I said I’d tell you today about The Golden Compass, so on the heels of a 12-hour work day (hello, holiday season retail!) here goes:

GORGEOUS. Absolutely gorgeous! I loved the Oxford sets, the North sets, the lighting, the costumes, the make-up, and the way the special effects worked seamlessly with all of these. There was a sweeping sense of space in each scene, making it easy to forget that the scenery didn’t extend beyond the confines of the movie screen. Within that sweep, though, there were so many fine details, costumes among them. And oh, Mrs. Coulter’s dresses and the costumes for the Gyptians! Fantastic!

FAST. The story clipped along at an astonishing pace. Blink and you miss half the story! Use the restroom and the world unravels! I wondered, often, if I would have been able to keep up if I hadn’t already known where the story was heading and been so well-acquainted with the characters. Someone less "in the know" will have to pass proper judgment on that. In all I’d say that it moved a bit too quickly for my taste. A movie that covered the same ground in three hours (instead of two) would have been more to my liking.

WELL-CAST. I can’t imagine a better Mrs. Coulter than Nicole Kidman, and I thought Dakota Blue Richards made a fantastic Lyra — with just the right mix of sweetness and cheek. Even more perfect, though, might’ve been the choice of Sam Eliott as Lee Scoresby. From the second he appears on screen with his lopsided grin (and long-eared rabbit) he exudes every ounce of Lee’s charm. Once he opens his mouth he seals the deal.

TRUE. To the book, that is. Granted, much had to be cut (again, for the two-hour reason) but the "essence" of the book was undoubtedly there. Most importantly, the characters felt real — as if they’d stepped right out of the book and appeared on that big screen. The things that won me over the most in this movie were the small moments, brief conversations in which I suddenly felt as though I really was watching the book come to life. The scene in which Mrs. Coulter asks Lyra to remove her (alethiometer) handbag, arguing that it’s silly to wear one around the house, might have been my favorite scene in the movie, because emotionally it hit the book’s notes PERFECTLY. The escalation of evil in Mrs. Coulter’s voice against the escalation of defiance in Lyra’s was so good in this scene, the tension so perfect, that I felt, momentarily, like I was watching the scene I see in my head whenever I read that section.

CLEVER: In order to include the book’s "biggest" scenes but the conclude the film with an action-packed finale, director Chris Weitz had to do some inventive rearranging of things, which worked surprisingly well. I won’t spoil it for you here, but suffice it to say you get your Battle of the Bears and you get your Bolvangar, just not when you expect them.

BAFFLING. Completely so. (And there’s a spoiler here, so skip ahead if you don’t want me to ruin anything for you…) Chris Weitz chose NOT to end this movie where Philip Pullman ends the book. This makes sense when you consider that it’d be evil to end a movie on a depressing, cliff-hanger of a note, when you’re not yet assured of the finances to film a sequel. But still… I was COMPLETELY unprepared for this change. At the end of what I didn’t yet know was the final scene Roger is telling Lyra that he wants to go with her to find Lord Asriel, and my heart was breaking, my head shaking NO, NO, NO, the voice in my head telling Roger to turn around and JUST GO HOME when poof!  The credits rolled. Whaaaaaaaaaaat?! WHAT?!? It’s over? Just like that? With no _______ and the ______ and we don’t find out that _________??! Well… okay then. Happy ending it is. But how the dickens is he going to start off the second film on THAT terrible note??

BREATHTAKING. In places. Little, wonderful places. When the daemons would change form and zip suddenly from bird to mammal to insect, the change looked SO REAL. So completely real! And each time a person would die their daemon would explode in a sparkling whirl of gold dust! Beautiful!

CHEESY. Yes, cheesy. But only in one recurring place: each time Lyra read the alethiometer we, the audience, see gold sparkles swirling around brief hazy glimpses of people and scenes, making it look a bit like Lyra is falling into some 1980’s film vortex — traveling back in time or watching her life flash before her eyes. Those moments were my least favorite of the film (though I’ll grant you that I haven’t yet thought of a better way to capture them).

IMPERFECT. Like everything. I love Ian McKellen’s voice but found it distracting to hear it coming from the mouth of a polar bear, almost as if Sir Ian (or perhaps Gandalf) had been swallowed and was calling out from the bear’s stomach. This didn’t prevent me from enjoying Iorek’s scenes, though, except for the occasional moment when the computer-generated bears bore a slight resemblance the advertising bears of Coca-Cola. And Pantalaimon was believably real in his ermine form, but not so as a cat.

