American Expo of Books...

Dash Shaw, graphic novelist of Bottomless Belly Button fame He was kind of quiet, seemed a little unsure when I mentioned his "twisted" mind, but asked where I was from and mentioned he was in Brooklyn. I replied that made sense to be in the hotbed of writers.


At the end of the day, I got the ARC of Blood's a Rover. Ellroy was telling everyone to read it and find him on Facebook. He signed mine to redheads and libraries ( I remember that his mother, who was murdered, was a redhead).


On of the two books I really wanted my hands on Friday was The 27s: The greatest myth of Rock & Roll. Eric and Josh put together a book of photos, text, illustrations. I read the Robert Johnson part on the train and loved the graphic quality. This photo was them laughing when I told them to strike a rock pose for the photo.


I was glad to meet Klosterman, he was not a hugely friendly guy- even when I tried to butter him up about being a 'bit of ginger'. Got his new book Downtown Owl


On the left, Dacre Bram Stoker, Ian Holt-- Dracula the Undead is the Stoker family supported sequel to Dracula. Very cool guys, discussed the misspelling of Dacre as "Darce". Long line, my first of the day, but really happy to have my hands on that sucker.

My overall impression--
Maybe it was my late - near 11 AM arrival to BEA, thanks to a very slow train from Jersey- but it was not what I expected.

I'm used to comicons, where even during the professional hours of librarians and industry people-- you still see evidence of fandom. More casual dress, more discussion in booths and across tables.

Arriving with librarian Ty, who scored a press pass, I first saw many suits walking. And corporatized booths with big logos on large white banners. The huge exhibit floor (thousands of vendors) found me walking down whole aisles barely stopping. Maybe because I didn't have a meeting at one of the hundreds of little tables where deals and convo's were happening. I was just a librarian, looking for new titles and hoping to get some free books and meet authors.

I never got to a single uptown or downtown stage session, because every time I wanted to run through the exhibits from the downstairs autograph area--- hidden way at the back through the entire children's publishing area- it was quite a haul.

At the end of the day, I just went line to line and got a few books I really wanted-- and a few I knew nothing about. Those moments with the authors (Chuck Klosterman, Ian Holt/Dacre Stoker, Dash Shaw, James Ellroy) were the best of the day.

I mailed 15 pounds of books home that should arrive by sometime next week.

I took a few photos with authors (and seemed to be one of the few people requesting photos). Again, different than my comicon escapades, I took very few photos.

Reading the #BEA09 tweets has been interesting. "Twitter will not save publishing" was a quote going around.

UPDATE 6/:
There are some graphic novel references in these BEA articles-- Stitches was the hottest GN at the show- not just GN but overall hot-

BEA tweets

Publishers Weekly rundown

New York Times

New York Magazine

PW The Beat