I happened to be wandering past the Penguin Random House booth when the galley drop happened - the rep thrust it at me with the line "This has never-before-seen information about Victoria's private life."  I have no idea how she knew I liked Victorian history - the last time we talked was during the George Saunders signing - but I was like SOLD.  This is going to be a good, juicy biography for those cold winter months.  It releases November 29, 2016.  (This better have a glossy photo insert in the finished copies.)


Another book I nearly stumbled over was Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King.  Monet painted the Water Lilies near the end of his life when his sight was failing and he had suffered personal disappointments (World War I was fast approaching, too).  They are beautiful canvases - I had seen the Monets at the Art Institute a few days before so this was clearly meant to be.  I always mean to read more art history and just never get around to it.  This will be out from Bloomsbury on September 6, 2016.  (This is also one I hope that will have a nice photo insert.)

When I stopped by the Graywolf booth on day one, Marisa told me I had to come back the next day for Belle Boggs's signing of The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood.  I had completely missed this on my galley schedule (it was there - I went back and checked and I just hadn't noticed).  I loved Bogg's writing in Orion and this is a collection/expansion on her writing about (what the subtitle says) fertility and motherhood.  Even though I'm unlikely to sprog anytime soon (for both personal and practical reasons), I am interested in the experiences of women who want children and experience heartbreak and hardship during their journey.  Also, this is Graywolf and they've never steered me wrong on a book.  This will publish on September 6, 2016.  (Boggs was putting pressed four-leaf clovers in the books as she signed them which was an unexpectedly sweet gesture during a crazy book conference.)

On Friday I went to the Book Club Speed Dating event.  This was really cool - you got assigned a table and publicists went around and rapid-fire pitched books that would be good for book clubs.  I picked up several things (mysteries/thrillers) I thought might work for the book club at the store but what really caught my eye were the books from Other Press.  The two reps there - Mona (she of the French accent) and Christie [Edit: Other Press got me her name - I'm so sorry I didn't get your card!] - just sold the heck out of their three books.  The first one, Among the Living by Jonathan Rabb, they unfortunately didn't have any spare copies to give out but it does sound interesting (a Holocaust survivor joins the established Jewish community in Savannah, GA, in the 1940s and attempts to make a "normal" life) - out October 4, 2016.  Then they pitched the novel The Honeymoon by Dinitia Smith.  This is out now (May 3) so you can pick this up immediately.  Smith chose for her topic George Eliot's late-life marriage to John Walter Cross in 1880, who was twenty years her junior (Eliot lived with George Henry Lewes, but they were never able to marry, until his death in 1878).  Smith set her novel during the honeymoon Eliot and Cross took in Venice and examines Eliot's thoughts about aging and grief.  This might as well have "MELISSA'S WHEELHOUSE" stamped on the cover.

And then Mona pitched Constellation by Adrien Bosc (translated by Willard Wood).  This is a historical novel about the famous 1949 crash of the maiden voyage of the Constellation airplane (among the thirty-eight passengers was Edith Piaf's lover, the boxer Marcel Cerdan).  Bosc tries to piece together why the plane crashed (could it have been avoided?) and the lives of all its passengers.  I almost crawled over the table to rip it out of her hands.  My father was a systems engineer with Rockwell so I grew up hearing about engineering and aviation history + debut novel + novel in translation = I need it in my eyeballs now.  WHEELHOUSE.  This also won the Grand Prix du roman de l’academie francaise.  (I was prepared to throw elbows for this one.)  Constellation released on May 10, so if you are into this you can get it immediately.

Now, this next one I wasn't able to get at BEA.  They didn't have galleys available but I got on the galley list with the publisher.  I was walking past the Norton booth when I did a one-eighty and made a beeline to a poster.  They have a book about Zika virus coming out in July.  My epidemiology senses were tingling.  Yes, yes, yes I will read a book about this - it's by Donald McNeil so I'm thinking it will have good reporting.  Norton also put out one of my favorites in the genre - Spillover by David Quammen (the Norton rep and I geeked out over it) - so I have high hopes.



Those were my surprise book finds at BEA (the adult ones anyway, I'll have one when I do the kids' books).  I was talking with Michelle and Jenn about things we were surprised we didn't find and Michelle mentioned a lack of science fiction.  I have to agree.  We saw a lot of fantasy (particularly for the YA audience) but we didn't see a lot of hard-core SF.  There was the new Cronin zombie book and Blake Crouch's book but nothing like Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch or a William Gibson or an Andy Weir.  Maybe we missed it?

I went to #bea16: Books on my radar (adults)

Before driving off to Chicago for a week of books and more books, I knew that I would have to plan out what books I wanted to look for.

I hadn't the foggiest idea how to go about that.  Edelweiss still had (has) a tab for "BEA 2015" so that went nowhere.  An article listed out the top ten galleys at BEA, but I knew there were more than ten galleys in the whole of the show (come on, I've seen the haul videos).  Conveniently, roommate Jenn came to the rescue with a link to the Library Journal Galley and Signing Guide.  I was at least able to make a schedule of where I needed to be when if there was something I was looking for.