A LABOR OF LOVE. That’s what it felt like, above all. This movie was clearly made by someone who wanted to put a beloved book on film and make it fly.

NOT THE BOOK. It’s not the book. And in the end I think that’s what I found disappointing about this film — I got so much FROM this film, but I didn’t get enough OF this film. What was there was wonderful! Almost perfect! But that made it almost all the more painful to get such a small fraction of the full story. In my dream world, there would have been enough funding to do this elaborate film as a 6-hour or 12-hour movie. Except, who would be able to sit though such a thing? So… maybe a 6-hour or 12-hour HBO mini-series! Except then you’d lose the impressive sweep of seeing these sets and these costumes on a big, BIG screen.

Gareth commented tonight that he thought the biggest thing missing from the movie was, for him, the "edge" that’s present in the book, and I’m inclined to agree. The trouble is, there’s just not enough time, in two hours, to move the plot where it needs to go AND build in that edge — the tension, the fear, the conflict, the love, the betrayal. But without them, the end results just aren’t that powerful. I teared up at the end of this movie, but I feel relatively certain that’s because I know the WHOLE story. I know what’s been cut, I know what comes next, I know how the whole affair finally ends. If I didn’t, well…? Let’s just say that I HOPE this movie will make people who don’t know the whole story want to go in search of it. If it does that, then it’s doing about as well as ANY movie version of The Golden Compass could do, even if it ran for 6 or possibly 12 hours!

I had planned to spend time this evening typing up my review of The Golden Compass (the movie, that is), but my plans were foiled by the following: a LONG day at work where we were busy, busy, busy with holiday shoppers; a LONG evening spent assembling book recommendations for a book talk I’m giving early tomorrow morning to a group of middle school parents; a late, late dinner when I finally got home at about 10pm; and, finally, author Katherine Applegate. Darn you, Katherine!

I was halfway through Home of the Brave when I sat down to my late-night meal (bless my chef of a boyfriend) and picked the book up again. I finished eating and thought, "I’ll just read a couple pages more," then became so emotional over the story that I figured I’d have to finish the book or go to bed a weepy mess. So I did. Curled up on the sofa beside Gareth, who was drawing sketches of Hamlet, I read and read and wadded up Kleenex and read and cried some more and read and finished the book. My three-word review: I LOVED it!!

So, BLAME KATHERINE APPLEGATE if you’re disappointed that you haven’t yet seen my Golden Compass review. Blame her for writing a beautiful, meaningful, wonderful novel — the kind that makes things like movie reviews seem too trivial for the late-night attentions of a tired bookseller. And the kind that makes me SO happy to have the job I do, and to have a blog like this, where I can sing the praises of books and their authors.

Trivial or not, I’ll have a movie review for you all on Thursday, I promise. And I won’t pick up another book until it’s done!

This week we received a letter at the store from Publishers Weekly, inviting us to nominate our choices for the 2007 Cuffies — the annual "Off the Cuff" awards for children’s booksellers’ favorite (and least favorite) titles, marketing campaigns and bookselling moments of the previous year. Usually when I skim the list of Cuffies categories I pause on "Most Garbled Title Request" and wish I’d kept better notes on our customers’ blunders. This year, though, a garbled request arrived right on schedule, just days before the Cuffies letter. Thanks to a customer who browsed the store last Thursday, I am SO prepared this year! Allow me to set the scene…

I’m straightening books in the picture book section when I see a woman looking at the shelves with a puzzled "I’m hunting for something…" expression on her face. When I ask if I can help her find anything she says (AND I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP), "That would be great, actually. I’m looking for a book called Zen Pants?"

There is a brief pause as I try hard not to dissolve into laughter while I scan the "M" authors of our picturebooks. My face shows (I think) only a hint of bemusement (kind bemusement) as I hand her a copy of Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth and ask if maybe it’s the book she’s looking for? Noticing the title she chuckles just slightly, explaining that she’d never seen the book before, that a friend recommended it, etc.

As she offers me an understandable explanation I am DYING for the chance to have a good laugh over this and wishing she’d dissolve into giggles so that I can too, but…? No such luck. Not even when I tell her that the forthcoming companion to Zen Shorts is called Zen Ties.

