The Written Nerd

Sorry about the lack of post on Friday -- the day got crazy, as is likely to happen more often as the wedding date (June 30!) approaches. I'll give a shot at recapping my BEA, with some extra linkage for fun. Wednesday Joined the rest of my fellow booksellers at the Brooklyn Marriott for a celebration of Brooklyn . Saw my old boss and mentor Toby of Three Lives and other familiar faces. And David McCullough's opening address -- man can that guy write. The author of 1776 and The Great Bridge expounded upon his own writing career, the Battle of Brooklyn, and the moment he knew he wanted to write about the Brooklyn Bridge. His previous book about the Johnstown Flood had been about the worst of humanity ("just because people are in positions of responsibility doesn't mean they're acting responsibly" he observed, presciently), and he wanted to write about the opposite, a great effort of idealism and civilization that succeeded. The bridge, he postulates, is such ...

You'll get the narrative rundown later, along with all the valuable things I learned and people I met, but everyone knows the pictures are the fun part, right? I feel the story of my BEA will be clear from these photos: i.e., I burned out early. Stressing out over the EL party on Wednesday, the LBC party on Thursday, and my panel on Saturday meant that I was not at my best for the rest of the festivities. But "oh, my foes, and oh my friends," as notorious party girl Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote -- it was worth it. Here's an overhead shot of the scene at Floyd, the Brooklyn bar chosen to hold a roomful of young booksellers from all over the country for the First Annual EL-BEA. My coworker Katie chats with EL Council Member Sylla on Floyd's comfy couches. From left to right, Amanda of Harvard Square, Tom of McNally Robinson AND A Public Space, and Megan of Harvard Square (who has the distinction of being the only OTHER person to have both an EL button and an LBC bu...

I didn't make it to the PGW party on Saturday night because I wasn't feeling too hot, and I spent all day Sunday in bed with some kind of mutant sore throat that took over my entire body. I'm still pretty incoherent, stuffy and wobbly today, so I'm going back to bed. But you probably won't know any of this because Blogger has decided I might be spam and won't be able to make up its mind about that for about two days. Whatever. More about BEA when I can. Update: It's Tuesday, Blogger has forgiven me, and I'm still stupid sick. Stay tuned for BEA reports when I can get it together.

Holy Cow, it's BEA! Despite all my anticipation I still feel like the biggest industry event of the year has snuck up on me, and I'm still scrambling to prepare. For my own benefit as well as yours, please find below where I expect to be for the next three or four days. I'll try to blog daily about the experience, and if you're in town for the show, you'll know where to look for me. At the end you'll find a special extra bonus for Written Nerd readers... Wednesday, May 30: morning: at my house, frantically preparing for tonight's party and trying to get done everything else I'd usually do this week... 2:00 - 5:00 Brooklyn walking tours sponsored by BEA. I'm headed for Fort Greene -- it's the Brooklyn neighborhood I'm most fascinated by and know the least about, though I'd love to go on every one of these tours. 5:00-6:30 ABA Brooklyn author reception -- a chance to grab some snacks and meet up with Brooklyn authors as well as all ...

Though I fear it has been too long in coming and will be a bit underwhelming, I'd like to try to articulate my own thoughts on the nature and evolution of book reviews: mainstream media, blogs, print, internet, etc. And it turns out living read girl' s Lady T (who ought to have a paying gig as a cultural critic) got there first. To put it in a nutshell, she writes It's like public school funding, the arts are the first ones to take the hit, while the football team gets their new uniforms. It's all about money to the corporations who run the newspaper/magazine industry,not quality vs. quantity. Essentially, we (that is, bloggers and professional book reviewers, the internet and the newspaper) are not each other's enemy. I mentioned some time ago the Wall Street Journal article which observed that publishers' allocation of advertising funds -- that is, spending money to get stacks of bestsellers front and center in chain stores, rather than on advertising in book...

Okay, this is the lazy girl's version of a Wednesday post. Below you'll find your comments and those of your fellow WN readers on reviews, in semi-abbreviated form, broken up by category: book industry, authors, and general readers (though of course there is some overlap). It's a bit long, but I thought it might be useful to see how people with different relationships to books are thinking about this issue. I'll have my thoughts on the issue on Friday. From the Book Industry: As a person who works in a bookstore, I find that a lot of customers still come in looking for a book that they read about in the Times (NPR being a close second in popularity.) Often, they don't remember the title or the author, so I try and read the Times book review so I can remember the name of the book based on their plot summary. (Noelle) Hi, I work in the bookselling industry so a lot of the books that I end up reading are just books which I've stumbled across while receiving book...

I can't wait until all my fellow booksellers converge on Brooklyn for BEA starting May 30! You may have noticed my major passions are books and Brooklyn, and I'm giddy with excitement as the two get lots of attention this season. Bookselling This Week has Brooklyn restaurant recommendations from local writer Pat Willard. I have a special soft spot for Convivium, which is where the ALP proposed, and 5th Avenue in Park Slope is becoming a real foodie's paradise -- in addition to Pat's choices, I'd also highly recommend Bogota for exciting Latin American food, and Biscuit for mouth-watering barbecue. But Smith Street is even closer to Hotel ABA , and you can't miss with the strip's array of restaurants. I love Bar Tabac for the sweet Gypsy jazz often being played by a live band, as well as for their juicy burgers, and have to add to Willard's list my favorite pan-Asian restaurant Faan -- the ALP and I love ordering a couple of sushi rolls, some Pad T...