Again with the BookExpo

Sitting in the lobby of the hotel this morning, waiting for FedEx to bring my freshly printed business cards, I read a darned interesting story in the Chicago Tribune about David George Holt, who folks accuse of being the world's busiest swindler, rare books division.

Once Mark and I got to the show, it was the usual mad crush, just trying to see as many people as possible. Daniel Handler blurted out my name as we walked past each other, which was the coolest thing that's happened to me in ages, and he and I had a minute to catch up. Mostly I picked up catalogs and galleys, along with a finished copy of Lisa Glatt's debut novel, A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That. Checked in with the ladies of Red Dress Ink, and picked up a galley of Girls' Night In, an anthology of short stories by big chick-lit names like Jennifer Weiner, Meg Cabot, Sophie Kinsella, Marian Keyes, Anna Maxted, etc., etc.; Red Dress will be donating the proceeds from this collection to War Child, an international relief organization. And I ran into an old friend of mine from the book publicity world who's now at Other Press, an independent line that has a very intriguing mix of European fiction-in-translation, psychological theory, and other literary material. You'll be seeing a lot of their books in these pages in months to come, believe me.