But no matter. Eventually the customer returns to her browsing and I walk purposefully downstairs to our managers’ office where no customers will overhear me as I pour the Zen Pants story out to our assistant manager, the lovely Kym Havens, and the two of us practically cry with laughter over what was a reasonable but ridiculously funny mistake. I can see that if you’d never laid eyes on Zen Shorts before and didn’t know the "shorts" referred to short stories or fables, it would be easy to mistake it for a reference to an article of clothing.

Nevertheless, I think this request is a doozy. Zen Pants! The only thing better would be Zen Lederhosen. (Hmm… Will have to see if they have any of those in the Virtual Lederhosenmuseum.)

Last Friday morning I woke up thinking about the idea of zen pants, imagining the kind of trousers that would allow one to reach enlightenment. Later I hopped out of the shower with a rhyme percolating in my mind. It’s quite pathetic, but I’m sharing it anyway. Perhaps its shortcomings will inspire a few of you to come up with your own (better) takes on the same theme. Please share them with me if you do!

Zen Pants (or A Sartorial Satori)

When I put on my zen pants
I feel a-okay.
When I put on my zen pants
the whole world falls away!
What’s left is me ‘neath a bodhi tree
with a man who smiles all day.
We sit, we rub our bellies, 
and "Ommmm…" is what we say.
You should put on YOUR zen pants
and visit us today!

The comments field of this blog doesn’t allow images, otherwise those pasted below would have appeared in the comments on my post about  the best book I got at NCTE, shared by an anonymous ShelfTalker reader. She says she is "another grateful reader of today’s expansive and exciting offerings in children’s books [who] also keeps this hilarious gem on her shelf as a reminder of how far we’ve come."

In case you can’t read the text in the image below, I’ll reprint it here for you:

     "Our Denver flight is fogged in, Barbie," said Ken. "I’m afraid we’ll be late taking off."
     "Oh, no!" said Barbie. "I’ll never get to my birthday party on time. I may be spending my birthday right here in this crew lounge." Barbie looked around the lounge and sighed sadly.

I could barely contain my excitement this week when a special, magic envelope arrived at the store bearing passes to an advance screening of The Golden Compass next Monday! HOOOOOOOOOOORAY!!!

I normally grit my teeth with nervous reserve toward film adaptations of my favorite books. In this case, though, the visual effects look so tremendous and the characters so seemingly well cast that I am VERY much looking forward to seeing the end results. Having seen the London stage adaptation a few years ago, too, I also feel like I’ve already been properly initiated into the world of abridged, streamlined renditions of His Dark Materials.

Whatever the case, this film looks like it will be a fun ride—much more fun, I’d wager, than the Beowulf movie, which Gareth and I saw last weekend in 3D on an IMAX screen. We both had relatively low expectations for the film but figured it would at least be entertaining. Which it was. In the WORST possible way. As we left the theater laughing at how bad it was, we overheard snippets of other filmgoers’ conversations as they too poked fun at its weakest moments, laughing uproariously. Yep, it was THAT bad.

My chief complaint is that all subtlety was stripped from both the story and the acting. It would seem that CG doesn’t lend itself to any small movements on the part of its characters, as every human gesture or supposedly quick glance appeared overdone and painfully obvious. This made very talented actors look and sound like complete buffoons. I’ve never been so unimpressed with a performance by John Malkovich. Or Robin Wright Penn. Or Anthony Hopkins, for that matter! Give me the real actors, please! In this case they looked about as real as the characters that populate the Shrek films, which is to say they looked very cartoony. Ironically, it’s the most fantastic character (the dragon) that looked the most real to me and delivered the best, most entertaining moments of the whole film.

As for the storyline of Beowulf and the way it’s newly interpreted here… Ugh. I understand that Hollywood has this obsession with sexing things up a bit and will give them credit for being creative about their way of doing it (making Grendel’s mother out to be a seductress who lures strong men to her bed, and later gives birth to monsters of their own making), but this variation of the story is told with too many inconsistencies and unanswered questions for my taste. In all I thought it felt overblown, terribly clichéd, and surprisingly sloppy.

