The cabin in which I was staying was laid out in such a way that no reasonable light could be left on for reading. I could squint at my smartphone, but the books I brought with me remained in my suitcase.  That is, until the last day, when I finished one, (Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis—riveting) started another (David Mitchell’s  complex and fantastical novel The Bone Clocks) and reacquainted myself with the singular pleasure of knowing I’m in the midst of a good book. Subtle and intoxicating, the sensation of something to look forward to makes me feel like a kid again, when even my impatience to return to a book just heighten the delight of reentry.

Before acquiring the galley for The Bone Clocks at BEA, I’d not read anything that Mitchell wrote, nor seen the tepidly received film adaptation of Cloud Atlas. It took me a few sections before I oriented myself to his style of interlocking stories, and a few more still before I started to see how they all fit together, but what a magnificent imagination that Mitchell has!

Now that I am back on the east coast and it’s reliably dark by 9:30, I’ve finished the book and am looking, hungrily, for another.  What book have you read recently that left you longing to get back to it?

$16 for this, folks.

As you heard from Jessica, last week brought the crowds and chaos of Book Expo to the cavernous Javits Center. Once you’ve got a few BEAs tucked under your belt, it’s easy to get a little jaded, or even grumpy – yes, it’s cold in there. Yes, the floors are hard, the food is overpriced (and not good), the aisles are crowded, and all the hot galleys vanish so quickly! I get it, I do. But I still kind of love BEA. And I recognize that it’s an incredible privilege to GET to attend, let alone have my entry pass and day out of the office handed to me.

Sure, it’s fun to dash around collecting pens, buttons, posters, even ice cream sandwiches and champagne, if you work it right! It’s fantastic to be handed early copies of books you’re dying to read, and to have publicists shoving books you’ve never heard of in your hand, promising you it’s going to be amazing (one of these I read in one sitting over the weekend because omg yes it IS that good). And, when you’re Industry, it’s also a bit of a reunion week. You get to catch up with friends from previous jobs that you haven’t seen in a year, or meet contacts face-to-face that you email every day or know from Twitter. If you’re lucky one of your industry pals might even let you stash your bag of galleys under their table so your back doesn’t break!

Bag of books!

But it’s not really about the free stuff or the socializing. As Jessica said, BEA is “a tangible manifestation of people whose lives revolve around reading.” At BEA I chatted with a blogger from Georgia who was thrilled out of her mind to be at BEA. She had cashed in frequent flyer miles and was sharing a hotel room with three other ladies in order to be there. In another line I talked to a delightful mother-daughter pair of children’s librarians from Iowa who were so eager to meet children’s book authors – not just to meet them, but to talk to them about the books their little patrons love and the books they believe need to exist. They took their responsibility to the kids in their community so incredibly seriously. I was inspired.

I love working in publishing in NYC, but it’s also so easy to take it for granted because I get to live and breathe books without even trying. I am surrounded by indie bookstores and could go to an author event every night of the week. I don’t have to plan my year around one big book event, or spend my vacation in a grim convention center. So I’m going to try to be a little less crabby about BEA’s inconveniences next year. And in the meantime, I’m going to work even harder on my little corner of publishing to make sure that the bloggers in Georgia and the librarians in Iowa get incredible books to keep them excited about reading. Because that’s what this industry is really all about. And I’m proud to be a part of it.

Have you ever been to BEA?

This post comes from the midst of Book Expo America, publishing’s annual trade fair that is staged in the cavernous interior of New York’s Jacob Javits convention center, a glass and steel behemoth hunkered down beside the Hudson. The Javits Center looks a good deal like an airport, complete with footsore travelers,  overpriced food and wheeled luggage, (but without planes, TSA pat-downs or conveniently located bathrooms.)  In the exhibitors halls stretch several football fields worth of booths—some small, some sprawling and beautifully appointed–and all bent on giving stuff away:  books, galleys, catalogs, posters, blads, postcards, totebags,  pens, custom-made gingersnaps…

 Beneath this hive of activity is the  purgatory they call the food court and a complex warren of meeting rooms that are as impossible to find as they are windowless, but where all manner of interesting meetings and panel discussions are taking place. This year, I was determined to attend a few. I sat in on a panel hosted by the Women’s Media Group that explored success amidst the shifting landscape of the publishing industry, where I got to listen to a quintet of accomplished women discuss their career paths. I’d also promised myself that this year I would not return home laden with galleys and books I had no business taking, that I would adhere to a strict look-don’t-take policy.  Of course I broke this promise almost immediately.   But who can say no to so many beautifully packaged, cleverly positioned books?  I am counting the minutes until I can dive into the galley of Michel Faber’s new novel. I loved the Crimson Petal and the White and Under the Skin, and while I rarely think that speculative fiction is my cup of tea, I’m willing to admit my ideas about tea might be wrong.

 Jut a little while ago, I got a funny e-mail message from an editor friend who assiduously avoids BEA, wondering if I actually like attending.  And I do. I like BEA because it affords me an opportunity to see out-of-town editors with whom I’ve previously only corresponded, to reconnect with  old friends (and make new ones in the dependably long queue for the ladies room).  But I love BEA because it is a visual, immersive, and tangible manifestation of people whose lives revolve around reading.

The following is the final paragraph of the galley letter for WHAT very popular book:

“I predict you’ll also face another quandary: whether to share this with a friend, or to keep it for yourself, knowing how much this Reader’s Edition of __________’s first book will be worth in years to come.”

Any guesses?