At the very top of my list was Bolshoi Confidential by Simon Morrison, out from Liveright (Norton) in October 2016.  For some reason I thought this was a novel initially but heck no, it's an exposé of the Russian ballet company the Bolshoi culminating in the 2011 acid attack on the artistic director.  Of course I have to read this.  It was the first galley I picked up (I got caught in a scrum at the junction of the Hachette and Scholastic booths immediately after the exhibit hall opened on Wednesday so after extracting myself I headed for the relatively calmer waters of the literary presses).  When "balletbookworm" is on your business cards, no one can argue with that.



Along the same lines, I stopped by Overlook Press to pick up Florence Foster Jenkins: The Life of the World's Worst Opera Singer by Darryl W. Bullock, out June 7, 2016.  My voice teacher used to bring up how popular Florence Foster Jenkins was as a singer even though she was a dreadful because she was an entertainer.  This book sounds so fascinating - a batty socialite who bankrolls her own opera career which is a critical bomb but plays to packed houses?  Yes, please.  There is apparently a competing title about Florence coming out a bit later that's the tie-in for a movie adaptation starring Meryl Streep (say what?) but this is the book I was looking for.



Graywolf Press is high on my list of publishers who consistently put out amazing fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.  Eula Biss's On Immunity, Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass.  Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy, out September 6, 2016, is going to be their next big hit, in my opinion.  It was longlisted for the Booker last year and won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.  The novel concerns a trip taken by three elderly women to a religious seaside town and their interactions with a young documentary filmmaker, Nomi.  The action takes place over five days and I've recently been interested in novels that have compressed timelines.



When Eimear McBride's novel A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing won the Bailey's Prize in 2014 I immediately hopped on the library online catalog I placed it on hold.  It was such a mind-bending book, with an interesting change in the voice as the narrator grew from infant to young woman.  Crown had galleys of her next book, The Lesser Bohemians, out September 2016, available on Friday.  Oh, I can't wait to read it and the rep said this voice is just as good - this one is a coming of age novel that follows a young Irish woman who arrives in mid-1990s London for drama school and falls for an older actor.  I have high hopes for this.




Yes, I couldn't pass up Alan Moore's Jerusalem.  This enormous, 1200-page behemoth will be out September 2016 - Liveright is publishing it as both a hardcover and a three-volume paperback set with slipcase (like 2666 and Skippy Dies) so readers can pick their poison.  If you fall asleep reading often, I wouldn't pick the hardcover.  Clearly, this isn't the final cover art.  It looks completely batshit insane and the back cover is mostly a picture of Moore's face which was on a giant banner by the escalators, too.  Getting this galley was made all the more fun in that the Norton people told me I had to promise to wear a button to get the galley - the button had a "happy penis" on it, which is clearly appropriate to the book but not much of a challenge, in my opinion (I just can't put it on my lanyard at the store, drat).  My response - hand 'em over, the book and the button both.


Last, but certainly not least, I braved one in-booth signing line at the Penguin Random House booth to get a galley of George Saunders's first-ever novel, Lincoln in the Bardo.  It comes out February 14, 2017 (2017!!!!) and I've already started reading it.  It's so, so, so good, beautiful structure and interesting concept.  Essentially, the story concerns the night after the internment of Willie Lincoln (who died of typhoid during Lincoln's presidency) and is told through a combination of quotes from historical sources and a conversation-like narrative from the spirits that inhabit the graveyard.  It is amazing.


And I'm so stoked that I stood in line and got it signed (I had a conversation with Saunders - he asked where my town was and I said near Iowa City and he said he ate at Pagliai's on the way through IC while helping his daughter move to California, eeeee!).  Once I finish reading it, it's never leaving my house again.   Ok, but seriously, mark your calendars for February 14, 2017.  You will want to read this.  (This was also that signing where people were going up to the rep opening the books for Saunders and asking if they could just have one and getting real snotty about things like tickets and waiting in line.)

And that's my highlights for adult galleys I was planning to look out for at BEA 2016.  I'll have surprises, kids/teens highlights, and more to come.

I went to #bea16: Tales from a newbie

After years of seeing pictures and hearing stories about Book Expo America - the big industry trade show for publishing - I decided that I should try to go in 2016.  It would be moving back to Chicago for the first time in something like ten years meaning I could easily drive there.  So I'd just have to find a hotel and pony up the greenbacks for registration.

So I did.  Conveniently, Jenn of Jenn's Bookshelves and Michelle of That's What She Read had room for a tribute volunteer to crash on the hide-a-bed in their room.  So that's the hotel sorted.  And I used a Christmas gift to register for BEA.  My registration came out to over $300 because not only did I get the three-day pass but registered for BloggerCon (a same-site concurrent event for book bloggers) and the Adult Author Breakfast and ten ticketed signings (go big or go home, right?).  I passed on BookCon, that was going to be too many people in the convention center for my taste.

