Book Expo America 2010 Or: How We Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Hundreds of Pounds of Books – Day 2

This is our report for Day 2 of Book Expo America 2010, go HERE for Days 0/1

DAY TWO: The Lack of Will Power, Alchoholic Pasta, Geeking Out and a Smugglerific Party

Ana: Armed with the strong resolve of not getting as many books as the day before, on Thursday morning we decided to arrive at the Javits earlier in order to be prepared for the Block of Doom – Part 2 (between 9am and 11am) and so that we could check some of the publishers we hadn’t seen the day before (like Disney Hyperion and Flux). We met up with Kenda to share a taxi at around 8am but our plan was twarped by the evil BEA organisers who decided not to open the hall before 9am. I immediately started whining at how “We could have slept another hour!” and then we sat down to wait. As members of the press (yeah, bloggers can get their BEA passes as members of the press – for FREE) we were allowed to enter the Press Room just before 9am and I attempted to drink their godawful coffee but couldn’t drink more than a couple of sips. We met Janice at the room and I took a picture of the group being all press-y:

At 9, the rush began and people were running (myself included – any attempts of playing cool and just strolling away were crushed by my own cursed competitiveness) to the Simon & Schuster booth in order to get an ARC of Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Angel. I am pleased to report we all got copies. We then ran to see Deanna Raybourn who was signing The Dead Travels Fast. We had a pretty cool moment here when she recognised our blog’s name and told Thea how much she loved her extremely well-written review of Silent in the Grave. Thea was delighted and I was mucho proud.

Carrying on with the Block of Doom – Part 2, we got in line to signed copies Adam Rex’s Fat Vampire, Larry Doyle’s Go, Mutants!, Gena Showalter’s Unraveled, Eric Luper’s Seth Baumgartners Love Manifesto and since most of these lines were short, we ended up getting into other lines and as you can see we completely failed to keep our resolve – we ended up collecting 30 books each, especially after doing impromptu visits to the Harper Collins’, Penguin’s and Flux’s booth (where I basically begged the nice lady for a copy of A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler and since I do begging so well, she actually gave me one of the display copies) which means that by 11am, we were already carrying way too much weight and dead tired on our feet.

That was when we collapsed (I had a horrible headache at this point) and decided to take a REAL break. We went back to the hotel to drop the bags off (making resolve number 2 of NOT GETTING MORE BOOKS but guess what, we didn’t keep it) and then have our first real meal since Monday night. We went to an Italian restaurant close to the hotel and had the most …. interesting pasta ever. It was supposed to be a regular tomato pasta but we are 100% convinced that someone must have dropped a bottle of pure, undiluted alchohol in it. It had the weirdest alcoholic taste but we were so hungry that we just ate the whole thing anyway.

Making our way back to the Javits (this time braving the subway system) , we made it back just in time to see the YA Authors of YA Editor’s Buzz panel with Ally Condie (MATCHED); Rebecca Maizel (INFINITE DAYS); Kody Keplinger (THE DUFF); Sophie Jordan (FIRELIGHT); Erin Bow (PLAIN KATE). The authors talked about their upcoming novels, about writing them and then read excerpts from the novels. This was actually a surprising panel because the two books we most wanted to read before we attented it (FIRELIGHT AND INFINITE DAYS) seemed to be the least interesting and we came out really interested in MATCHED and THE DUFF and positively salivating over PLAIN KATE. They didn’t have any copies to giveaway there but I ended up getting a copy of FIRELIGHT (see? no will power).

We then went back to get a copy of more signed books – Thea really wanted Pariah by Bob Fingerman and wouldn’t you know, Erin Bow was signing Plain Kate just there so we whooped and squeed and got ourselves copies.

At 4pm, we made our way to The Book Bloggler Convention Reception and that was another surprise. Extremely well organised, with food and drinks, the room was absolutely packed not only with bloggers but also industry professionals from major publishing houses and imprints such as Tor, Little,Brown, Harper Collins and Big Honcho Media. The best part of it though was meeting two authors we are friendly with: historical fiction writer Susan Holloway Scott and YA writer Diana Peterfreund whom we spent a good hour chatting to and geeking over Halloween, books and blogging.

You can’t see in the picture but I am wearing the BEST T-SHIRT EVER CREATED which Angie (thank you Angie!) presented me with and it reads:

What Would Eugenides Do. (if you don’t know who Eugenides is and why would anyone be interested in knowing what he would do, go here.)

We were one of the last ones at the reception and we had to madly dash back because we were throwing our own BEA party: A Smugglerific Party at a bar called the Volstead. Unfortunately, NY conspired against us and it was raining buckets when we left the hotel and we were finally able to observe and experience the phenomenon of NOT BEING ABLE TO GET A TAXI. Up until that point we thought all the TV Shows and Movies lied to us because we had no problems getting taxis till then.

We were the last ones to arrive at the party (bad, bad hostesses) but once we settled down, it was an absolute blast. On top of some of the bloggers we had already met like Angie, Kenda (with her husband in tow), Kristen, Janice and Heather, we finally got to meet two of our favorite bloggers in the world. The wonderful Christine of The Happily Ever After, someone we had been exchaging emails with since the start of our book smuggling careers and the lovely LR of Lusty Reader.

The bar was a little bit too loud and we did have to shout our conversations a little bit but the food was delicious (thanks Heather, for letting me share the most awesome steak sub) and very affordable (key word here, people). The party ended at around half past ten and we made our wobbly way back to the hotel, where we once more collapsed in exhaustion.

Thus, Day 2 endeth. Report of The Book Blogger Convention and the conclusion of our NY adventure including “The Strand – An Exposee” will be up on Wednesday! We promise.