One thing related to the Beowulf movie that I *did* love, though, was a typo (I think…) that I happened to catch in the Boston Globe, in their info. about the rating of the film. They explain that the film has a PG-13 rating "for intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual mater." Yes, it says sexual MATER. And "mater" is the Latin word for what? Mother. So, is "sexual mater" a Freudian slip or some copywriter’s very clever joke about Angelina Jolie?

Whatever the case I looked at the rating info. for The Golden Compass, but it’s reportedly PG-13 only "for sequences of fantasy violence." Too bad they left out the "sexual mater" bit there, because I think Nicole Kidman in the role Mrs. Coulter is guaranteed to qualify.

One of my favorite events we’ve had at our store was that with balloon-twister Addi Somekh, almost exactly six years ago (Nov. 28, 2001). He visited soon after the publication of The Inflatable Crown Balloon Hat Kit (Chronicle Books) and WOWED us with the incredible creations that would spring from his fingertips to tower over our heads and frame our smiling faces.

Here’s me (on the left) with my beloved pal Pam Daghlian, who was our store manager at the time:

My enthusiasm for Addi’s visit sprung not so much from my love of balloons, as my love of what Addi and his friend Charlie Eckert had been doing to make the world a smaller and smilier place. Together the two traveled the world on a shoestring budget, visiting 34 countries (in 7 trips), where they’d often visit remote outposts populated by the poorest of people. Everywhere they went Addi made balloon hats for people while Charlie took photos. Often these encounters took place with folks who had never seen balloons before.

The whole point of this project was "to show people all over the world laughing and having fun, and to emphasize the fact that all human beings are born with the ability to experience joy." Many of the photos from Addi’s and Charlie’s travels were included in the book that comes with the Balloon Hat kit, but (alas) the kit is now sadly out of print (though it does appear you can still purchase copies of it directly from Addi). Kit aside, you can can spend a chunk of time admiring the photos on Addi and Charlie’s Balloon Hat website, which are guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

In the years since his visit here, Addi and Charlie’s travels have become the subject of a feature-length documentary (Balloonhat). Addi has also made balloon hats for 200 in-studio guests on the set of Martha Stewart’s television show ("Martha"), played the balloon bass in a band ("Unpopable"), designed a balloon bikini (which puts the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue to shame), and captured much of this fun and more on YouTube.

I tell ya, when it comes to originality, Addi’s job history puts almost anyone else’s to shame. Nice to think, though, that it includes time spent (however briefly) at Wellesley Booksmith!

Thanks for the memories, Addi!

The best book I got at NCTE has stiff competition from a signed copy of Gloria Whelan’s new novel Parade of Shadows, which I’m looking forward to reading. And it would be hard to beat a signed copy of The Aurora County All-Stars by Deborah Wiles, as it’s one of my favorite books of the year. But sorry, Gloria, Deborah, Patricia Reilly Giff, Pam Muñoz Ryan, Jeff Kinney, Charles R. Smith Jr., Katherine Applegate, Sy Montgomery, Marilyn Singer, Joyce Sidman, Robert Neubecker, T. A. Barron, William Low, Megan McDonald, Linda Sue Park, Peter Sís, and anyone else I’m forgetting. I love your books, but they’re no I Want to Be an Airplane Hostess by Carla Greene. Nor are they I Want to Be a Homemaker, also by Carla Greene. I can’t decide which of these compelling reads I prefer. Fortunately both of them are conveniently bound together in ONE volume! Read one story, flip the book over, and read the other. How handy! How convenient! A girl’s twin aspirations joined together, BFF.

Of course, I didn’t actually pick up this 1960 gem at a publisher’s booth, so I suppose it’s cheating a bit to allow it to take home top prize. But this literary masterpiece WAS given to me at NCTE by my dear friend Tim Decker, who was signing copies of his newest book, Run Far, Run Fast, at the show on Saturday, so I say it qualifies.

Why is this book the best of the ones I took home from the show? Because it sets all the others into the most stark relief—makes them seem that much more valuable, that much more welcome. Thank goodness we’ve moved beyond this point, in terms of quality of writing, quality of content, and quality of message.

Books like this, of the Dick and Jane ilk, paved the way for the reader-friendly titles we have today, of course. But thank goodness they were the paving stones, rather than the bedrock.

(Pair this post with the one that precedes it, about the cons of being tied to a booth at the Nov. 2007 NCTE convention.)