I had so much fun.  We wound up miscalculating on days and got an extra day in Chicago on Tuesday so we went to the Art Institute (I snagged some more prints for my rotating gallery).  We got real Chicago-style pizza.  We went to a party hosted by a literary agency at the Arts Building - in a beautiful interior courtyard - and another the next night at 360 Chicago at the top of the John Hancock Building hosted by Sourcebooks (that was wild).  And then we got to take the scenic route from McCormick Place to O'Hare because the freeway was completely backed up due to an accident - we got to see a part of south Chicago I'd never been in before, I'll say that much.

I bet you're still reading to hear about the books, right?  Well, I think for this post I'll stick primarily to what I saw or did at BEA.  I'll do another post highlighting books I'd been looking for at BEA and another about surprise books I hadn't expected to find.  Otherwise, this post is going to be hella long.

First off, I got to see so many of my favorite people who I only ever talk to online!  Meeting my roomies Jenn and Michelle only confirmed how awesome and lovely they are.  I kept (conveniently, because it was such a treat) running into Liberty who is always a sweetheart and also Rachel Manwill who got a tattoo at BEA (ok, not at BEA, she went to a tattoo artist elsewhere, but still, pretty rad).  I also got to chat with Rebecca, Amanda, Jeff, Yan, Clint, Jenn, Jessica, Kim, and Cassandra from my most favorite of bookternet sites, Book Riot - usually when we were all running from one place to another, of course, but I plan on seeing them all again at Book Riot Live.  I got to meet Candace (Beth Fish Reads) FINALLY! I ran across Kevin Smokler and I'm so excited for his new book, Brat Pack America, out this fall.  I finally got to meet Nathan Dunbar, who is quite a bit taller than I expected and that helped when we were tweeting in order to locate each other (congrats on the new gig), and Eric Smith, who was wearing his hat which helped me recognize him (because he didn't have a corgi on his person and that would have been weird but adorable).  And I finally, at the very end of the show, found the booksellers from Prairie Lights (my local indie), who I knew were there but hadn't come across them - I found them in the signing line for Berkeley Breathed at the Image booth because of course all the Iowa booksellers will all be there.

Second, I got to meet so many of the publicists and marketing staff that I email and tweet with about books and advance buzz and galleys.  This was really worth the price of the registration.  Getting to meet the Graywolf staff in person (Hi, Marisa!), seeing Pam Jafee from HarperCollins/Avon/whatever publisher hat she happens to be wearing at the time, meeting the Liveright people at Norton, and making friends with Mona from Other Press (and does she has a yummy French accent) - that was so, so awesome.  I sat down with the rep from Chooseco to talk about how much the kids at my store love Choose-Your-Own Adventure books.  I even managed to track down the elusive Erika Barmash - "elusive" because she had done a few huge events with Bloomsbury that week and I got lucky in that I finally wandered by the booth when she wasn't mobbed.

For my part, I should have made a Bloggess-style cutout of my Twitter avatar on a stick.  No one knows what I look like but they sure know who my cats are, particularly the stripy one napping on my knitting.

So that's the people I know...and there were A LOT of people in McCormick for BEA.  I was hearing from BEA alumni that there were fewer people present this year but that there was more space at McCormick than Javits in New York City.  This is insane to me!  There were so many people at this thing and then you stuff more of them (and more publisher/exhibitor booths since there were fewer of them this year, too) into a smaller space that is not as new...yikes!  If I go to BEA at Javits in NYC (and I'd like to, if only just to see what that's like) I'll definitely have to pack the hand sanitizer.  Eek!

I managed to catch a few panels.  I'll go into the Adult Author Breakfast and BEA Adult Editors' Buzz panels in a later post but suffice to say they had fantastic selections.  The What's New In YA? Panel was a gem - Lauren Oliver, Allyson Noel, Kendare Blake, and Melissa de la Cruz moderated by Veronica Roth.  Absolutely a scream and Kendare Blake's new book, Three Dark Crowns, sounds completely amazeballs.

I got pitched a variety of random books by authors, both on the fly and while stuck in a signing line.  A very nice lady caught Nathan and me and asked about getting her STEM book published (I wish her luck, she's got a lot of enthusiasm and STEM is big right now).  An odd person cornered me and kept trying figure out what kind of books I sold then walked off when I told him which bookstore I worked for (um, ok?).  I wound up with a postcard for some completely cracked-out sounding book about [insert slur here] shamans talking to a white lady in the desert (it's "true", apparently) - that wound up in the hotel garbage.  People will just walk down signing lines and pitch their book to anyone who can't get away.  You do you, but I would think that perhaps for the money one spends to get a pass to BEA one might be a tad more professional?  It just strikes me as odd.

