Harper Perennial’s day at the Brooklyn Book Festival began quite early on Sunday morning, as some of us woke at the crack of dawn to haul all of our awesome books and free stuff back to Brooklyn from our midtown office. Despite crazy train delays and a quick wardrobe change (it was a lot hotter out than I expected, but maybe that had something to do with hauling boxes of books), we arrived safely in Brooklyn and unpacked.
The day quickly got off to an exciting start with a surprise visit from our author Russell Banks! We knew he’d be at the festival, appearing on a panel, but we were super excited when he stopped by. He got to work signing copies of his books Rule of the Bone and The Reserve, which were quickly snapped up by eager fans.
After a visit from HTML:Giant contributor and Harper Perennial author Justin Taylor (Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, out this winter), who pretty much sold me on the new Nicholson Baker book, we had our first author signing of the day! Ken Davis, author of Don’t Know Much About Literature, America’s Hidden History, and a whole slew of other books filled with things you should really know (but don’t), showed up promptly at 11 with his wife Joanne. He has awesome glasses and was beloved by all who had the chance to meet him.
Soon everything started to blur. We had another signing (Peter Terzian, author of Heavy Rotation.) We had more author visits (Josip Novakovich, author of April Fool’s Day and Infidelities, Ben George, author of The Book of Dads.) One man tried to throw his trash away in one of our boxes of books behind the table but stopped when I gave him the death glare. Multiple people watched a video of my cat humping a blanket. We all wore olive stickers and buttons. We had, spread out over various points of the day, ten people (and three significant others and one very cute baby!) at the booth. We sold a lot of books, and we had a lot of fun.
And next year, the Target dog is going to have to take a back seat to one of us (not naming any names) who has sworn to dress up like an olive.
We’re coming for you, Target dog! And you too, Brooklyn Eagle that I did not get a picture of!
Most importantly, the Olive Reader must pay tribute to marketing maven Stephanie Selah, without whom none of this would have been possible. HP may heart BK, but we all heart Steph.
A full recap (with photos!) is coming of our fun day at the Brooklyn Book Fest yesterday, but I will say that one of the books we sold out of** was Holly Goddard Jones’s Girl Trouble. Holly is currently the subject of a front page story over at Ace Weekly, with Girl Trouble their book club book for October.
**due in part to extremely enthusiastic selling on our part
This parasite only does one thing to its host animal: it eats the animal’s tongue and then replaces it with itself. It sounds confusing, but the picture explains it all:
I would love to see this parasite play an important role in a murder mystery novel someday.
This Sunday is the Brooklyn Book Festival! Harper Perennial will be in booth #129 (near Joralemon St and the main stage, or you can just look at this map here). We will have books for sale. We will have free stuff. You will have fun. Promise.
We here at the Olive Reader very much support Book Blogger Appreciation Week, created “to recognize the hard work and contribution of book bloggers to the promotion and preservation of a literate culture actively engaged in discussing books, authors, and a lifestyle of reading.” In other words, we love book bloggers! And of course we particularly love our very own Book Club Girl, who is nominated for Best Book Club Blog. You can go here to vote for her or any other blogger, and also to check out the lists of nominees. I’ve bookmarked the page for myself and plan on checking them all out sometime soon.
And check back here next week for BBAW Interview Day for a special post!
If you’re not doing anything tomorrow at 7 pm, be sure to tune in to Tom Piazza discussing City of Refuge on Book Club Girl on Air. In City of Refuge, two families, one white and one black, deal with Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and this is sure to be a discussion that will be totally fascinating even if you haven’t read the book.
And if you’re interested in reading more about City of Refuge, here are some blogs that have reviewed it recently (check them out and you may find your new favorite book blog):
That’s what you’ll find over at edrants this week: five days of Sarah Hall’s new novel How to Paint a Dead Man, as discussed by Edward Champion, Frances Dinkelspiel, and Sarah Weinman. They promise “cameo appearances and some unexpected revelations,” as well as plenty of thoughtful commentary.
We’re very excited here about Sarah Hall, and it’s nice to see others following suit! And in case you don’t know what How to Paint a Dead Man is about, here’s a bit of summary of this excellent paperback original, on sale tomorrow (9/8/09):
‘The lives of four individuals—a dying painter, a blind girl, a landscape artist, and an art curator—intertwine across nearly five decades in this luminous and searching novel of extraordinary power. With How to Paint a Dead Man, Sarah Hall, “one of the most significant and exciting of Britain’s young novelists” (The Guardian), delivers “a maddeningly enticing read . . . an amazing feat of literary engineering” (The Independent on Sunday).’
Loving this New York Times article about reading on the subway, especially the part about the day camp kids who have to read if they manage to get seats. Though I am very fond of my short commute (Greenpoint to midtown in 20 minutes), sometimes I find myself wishing for the days when I had an hour-long commute with nothing to do but read.
The latest issue of the L magazine addresses the question we’ve all asked ourselves at one point or another: The Book Publishing Office: Stay or Go? Weighing in is our esteemed editorial director Cal Morgan, who says:
Is your office more The Office or Mad Men?
Casting: WKRP in Cincinnati. Set design: Barney Miller.
For word-nerds the world over. Every year, hundreds of words are dropped from the English language (conceivably to make room for new words like vlog… I’m still skeptical.) Old words, wise words, hard-working words… words with feathers in their caps and words that hobble by with little word-canes. But now you can help: go to www.savethewords.org, where you can find the definitions of thousands of words you’ve never heard of, and even adopt them, which means being willing to use them as often as you can. I’ve already called lardlet: a small piece of bacon used to enrich meat. Or how about quaeritate, to ask. As in, No, Jimmy, your goldfish isn’t dead. It’s quaeritating you to rub its belly.
If, like me, you can’t wait until next summer for Neal Pollack’s upcoming Yoga Dork, you should check out his new yoga column in The Faster Times. I love doing yoga, but hate being asked to embrace my inner goddess or growl like a lion (true things that have happened to me at yoga classes.) Something tells me Neal Pollack would never require such things of me.
