Slog News & Arts

Line Out

Music & Nightlife

« Wasn't This About Books? | This Just In... »

Saturday, May 31, 2008

It Wouldn’t Be a Convention Without Seminars

posted by on May 31 at 14:00 PM

BEA is full of seminars where people talk about books and pretty much all aspects of the book industry. There are meetings about copyright. There are meetings about minority representation. There are a whole bunch of meetings about running a small, medium, or large bookstore.

These are the sorts of things that are fascinating only to the people who are interested in this kind of thing, of couse. I attended a couple of seminars so far. One was about Book Buzz…I’m totally addicted to buzz, don’t’chaknow. I did learn about a couple of interesting books at that one. There’s a memoirish novel called Miles From Nowhere by a first time novelist named Nami Mun. She’s from South Korea and moved to New York and has worked as an Avon Lady. This sounds pretty good. Another editor talked about The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews. Miriam Toews has a couple of books out already—one, called A Complicated Kindness is really amazing. I don’t know why she isn’t widely read, except maybe that certain book editors have entirely failed to talk about her. Troutmans is about a family—the son is addicted to a New York Times Magazine interviewer, and the daughter has started talking like a hip hop star—taking a road trip to South Dakota to find the missing father. It’s kind of a hard sell, but Toews could totally pull it off. This seminar was only about half-full, or half-empty if you prefer.

But then I attended a Q&A with Jeff Bezos. The room was packed. Bezos talked about the Kindle and then a Wired Magazine editor asked him questions. This was a very thorough Q&A session. The only two hardball questions I’m surprised that Bezos didn’t get asked were: “Why are you so great?” and “Can I just give you a blowjob right here and now?” This is pretty depressing for a whole lot of reasons, mostly the symbolic kind.

RSS icon Comments

1

The sexy, open-mouthed Marilyn smile is lost on this Monroe lookalike. She looks more like a menacing velociraptor.

Posted by Hooty Sapperticker | May 31, 2008 3:19 PM
2

Is she a man? Where'd her right boob go?

Posted by Fnarf | May 31, 2008 4:30 PM
3

Are you sure this post isn't by Charles Mudede?

Posted by Dan Savage's Angry Vagina | May 31, 2008 4:53 PM
4

She *does* have pretty teeth.

Do we need to see them all at once?

Posted by Wolf | May 31, 2008 5:04 PM
5

Bizarro-Marilyn want raw meat! Bizarro-Marilyn must kill!

Posted by Mahtli69 | May 31, 2008 5:08 PM
6

She looks like she'd make a better Judy Garland impersonator.

Posted by NapoleonXIV | May 31, 2008 5:14 PM
7

@4 Wolf, Glad you are OK, you worried me last night with your "tornados coming got to sign off" post.

Posted by PopTart | May 31, 2008 5:18 PM
8

Thank you. I know I honked off several people, but all I was saying is what the law was re art.

The storm blew through here pretty violently and knocked out power for a while, and when I went out this morning the bed of my truck looked like a lake. The streets were covered in mud and limbs. It looked a little like a war zone, minus soldiers.

I live in an 1857 or so church made of brick, so it's pretty sturdy. But it's still scary when they say there's a tornado heading your way and it's time to duck and cover.

But thank you again for the concern.

Posted by Wolf | May 31, 2008 5:42 PM
9

can't sleep... Marilyn will eat me...

Posted by Halloween Jack | June 2, 2008 1:14 PM

Comments Closed

Comments are closed on this post.