The one thing that I was seemingly not prepared for, even though I'd heard stories, was how unbelievably rude attendees were to the reps and publishing staff.  I always tried to lead with a handshake, introduce myself, and then my twitter handle/blog (see above for why), and then ask politely after whatever galley or information I was trying to find.  I was registered as a bookseller so I always tried to be professional.  But the number of times I saw people try to take things that were marked "For Display Only" or "Do Not Take" or grabbed entire stacks of the same book or (and this was my favorite) tried to tell a rep in the middle of an author signing that they should just be able to "get" a galley without waiting in line....wow.  It wasn't even one type of attendee - I saw booksellers, bloggers, people with press passes, authors all doing it.  At the speed-dating event I attended (which was a pretty cool event), a woman at my table interrupted every rep during their pitch to ask how she could get free books from them.  Holy cow, so rude.  And I'll admit my eyes got a bit bigger than my brain and I grabbed stuff in passing but only if it was set out as an obvious galley drop.  (Ok, fine, I did beeline it to the galley table at the BEA Adult Editors' Buzz panel - I'll get to that in a subsequent post - but I only snagged one copy of each.)  Teen/YA Fantasy galley drops and in-booth signings were particularly insane.  I thought I was going to get murdered by a few YA bloggers because I was trying to get past the Bloomsbury booth during the run-up to the Sarah J. Maas cover reveal and all I wanted was to get to the Graywolf booth.  Yikes!  I had been hoping to snag a few titles for our kids' leads at the store but nope.

Overall, though, I had such a great time at BEA.  Most of it was exactly as I expected - which was a big, crazy industry show.  I definitely want to go again.  Unfortunately, not BloggerCon, which was a bust for me - not my blogging tribe.  But a repeat BEA trip is definitely in my future!

(And "First BEA Hoarding Compulsion" should be in the DSM-V - I took a picture of everything I came home with unpacked onto the couch and it's never going on the Internet because it makes me look completely insane.)

The World Between Two Covers by Ann Morgan

Summary from Goodreads:
A beguiling exploration of the joys of reading across boundaries, inspired by the author's year-long journey through a book from every country.

Following an impulse to read more internationally, journalist Ann Morgan undertook first to define "the world" and then to find a story from each of 196 nations. Tireless in her quest and assisted by generous, far-flung strangers, Morgan discovered not only a treasury of world literature but also the keys to unlock it. Whether considering the difficulties faced by writers in developing nations, movingly illustrated by Burundian Marie-Thérese Toyi's Weep Not, Refugee; tracing the use of local myths in the fantastically successful Samoan YA series Telesa; delving into questions of censorship and propaganda while sourcing a title from North Korea; or simply getting hold of The Corsair, the first Qatari novel to be translated into English, Morgan illuminates with wit, warmth, and insight how stories are written the world over and how place-geographical, historical, virtual-shapes the books we read and write.

Some time in late-2012 I stumbled across a blog titled A Year of Reading the World.  This very nice lady, Ann Morgan, was apparently wrapping up a year-long blog project wherein she read a book from every country in the world.  Plus a territory chosen by poll from her readers.  197 books in all.

197 books, one from each country.  Translated into English.  (2012, for me, was the year I read 192 books, mostly romance novels because my mother was undergoing treatment for cancer and I couldn't handle much else.  So Ann's project caught me attention simply for her level of ambition - I have blog projects, but I am absolutely the worst at reading to list or schedule or timetable.)  As 2013 rolled in, I backed up to the beginning of Ann's blog and read it all from the beginning.  Not only did she find some really interesting books to read she also had a fair amount of trouble getting books to read from more countries than I would have guessed.  Ann's experience led me to check and see how much in-translation work I read....which, like my percentage of POC authors, was pretty terrible.  And then Ann announced she'd been offered a book deal based on her blog....

https://www.tumblr.com/search/Kermit-flail#

(Full disclosure: once I found out that Norton's Liveright imprint was going to publish the US edition I begged a galley off them.  I have no regrets.)

The US title of Ann's book is The World Between Two Covers and if you thought it was going to be a potted, bound version of the blog you're going to be disappointed.  What the book turned out to be is a very well-written examination of why the Anglophone (specifically UK via Ann's experience and US by extension) reading population and publishing arm reads little world literature, particularly in translation.  At best estimate approximately only 3% of non-Anglophone world literature is translated and published in English.  Only 3%.  That's terrible.

Ann touched briefly on many translation or publication issues on her blog but the book allows her to expand her topics in a very accessibly way.  There are a number of roadblocks one encounters when trying to find and read literature by authors (and, by extension, purchase legally) from, say, Burkina Faso or Nepal or Kuwait or Monaco or Lichtenstein.  New countries may not have a strong press or literature tradition (or even a written tradition as we define it in Western literature, as Ann found with some island nations).  Some authors turn increasingly to the ebook self-publishing industry for publication and access to readers, some are fleetingly available through small specialty presses. A huge list of books to read can be derived from Ann's work both in the actual 197 books she read in 2012 and the books she references in mulling over her experience.  The World Between Two Covers will make you think and grow your TBR list by leaps and bounds - which is exactly what happened to me.  You can also watch me natter on about this in two videos - I talk about the book and then about some recommendations for literature in translation.

And I made a display at the store because, ugh, so much good stuff to read.

