A couple of weeks ago, I suggested that my experience at Book Expo America 2012 might not be all about books. And I guess that technically it wasn’t, since I cataloged slightly fewer books in a “Books from BEA” collection on LibraryThing this year than I did in 2011, but I brought back more than I’d expected to. And unlike last year, I actually did bring the books back home with me; they made my suitcase nine pounds overweight, but the excess-baggage charge still cost me less than shipping from the convention center.
I’ll be working on putting together my thoughts on various aspects of the week–the expo, the BEA Bloggers Conference, fun stuff in New York City–during the next several days. There’s definitely blogfodder; I just need to sort it out and get it written down. Meanwhile, would you like to see the books?
That one with the red cover is Michael Chabon’s September release Telegraph Avenue, which was my most-anticipated BEA book, and I was thrilled to see it on the table on Thursday morning. But after hearing fellow author guest J.R. Moehringer talk about his upcoming first novel Sutton, about the bank robber Wille Sutton, I’m really looking forward to reading that one too (although I’m loaning the galley to my dad to read first, since he actually remembers Wille Sutton).
This is the fairly small number of books I got from Book Expo itself (full disclosure: one was appropriated from my roommate’s suitcase, with permission, but she had obtained it at an Editors’ Buzz session, so I’m counting it here). Two are signed, and meeting John Scalzi was probably my best author interaction at BEA (thanks to name-dropping his friend Pamela Ribon and mentioning their panel at the LA Times Festival of Books in April).
The gift bags also included quite a few other books that, for various reasons, I didn’t bring back with me. BEA’s charity partner, Housing Works, had a donation booth at the back of the Expo Hall to accept these, and I hope it did a great collection business last week!
My book purchases during this trip are not pictured or included in the BEA list. I only visited one New York City bookstore this year, where one of the two (just two!) books I bought was a Father’s Day gift for my dad…but that bookstore visit was my long-overdue first one to the Strand, so it was rather momentous.
