I just found about this thread...

Ah well, hope you have lots of fun!!

yay!
i love you so much!!!!
you rock!

Ok -- just wanted to let people know that, though I have the list (and will most likely take another peek at this thread before I leave in the morning for the Expo) I have a feeling that we may only be allowed one chapbook per person on the autograph line, so, please try not to get your hopes up. (edited to add -- the reason I'm not feeling optimistic is just because of the autograph booth set-up -- it looks like the books may get handed out before you get within talking-distance of Neil, and that the line-police are Expo staff rather than Harper Collins' people. While I'm pretty sure Neil would give us the ok to have extra copies when I tell him they're for the boarders, and that a Harper Collins rep would do what he asked them to, if the line is being run by Expo-people whose priority is getting as many people through the line as quickly as they can, there will probably be no room for negotiation.

I made it to the Expo today around 3:45, rushed to the Graphic Novel panel as it was ending, hoping to spot Ravenina, but, no luck. Then I went down to the autograph booths where Pekar & the rest of the panelists were signing, to do some more Ravenina-hunting, but, alas, no luck again. I did get to have a chat with Joe Nazarro, and scope out the autograph-booth setup. Then I headed over to the Harper Collins booth to see if they were giving any of the chapbooks away. Sadly, they were not. They did have a card you could fill out with your name/company/title & address in order to get an advance galley print, which I did. (I don't know if it would be ok for me to fill out cards for other people - especially if your company & job title are not remotely book-ish. But I'll see if any of my co-workers will let me add their names in so I can have a spare copy, and make that the lending copy. Maybe we can mail it around and write notes to each other all over it. Hee.)

Apparently Neil is the MC tonight at the Audie awards. I think I vaguely knew he was doing that, but, since he hadn't plugged it on the blog recently, I forgot about it completely, and made no plans to attend. Oh well. I suppose I should be sad (and no doubt will be when I read Neil's eventual blog entry about it, or someone else's glowing report), but, I'm just so glad to be out of the dreary drizzly weather, snuggled up with my neurotic cat, and resting my aching shoulders.

The reason my shoulders ache is because of all the books I hauled home. The wonderful thing about Book Expo is that all of the big publishers (and many small ones) give away advance-reader-copies of upcoming books. In just one hour of wandering the booths, I ended up lugging away the following:

The Days of Awe by Hugh Nissenson
The Lady's Guide to Rakes by Kathryn Caskie
The Fire Thief by Terry Deary
What Do You Do All Day? by Amy Scheibe
How To Cheat Your Friends At Poker by Penn Jillette and Mickey D. Lynn
The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch
The Eye of the Warlock by P.W. Catanese
Curse of the Narrows by Laura M. MacDonald
The Triumph of Sam Cooke: Dream Boogie by Peter Guralnick
Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits and the Struggle for the Constitution by Lawrence Goldstone
I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch: A Fantastic Tale of Boys, Booze and How WHAM! Were Sold to China by Simon Napier-Bell
The Haight-Ashbury: A History by Charles Perry
The Tender Bar: A Memoir by J.R. Moehringer
The King In The Window by Adam Gopnik
Rewind by Jan Page

No idea which of these will turn out to have been worth the effort of carrying them, but, there's bound to be a few gems, and hopefully more to come over the weekend. I'll try to report back again tomorrow night, hopefully with pictures.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mara@nvg,

Thanks for the update Mara. Wow, i wish i worked in the publishing industry. I have never heard of any of the authors you posted, but the thought of people handing me ARCs for free just makes me drool.
..
Kindof a bummer that the expo people are not going to let you two get the books, but thanks again for trying.

I'm standing at the Nelson Business internet cafe, right behind where Neil was signing. We got signed chapbooks for everyone who asked for them! Mara and/or I will start a private thread for addresses, etc., I have six, Mara's got the rest. Neil was very nice, but very stressed, and he appreciated Mara's gifts.

OK, gotta go now to keep an appointment.

I'll be back Sunday night.

woo-hoo! very cool. Thanks again Ravenina and Mara!

Thanks to Ravenina for posting -- I hauled away so many books on Saturday that after trudging through the hot, muggy, NYC streets from the Javitts to the 33rd St. PATH train, I was completely thrashed by the time I got home. (But it didn't stop me from going back Sunday for one more raid. Total haul = 77 books! And assorted bookmarks, postcards, pins, a bobble-head two-headed cow from the Ripleys Believe It Or Not booth (which I'm giving to our mail-room guy), and some rather creatively packaged condoms from the Ellora's Cave Romantica Publishing booth.

Wow, that's a fairly long walk with all of those books. I know Javits was on like 36th--how many more blocks was it to PATH?

The PATH train is at 33rd St & 6th Avenue, and the Javits is on 11th or 12th Avenue, so, yeah, Saturday's haul was brutal. But, on the plus side, I no longer feel the slightest twinge of guilt over the fact that I'll be saving all of the good books for myself instead of sharing them with the office, now that I've suffered for them.