Other things booksellers do: find a book they like so much (@ayearofreadingtheworld 's WORLD BETWEEN TWO COVERS) that they make a whole display based on it of international literature

A photo posted by Melissa W. (@balletbookworm) on Apr 23, 2015 at 7:47pm PDT

Recommendation: buy this sucker and read the heck out of it, pen in hand.

Dear FTC: I requested an ARC from the publisher, nearly read the cover off, and had to buy a nice, clean copy for my shelf.

Classic Nasty: More Naughty Bits: A Rollicking Guide to Hot Sex in Great Books, from the Iliad to the Corrections

Summary from Goodreads:
Jack Murnighan, former editor in chief of the erotica website Nerve.com, is back with a new collection of the steamiest sex scenes from the greatest books of all time. Here is the literary sex-education readers have always lusted for, with over 80 excerpts by authors ranging from Homer to James Baldwin, Kierkegaard to Judy Blume, Scheherazade to Franzen. Who knew there was so much bumping and grinding in Goethe? How about Dali's fascination with masturbation? Ever curious about what made James Joyce purr? Murnighan supplements each bite-sized excerpt with a lively, insightful introduction that will help readers see the world's great books as they've never seen them before.

It took me a bit but I finally tracked down a copy of the next Naughty Bits collection from Jack Murnighan's Nerve.com column (it's no longer available to order through usual channels, had to resort to a used search).

No surprises here, since it's basically volume two, and I enjoyed the range of literature Murnighan included.  The Native American Trickster myth.  St. Augustine's plea that he be made continent...but not yet.  Restoration poetry.  Pushkin.  A Confederacy of Dunces (ok, not that enjoyable for me since I really don't get why people go gaga over that book).  John Fowles.  Peter Abelard (yes, that Abelard).  Tess of the D'Urbervilles.  Rita Mae Brown.  Lots of room for many different tastes among Murnighan's columns.

And, yes, I found more things for the TBR list.

The Naughty Bits: The Steamiest and Most Scandalous Sex Scenes from the World's Great Books

Summary from Goodreads:
The literary education you've always lusted for.

Fresh from the virtual pages of Nerve.com comes this collection of "naughty bits," an irreverent look into the steamy, scandalous side of literature past and present. With bite-sized salacious excerpts from the classics -- new and old -- each with a fresh, insightful introduction, The Naughty Bits presents the world's great books as you never thought you'd see them.

Jack Murnighan is really good at creating lists of books to read.  And very good at making these books sound fun.  He came up on my radar with the publication of Beowlf on the Beach and I recently obtained a copy of The Naughty Bits so I could put together another "beach reading" endcap with a different flavor than the list called for in the master list for the store.

The Naughty Bits is a collection of Nerve columns and very much an overview of what Murnighan considers the "sexiest" scene from books ranging from Dante and the Old Testament to Kenzaburo Oe and Toni Morrison.  As we all know, not all of us find the exact same things "sexy" so there were a few selections where I just didn't get it but.  I really enjoyed the range and breadth of pieces Murnighan covered. I found a lot of books to add to the TBR (how did I never know about Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch before now?). The best parts of all these "bits" are his introductory commentaries. Great fun to read.  I didn't like some of the language "modernizations" though, but that's just me.

Rumor has it that there's a second collection of columns titled Classic Nasty - unfortunately no longer available new so I'll have to check a few used outlets.

Happy Birthday, Georgette Heyer! (why, yes, Sourcebooks has a sale)

In honor of Georgette Heyer's 110th birthday Sourcebooks is offering fifty-two Heyer ebooks (and the companion volume, Georgette Heyer's Regency World) for $2.99 - 8/14 - 8/20 (Heyer's actual birthday is the16th)!  Heyer is considered the creator of the Regency Romance as we know it today (I recommend the Avon/Taverner series that runs These Old Shades, Devil's Cub, Regency Buck, and ending with the well-researched An Infamous Army).

Historical romance:
April Lady
Arabella
Bath Tangle
Beauvallet
The Black Moth
Black Sheep
Charity Girl
A Civil Contract
Convenient Marriage
The Corinthian
Cotillion
Cousin Kate
Devil's Cub
False Colours
Faro's Daughter
The Foundling
Frederica
Friday's Child
The Grand Sophy
Lady of Quality
The Masqueraders
The Nonesuch
Pistols for Two
Powder and Patch
The Quiet Gentleman
Regency Buck
The Reluctant Widow
Sprig Muslin
Sylvester (or, the Wicked Uncle)
The Talisman Ring
These Old Shades
The Toll-Gate
The Unknown Ajax
Venetia

Historical Fiction:
The Conqueror
An Infamous Army
My Lord John
Royal Escape
Simon the Coldheart
Spanish Bride

Mystery:
Behold, Here's Poison
A Blunt Instrument
Death in the Stocks
Detection Unlimited
Duplicate Death
Envious Casca
Footsteps in the Dark
No Wind of Blame
Penhallow
They Found Him Dead
Unfinished Clue
Why Shoot a Butler?

(Let's just say that I maybe bought too many all at once....)