The Pros of Being Booth-Bound at NCTE

1. Being able to sit down.
This gets big points in my book. Those concrete floors are murder on your feet, your knees, your back. Lengthy opportunities to rest your aching dogs are a trade show rarity for those expected to stroll the aisles.

2. Being unencumbered by totebags.
As gratifying as it can be to get great loot, it’s grueling to schlep it around, even for short stretches of time. I did acquire some books this weekend but was grateful that each one made the short trip back to our booth without having to dangle first from my shoulders. The tendency to overload one’s carrying capacity wasn’t quite as evident at NCTE as it is at Book Expo, probably because at BEA most books come for free, or for the price of a small (usually $2) donation. At NCTE books must be purchased, though books at author signings tend to be inexpensive ($2-$5 for paperbacks, $5-$10 for hardcovers), and by the end of the weekend large (and large-ish) publishers are selling off all the books in their booth for a song. It was great to see teachers loading up on fantastic new titles for their classrooms at prices often as low as $2. The most expensive rate I saw books going for by Sunday afternoon was 50% off. The men and women taking full advantage of this clearing house are the ones I saw experiencing the worst shoulder fatigue. I can’t imagine how they managed to cart so many books out of the Javits Center, let alone all the way to their homes, but I suspect their methods involved spare suitcases and/or empty automobiles.

3. Gaining shelf-satisfaction.
This is the same high I get from handselling books in our store—it is so gratifying to see customers’ enthusiasm for books they hadn’t previously known, and even more gratifying to send them home with those books, knowing that they’ll be gifted to some grateful soul or put to regular use in some classroom somewhere. I never got tired of watching people get excited about Gareth’s books. (And I hope I never will!)

4. Avoiding the pitch.
I don’t like being "sold to" in the obtrusive, pushy sense of the word, and wearing an EXHIBITOR badge meant I didn’t have to worry about this. Folks at the pushiest of booths (of which there seemed to be relatively few at this show) didn’t bother trying to corner me or hand me bookmarks promoting their products, which was nice, as I find it tiring to repeatedly smile, say no thanks, and dodge my way quickly out of danger. Thankfully I didn’t see one costumed character at this show, which also helped matters.

5. Feeling the love.
When you’re in a booth and people are repeatedly coming by to marvel at your books, remark about how much they love them, and hand you cold hard cash with which to purchase them, you can’t help but get high from the experience. Time and again teachers came by our booth with praise for Gareth’s Beowulf graphic novel, explaining how much their students loved it and how much easier it made the task of enticing them to read full-text versions of the book. Many others came by having not yet seen Gareth’s books and most of them were thrilled with what they saw. This was especially gratifying because so many of them are purists—Shakespeare and Beowulf afficionados if ever there were. Watching these folks be won over by Gareth’s talents was deeply satisfying.

And then there was the teacher who came by the booth looking visibly moved. She said she could hardly believe that Gareth was there—that she’d been wanting to meet him in person for a couple years now, to tell him that he’d literally saved one of her student’s lives. This kid had been a gangbanger, she said, who was pretty well lost to the streets and completely uninterested in school. After she noticed him doodling on the pages of his notebooks on several occasions, she went looking for something that might interest him artistically and get him hooked enough to take some interest in what she was teaching. An online search brought up Gareth’s self-published edition of Beowulf, which she then ordered multiple copies of for her class. The student she’d been trying to reach was impressed enough by Gareth’s artwork to go looking for his web site, where he read that Gareth had created some of the art by modulating his freehand drawings on the computer. Computers + art. Apparently it was a combination this kid hadn’t heard about before. "You saved his life," this teacher said. "He went on to study computer science."

There wasn’t a dry eye in the booth.

It was worth being booth-bound all weekend just to meet that one teacher and hear her story. Working in a bookstore I have daily contact with customers and get to hear their "this book touched my life in this way" stories on a regular basis, but sitting at NCTE last weekend it occurred to me that my colleagues tied to neighboring booths probably don’t get to hear those as often. This leads me to believe that there’s a great deal to be gained (and learned) from being a regular booth-sitter.

Seeing as how I have these conversations on an (almost) daily basis, I’d still choose to roam the floor over having to remain stationary. I’ll happily do the latter at future trade shows, though—especially if someone’s willing to bring me the occasional cup of overpriced coffee. And a Greek chicken pita sandwich or two.