Here’s another clue. The galley letter is signed by Arthur Levine…

Written for a debut novel that his eponymous imprint at Scholastic purchased for $100,000…

And this galley mailing happened in the summer of 1998…

Being brilliant and super knowledgeable about publishing lore (as all regular readers of the DGLM blog are), I’m sure you’ve guessed that this mystery title is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

  I learned all this delightful trivia from The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter, an exhibit at the New York Public Library’s historic Bryant Park branch (yes, the one with the lions out front). The Harry Potter area caught my eye, as I am currently in the middle of a delightful re-read of the series, which I only read for the first time a few years ago. (I know, I know, hush!)

Sound philosophy, even for muggles

Now it’s no secret that I’m a sucker for children’s books. And the exhibit area was full of artifacts from other children’s literature. You can stop by and see the original Winnie-the-Pooh plushies that inspired A.A. Milne or Frances Hodgson Burnett’s handwritten manuscript for The Secret Garden. One display discusses classic NYC-themed children’s lit (hooray for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler!), and there’s even a Goodnight Moon reading nook with battered library copies of all your favorite picture books. Quite a few families were curled up on the rainy Sunday afternoon that I visited, and I was tempted to grab a Wild Thing and join them.

Not all attendees were as riveted as I was.

From Publishing Trends, it seems like the hot topics this year are eBooks (natch) and self-publishing, with the various pros and cons debated as they’ve been ad nauseum for the past year.  From Publishing Perspectives,  we get the news that foreign publishers are going to sell eBooks here in the States, complicating further the territorial disputes that arose with the first wave of e-publishing. And then, we have this surprising piece of news from the American Booksellers Association: their membership of independent booksellers rose by 3.5%, or 55 stores, in the past year.

So on the one hand, we have eBooks and self-publishers taking over the world—and on the other, independent bookstores not just holding their own but increasing in number.

In other words–huh?

I’m heading over to the Javits Center tomorrow to check it out for myself, but if any readers have been over today, I’d love to hear impressions—especially if there are any galleys worth seeking out. Which, really, is the best feature of BEA anyway: in the end, it all does come back to the books.

So you finish this new novel with all the buzz and you think, “Wow. This is going to get creamed when it comes out. I can’t believe they’re making it into a big deal.” And then the book comes out and the New York Times raves about it. PW and B&N name it one of the ten best books of the year in its category. It sells thousands upon thousands of copies in its debut week. And you think…if this had come in through slush, I would have drop-kicked it back to the author in the blink of an eye.

I assume this has happened to all of you exactly as I describe.

Okay, fine, I’m talking about a very specific and current example, but the feeling of disliking something everyone else raves about is not completely new to me in any category whether it was feeling like the only person who didn’t love Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or fruitlessly trying to explain to people why I thought E.T. was one of the most overrated movies of all time.

And I do have these debates, but how I handle them can go one of two ways. Either (a) I convince myself I only know idiots who can’t tell quality from trash, or (b) I feel a profound sense of disquiet and begin to doubt my taste in absolutely everything.

Just kidding!

(No I’m not.)

So what do you do when you’re the only person you know who fell asleep during Avatar or can’t for the life of you figure out why anyone loved 2666? Fight or flight? Extra confidence or a bundle of doubt?

Yet, as much as I appreciate the swag, I find that sometimes it’s a curse as well. The constant availability of books means that I often procrastinate on reading what I actually want to read—or worse, I don’t get to them at all. I’m a huge fan of the Hunger Games books, but it took me months to get around to Mockingjay, not because of the reviews or word-of-mouth, but because I simply had other stuff that looked intriguing at hand.  And I still haven’t gotten around to A Visit from the Good Squad. Or Freedom.

Are the freebies books I would have sought out and purchased? Probably not. But in most cases I was glad to read them, and certainly there’s an educational benefit to reading books on subjects I’d never consider while browsing in the store. On the other hand, it’s been years since I read any classics, because that would mean actually going out and getting the books—and I do worry that my sense of perspective has become limited to what’s contemporary.

I know, it’s pretty obnoxious to complain about having too many free books… and okay, when it comes to book shopping I’m remarkably lazy, too. But still, I’m curious: do you ever put off reading what you want for what’s at hand? Or are you always more focused in your reading choices? If so, do you have a varied reading list? Any strategies for mixing things up?

Having made it back alive from the convention, I know it will be exciting to dive into the new and unfinished novels I collected, and then hopefully watch some go on to fabulous sales and notoriety.

Will any of our readers out there be attending BEA this year? If so, what books or events are you looking forward to?

It’s BEA week (check this out for an overview of the conference if you’re not familiar with it) which means that some of us are at the Javitz Center checking out publishers’ exhibits, schmoozing with authors who are in from out of town, and loading up free tote bags with galleys of books that are already generating buzz.

For me, the point of BEA has always been collecting those galleys. Invariably, I find myself walking the huge expanse of the Javitz arena ridiculously bogged down by the weight of too many of these advanced readers copies only to realize when I leave the building that getting from 11th Avenue to civilization requires a very long walk to the nearest subway or an endless wait for a cab. No matter. It’s still a thrill to read something in this vulnerable, unfinished format (complete with typos and mostly exaggerated promotional information on the back cover) and then watch the published book race up the bestseller lists, win a huge prize, or both.

I just came across this old piece from New York magazine and was delighted to see how many of those galleys I’d picked up at the 2007 BEA went on to gaudy sales and great acclaim.

Are any of you attending BEA this year? What galleys are you walking away with?

Sorry for the late notice, but if anyone wanted to bid on the galleys we donated for the Do the Write Thing auction, bidding is ongoing!