Sourcebooks is the place for goodies on JA's birthday!

In honor of Jane Austen's birthday (December 16) Sourcebooks is offering the ebook editions of Darcy-inspired fiction for $1.99! 

There's a "Darcy for everyone":

Darcy and Fitzwilliam
A Darcy Christmas
The Darcys and the Bingleys
Darcy's Voyage
Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star
The Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice
Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy
Mr. Darcy Goes Overboard
Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife
Mr. Darcy, Vampyre
The Pemberley Chronicles
Pemberley Ranch
Searching for Pemberley
The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy

I picked up Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star, The Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice, Searching for Pemberley, and Weekend with Mr. Darcy (not listed on the Sourcebooks page but found for $1.99 when I ran "sourcebooks+darcy" into the B&N search engine).  I find that I enjoy the Austen-inspired stuff more when they use the works for inspriation as opposed to writing "sequels" or "variations" with the original characters and settings.

The special pricing runs through December 30 so get 'em while they're hot!

(I also picked up Penguin's Holiday eSampler for free...just in case you're looking for more holiday deals.)

Romance Benders

Lit snob confession:  I used to read romance novels a lot.  I used to sneak them from my mom's room and read all the naughty bits.  Then I read the Anne Rice Beauty trilogy (yeah, yeah, I know, the non-vampire stuff is erotica, technically, but someone thoughtfully misshelved them with some romance novels at the library) and that just about put me off my feed (also, I was about fifteen...if you haven't figured out "vanilla" yet the "banana split with whipped cream, sprinkles, and nuts" will make your hair stand on end).  So extended break from romance novels.  I was also tired of recycled plotlines.  I did get the brilliant idea to name one of my cats "Chaucer" from a romance novel (The Wedding by Jo Beverly, I think) so not entirely a bad thing.

My sister-in-law turned me onto Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series a while ago.  They are fun books to read - Regency-era flowery-named spies causing trouble for Fouche and Delaroche while protecting England from French invasions framed by the modern story of an American grad student in England trying to write her dissertation about the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Purple Gentian, and the Pink Carnation.  They are deliciously funny, Regency romance-type novels that borrow on some Austen themes (Letty's family in The Deception of the Emerald Ring is an obvious borrowing of the Bennetts from Pride and Prejudice that works well in that plot) and combine them with cheeky espionage plots.

This year, having partially OD'd on fantasy novels again (thank to GRRM) and partially fried my attention span by writing a book, I have come back around to romance novels.  Simple plots.  Mostly happy endings.  Bad guys get punished (after 4000 pages of Lannisters getting away with just about everything I needed some punished villains, let me tell you).  Poor fried brain doesn't have to think.  Additionally, I can read a 300 page romance novel in about two hours - a good thing when I'm twenty books in the hole on my goal to read 100 books this year.

Back in July, my attention was caught by The Bargain by Mary Jo Putney.  Has a good meet-cute: she needs to marry by age 25 to get her inheritance money (stupid clause in father's will), he is dying from a wound received in the Napoleonic wars.  He'll marry her, she will provide an income for his sister who's scraping along as a governess.  Good bargain, right?  Well, enter one outraged sister, a pioneering surgeon, a twist of fate...you get the picture.  It had what felt like a really rushed ending - makeup sex and an annoying epilogue.

So, ok, that was fun, right?  At the end of August I picked up The Secret Desires of a Governess by Tiffany Clare.  The governess was a fun character to root for and the book had a really nice Gothic quality to the backstory and mystery.  However, the sex scenes between hero and heroine - while crazyhotandsteamy and not completely out of place for a modern setting - felt really forced in the mid-nineteenth century setting.  A few plotholes, too.  Sort of meh.

The next month, while receiving at the bookstore, I came across Devil of the Highlands by Lynsay Sands.  Evil stepmom betrothes sweet stepdaughter to a Scot known to be horrible, cruel, and a "devil".  Turns out the Devil (Cullen) is not bad looking and quite a considerate guy.  Seems to be mostly misunderstood.  Ok, I'll bite.  Not withstanding a re-donk-ulous meet-cute (Evelinde falls in the stream, getting banged-up in the process, tries to dry her dress by holding it over her head while riding horseback, and causes an accident with Cullen) and an extended English-girl-has-no-idea-what-is-up-with-Scots-culture scene (which is actually pretty funny, leading to a crazy someone-took-four-muscle-relaxers-type scene almost straight out of Sixteen Candles) I really liked this one.  It has a really nice little mystery to solve and is also quite funny in places.  Fun to read.

Ok, liked the historical setting, a little humor is good.  I tried out The Black Lyon by Jude Devereaux next.  I found an ancient copy while browsing at the library (the new mass market edition is much prettier) - it's about the same time period as the Sands so I figured I'd give it a shot.  While decently researched as to time period (a good book for setting, clothes, what happens at a tournament, etc.) I really didn't like the hero and heroine.  He was beyond too jealous and controlling and she was way too insecure.  Also, I didn't find this one very funny, actually pretty depressing at times.