A week ago I had my first experience at NCTE and my first experience with being tied to a specific trade show booth. It was… exhausting. But perhaps not more so than being a strolling trade show visitor. While the NCTE exhibitor hall is teeny-tiny compared to that of BEA, it’s nevertheless capable of inducing the same exhibit fatigue (both mental and physical) as larger shows. I’ve created a list of pros and cons about being bound to a booth rather than being free to roam the aisles. I’ll start with the cons, and put the pros in my second post (the darn blog tool STILL won’t let me combine them into one!) in the interest of ending on a positive note.

The Cons of Being Booth-Bound at NCTE

1. The Endless Repetition.
Quite possibly the most tiring aspect of my booth-bound experience was the fact that I had to say the same things again and again and again to each person who approached our table. "The guy sitting next to me IS actually Gareth Hinds, the adapter/illustrator of these books. The Candlewick edition of Beowulf is type-set and uses a prose translation of the text. Gareth’s self-published edition is hand-lettered and uses a verse translation of the text. His edition of King Lear uses about half the text of the original play. No, he hasn’t done Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet yet. Yes, Gilgamesh is a great idea. He’s currently working on sketches for an adaptation of The Odyssey" and so on and so on, again and again. Now that I think of it, this situation would have been helped by having more titles… All the more reason for Gareth to get back to the drawing table a.s.a.p.

2. Being Charming, Charming, Charming.
That schmooze fatigue—it’s a killer. It’s hard to be friendly and make small talk at booth after booth when you’re a booth roamer. It’s even harder to muster the same enthusiasm when you’re in a booth, though, being greeted by visitor after visitor, because you don’t have the option of doing otherwise, of letting your smile droop, as it were. If you appear indifferent, the visitors to your booth will probably be the same.

3. Being in it for the long haul.
From set up to tear down, several days later, someone has to be in your booth. Okay, they don’t have to sleep there overnight, but during the hours the trade show is open to visitors, someone has to be there to talk about the books and see that they don’t walk away. At BEA I usually hit my trade show limit by the end of the second day. At NEBA, where the floor is considerably smaller, one day is time enough for me to do things justice. In each of those cases I can usually miss the last day of the exhibition hall, or at least break up my time there with education sessions. But when you’re manning a booth? No can do. The saving grace for my weekend was probably the fact that our booth was small enough that we could get away with having only one of us there. That having been said, neither of us liked to leave the other stranded for long, and each time Gareth left I found myself faced with disappointed "customers," all wondering when the adapter/illustrator would return so that they could meet him and have him personalize their books. This meant that I was the one allowed to take the most frequent breaks, which usually involved me dropping in on some author or illustrator’s signing line, in the case of those friends I hadn’t seen in a while or people I’d always wanted to meet. OR it meant swinging by the booth of my publicist pals to see how they were doing or beg them for a favor of some sort. ("We’re running low on $5 bills—can you spare any?")

4. Packing up before going home.
FINALLY the show ends, the exhibit hall closes. Is your work done? No. Before you head back to your awaiting hotel room or (in our case) friends’ apartment, have fun packing up your books, rolling up your banners, folding up your tablecloths, sealing up your boxes. After you’ve done all this, enjoy finding some way to get them out to your waiting vehicle. Or spending a LOT of cash to ship them homeward. Either way, add another couple hours to the end of your day, because all of this is going to take you a little while.

5. Convention Center Food, Several Times a Day
Ugh. Ick. Ugh. My hot tip of the week: eat at the Agape Cafe the next time you’re at the Javits Center. A Greek outfit where the owners work right there on the premises, it offers food that’s actually quite tasty and feels considerably less "processed" than anything else you’ll find in the convention center. My entrepreneurial scheme of the month: set up a business as a Starbucks runner for booth-sitters. Seriously. When I offered to make a Starbucks run for my Houghton Mifflin pals late Saturday afternoon I realized we booth-sitters were all hitting the same wall at the same time and reasoned that someone could easily be capitalizing on that fact. After you’ve been standing on your feet for two days, talking ad nauseum about the same books and smiling to beat the band, tell me you wouldn’t be crying out for something sweet and caffeinated. And if you couldn’t leave the booth to fetch it for yourself, would you not pay someone to bring it to you? I rest my case.

(Where are the pros of being booth-bound at NCTE? In my next post. Read on!)

This quote is tacked to the door on our buying office:

"In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others."  – André Maurois

Too true…