So, that Lynsay Sands...writes a pretty good book.  Conveniently, I had put The Deed on my book clubs endcap for September (the Romantic Reads group was reading the KISS and TEAL Avon books to help raise money for ovarian cancer research) and I read a little on break one day.  The Prologue and first chapter cracked me up - poor Lady Emmalene has to petition King Richard to force her husband to bed her...and then the bugger up and dies before he can return home to do "the deed" so the King marries her to a loyal knight to both protect her from evil relatives and reward the man for saving his life.  So I fired up the nook for a purchase.  Emma is a really endearing little character - stubborn, bossy, funny, and resourceful.  Amaury isn't so bad either.  I really liked this one - even re-read it during the readathon when I had mush-brain and was too lazy to get out of bed.

I continued with my Lynsay Sands run.  The Perfect Wife is interesting in that it plays on the very modern (and very old) problem of women thinking they need to look a certain way or be a certain size to be loved by men.  Avelyn is a full-figured heroine and it's nice to see her evolve to accept herself over the course of the book.  The mystery plot got a little odd in places but the book had a good cast of characters (Lord and Lady Gerville were pretty funny at times).  Taming the Highland Bride picked up where Devil of the Highlands left off with Evelinde's brother, Alexander, marrying his betrothed, Merry Stewart, thus introducing us to her drunken family.  This one felt a little more sinister - particularly with a certain character we met in the first book and you know it isn't going to turn out well - but still a fun read.  Merry is a great character and we got to visit Evie and Cullen again.  The Hellion and the Highlander jumps to Merry's eldest brother, Kade, who has just recently returned from imprisonment in the Crusades, and his marriage to Averill (who, according to English standards, will be trouble because of her bright red hair, small strawberry birthmark, and nervous stutter but Kade's Scot sensibilities think she's wonderful).  Kade has his work cut out for him in turning the Stewart men around and Averill is a very capable heroine to match him.  They also have a very sweet relationship, defintely one that makes you go "awwwww".  Sands has a lot of room to write more books in this series if she wanted because there are a load of single side-characters she could use (Ian, Will, Tralin, Tavis, etc.) so here's hoping.  The last two titles are sort-of misnomers - Merry doesn't need taming and Averill isn't a hellion.

I think I'll continue reading romance novels here and there.  I get them on my nook - I think the mass market size was a considerable turn off and the nook lets me make the print larger/size of book easier to handle.  I don't think I'll be expanding to paranormal romances (having supernatural vampires/were-whatevers/angels/demons/dragons that turn into hotties in my fiction has never been a huge draw for me) or western-themed or contemporary romances but I enjoy the historicals (so far, and as long as the anachronisms don't get too crazy).  I also really enjoy Sands's writing so I'll read more of her historicals (I've get a bit hooked on her style) then maybe look into some others.  We'll see.  Keeping myself entertained is the point.

A Jane Austen Education

I never had to read a Jane Austen for school.  At least, not on the first read.  My grandmother gave me an Illustrated Classics edition of Pride and Prejudice when I was eight or nine.  Yes, I read it.  I didn't quite "get it" but I liked the story.  I read an unabridged edition in junior high and fell in love with Jane Austen.  I read Persuasion and fell head-over-heels for Captain Weentworth (that letter can still make me feel like melting through the floorboards).  I read Emma and, yes, I agreed with the Mighty Austen that Emma was a character that really only she would love (I just wanted to slap Miss Woodhouse for being such a snot).  Marianne is bonkers (dudes, if the guy is too good to be true he probably is) but Elinor needs to lighten up.  Fanny is sweet; a door-mat to her evil Aunt Norris but sweet.  Catherine is a loveable book-geek and who hasn't let her imagination run away with her?

William Deresiewicz didn't read an Austen novel until he was in his second year of grad school at the age of twenty-six.  He was a modernist, a reader of Faulkner, Nabokov, Mailer, Kerouac (also, he admits he was a tool, an inconsiderate immature one at that).  Long, preachy nineteenth-century British novels were not high on his reading list.  Boooring.  But then, he had to read Emma in a course on the novel.  At first he didn't like it - boring, nothing happens, Emma's neighbors are all nitwits, her father, too - although he did like Emma herself because she was a big fish in the little pond of Highbury, looking down on her inferiors.  But then...he started to notice that the focus of the novel was on the "minute particulars" of everyday life, that to avoid looking at the little things was to let your life pass you by and that looking at those little things meant your life had weight, that your acquainances meant something to you. 

Deresiewicz started applying Austen's observations to his life: Emma is about appreciating the little things, Pride and Prejudice about learning to be an adult (he provides the best short-hand description of Darcy ever: "haughty as a Siamese cat, practically licking himself clean whenever someone touched him the wrong way"), Northanger Abbey the habit of learning, Mansfield Park learning to be useful to others (the chapter subtitle "being good" is a bit of a misnomer), Persuasion how to be a good friend (he doesn't even touch on the Anne-Frederick romance...not even the letter), and Sense and Sensibility how to love.  Along the way, Deresiewicz brings in letters from Austen and her family to illuminate some of her lessons.  It's a little bit of literary criticism and a little bit of memoir and a lot of JA love all rolled into one.

Deresciewicz and I come at the novels from two different places but we both learned the same things (well, OK, I'm still learning).  We both learned to appreciate people, to avoid emotional drains, to avoid jumping to conclusions, to shut up and listen, to give people the benefit of the doubt, and to trust (I have trouble with the trust thing).  It's the benefit of A Jane Austen Education.

INCIDENTAL COMICS: Confessions of a Book Fiend

This. Is. Awesome.  Grant Snider has created a hysterical comic about book fiends.  It's so true.  Click through to see the comic - if you're a book blogger you will agree with the conclusion whole-heartedly.

As a bonus, Grant has posters of his comics available.  Methinks I will have to invest in one after I sort out my current moving/real estate messiness (no end in sight right now).

The Satanic Verses

I started reading Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses last September for BiblioBrat's Banned Books Challenge.  I started reading during the last week of the challenge, which was busy, busy, busy on its own, so I only got about 150 pages read before October took over and The Satanic Verses wound up at the bottom of the reading pile.  Now that September has returned, bringing with it Banned Books Week and the news that some crazy people want to burn Korans to punish Islamic fundamentalists (< sarcasm > because that's totally going to show them < / sarcasm >), it was appropriate for me to fish The Satanic Verses back out of the pile and finish it off.

Rushdie fully expects the reader to suspend belief right from the last line of the first paragraph:

Just before dawn one winter's morning, New Year's Day, or thereabouts, two real, full-grown, living men fell from a great height, twenty-nine thousand and two feet, towards the English Channel, without benefit of parachutes or wings, out of a clear sky. (p 3)

Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha are the miraculous sole survivors of an act of terrorism and wash up on the beach of England.  Each begins to display characteristics representative of an otherworldly being - one displays a halo, the other a pair of horns - setting off a story of acceptance and forgiveness interspersed with commentary on tolerance, faith/doubt, megalomania, and identity.  Gibreel and Saladin form the frame narrative as we learn each man's history and as they try to piece their lives back together in the wonderfully titled section "Ellowen Deeowen".  Gibreel (as the incarnation of the archangel Gibreel) develops visions of the prophet Mahound at the time of his revelations in Jalilia (an interpretation of the life of Muhammed in Mecca) as well as those of a modern Indian peasant girl, Ayesha, who moves an entire village to walk to Mecca - through the Arabian Sea - based on the belief in her revelations from the archangel.

There are many character and narrative threads in The Satanic Verses and they don't all start to come together until late in the novel.  This is a novel to be savored and pondered with wonderfully evocative imagery.  There are also many "doubles" in this novel - two Hinds, two Mishals, two or three Ayeshas (depending on how you count), Gibreel himself and Gibreel the archangel, and a Salman (who might mirror the author depending on how you look at it) - so you must also read The Satanic Verses closely.

This is a controversial novel, there is no getting around that.  When the prophet Mahound issues a proclamation from the archangel that women are to be sequestered, a madam comes up with the idea to have her twelve girls take on the personalities of Mahound's twelve wives; the brothel receives a boost in business from the scheme but the brothel is eventually shut down and the prostitutes and collaborators are executed.  Because the novel uses the life of Muhammed as a basis, the idea that prostitutes are imitating the Prophet's wives can be offensive to some.  Do you want to know what I think?  Those people don't have to read The Satanic Verses, same as people who don't like to see novels about the life of Jesus Christ that depict him doing un-Christlike things don't have to read those.  A novel isn't real, just like any historical novel using the Tudors as basis isn't any more real just because it uses King Henry VIII as a main character.  Some events will be made up for storytelling purposes.  No one is forcing you to read it.

The novel also brings the issue of faith and doubt to the fore with the visions of Mahound and Ayesha the peasant.  How is someone believable when he or she claims to be the mouth of the archangel and brings revelations from God?  What do you do when the prophet suddenly retracts a previous statement, claiming it came from an "evil" source?  This is the controversy over the so-called Satanic Verses, a sura attributed to Muhammed that affirmed prayer to three old female polytheistic deities from the regions around Mecca but later retracted as the work of Shaitan (the devil).  Since the archangel only reveals information to a prophet, never to anyone else, how do we know if the revealments are the actual Will of God?  It requires faith, same as the village that follows Ayesha the peasant on a pilgrimage to Mecca, on foot, through the Arabian Sea; Ayesha affirms that the sea will part for them and the faithful will walk across the seabed; there are believers and there are doubters.  Like Doubting Thomas of the New Testament, does one need proof of the Divine to make the leap of faith?

The Satanic Verses is much more than just a book that pushes buttons for the sake of pushing buttons.  If those buttons set you off, then perhaps you ought not to read this book.  If you do read, look beyond those hot-buttons for the journey of Gibreel and Saladin; it's a crazy ride and, ultimately, a very satisfying one.