I arrived in DC on Wednesday afternoon, with some time for kill sight-seeing. Here are some pictures I took while exploring the Mall. That night I attended the Emerging Leaders meeting and met Jessica Stockton for the first (and definitely not the last) time as well as many other really nice people. Thursday I spent at panels trying to broaden my horizons as both a bookseller and a blogger. The show floor opened on Friday and I imagine is sort of like the Oklahoma land rush of 1889, everyone racing in trying to grab some attention–and some galleys. The publicists waiting in their booths, eager to hand out the latest novel or memoir or whatever to the grasping hands. I had appointment with various publishers, so I didn’t get an chance to wander the floor at all. I began the evening at the LBC party. Here’s some of the pictures from the evening (a couple of photos in). Most of us left there for the Public Space/Small Beer Press/Melville House/Bomb magazine party a few blocks away. Where our party was rowdy , smoky, and noisy (due mostly to Mr. Segundo I might add), their party seemed more hip, but just as fun. I met David Kipen of the San Francisco Chronicle and the NEA! After some dinner, I went with some great booksellers, James and Laura from Shaman Drum, to a party out by Politics & Prose. This is an annual party where all the booksellers let down their hair (if they’ve got it) and let lose.

Since I was attending the Booksense breakfast the next morning at 8 am, I went home fairly early (okay, 1:30 am). Being slightly tired didn’t stop me from enjoying Barack Obama, Amhy Sedaris, and John Updike that morning. After that, it was back to the floor for more appointments with publishers and some exploring. I went to a cocktail party thrown by Holt celebrating some of their Fall authors. I met Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horowitz, who seemed very nice. After that, I went a few blocks to Jose Andres’ restaurant Zaytinya for the Ecco anniversary dinner thrown by press starter Daniel Halpern. Authors in attendance? Nell Freudenberger, Daniel Handler, Joyce Carole Oates, Robert Stone, and Leonard Cohen—yes I got to meet Leonard Cohen, though only briefly to my disappointment.

After a good night’s sleep, feeling refreshed, Amanda (my co-worker) and I returned to the show floor for more meetings. At about 1 pm, we had had enough. On Sunday, most people are packing up and attendance is way down, but even that did not discourage us from getting outside to enjoy the sunshine. We headed to Dupont Circle, home of Kramerbooks. Sitting around the fountain in the sun did much to restore my energy. I had dinner at a wonderful French restaurant Bistrot Du Coin, which is in the area with 2 great booksellers. We met up with other booksellers to enjoy the nightlife a bit. I have to say that Kramerbooks is quite the hotspot on a Sunday night. A bar in a bookstore! How awesome.

Each year, after BEA officially closes, a group called IBC, or the Independent Booksellers Consortium, meets the day after. We all stay at the same ABA hotel and meet in different groups to discuss the world of bookselling. It’s perhaps my favorite part of the convention each year (okay, I’ve only gone twice now, but still). It’s a great forum to discuss changes in the industry, to exchange ideas, and to just gossip a bit.

And finally, late last evening, I arrived home, weary and with sore feet, thinking that I really love this book world, small as is may be. My only regret is that I didn’t get to spend more time with bloggers. I did get to meet Jessica, Carolyn, Ed, Max, Matt, and many others (sorry if you’re not listed here. Anyone who met me, feel free to chime in). Others have blogged more extensively about their experiences at BEA and I will try to put together a more comprehensive post about that tomorrow.

Hello again. Sorry that I’ve been remiss in posting about Book Expo. There’s no free wifi in the DC Convention center, so we can only post back at the hotel, but with all of the parties at the end of the day, who has to time to write? Regardless I will fill in the blanks and report about what I’ve seen here, what’s coming in the Fall and who I have met (Leonard Cohen!). Back soon.

The ABA announcd the 2006 Books Sense Book of the Year Awards at last night’s Tenth Annual Celebration of Bookselling. Here were the winners:

Nonfiction: Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Roughcut) by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

Fiction: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Children’s Illustrated: Zen Shorts by Jon J Muth

Children’s Literature: Inkspell by Cornelia Funke

Among other awards, the Publishers Weekly Bookseller of the Year award went to our friends at Northshire Books in Manchester, Vermont. As former winners of this award, we at Harvard Book Store know what a thrill it is to have your excellence recognized by our peers — Congratulations to everyone at Northshire!

In Virgina Woolf’s classic essay “A Room of One’s Own,” she recounts a luncheon at Oxbridge where the excellent food and the flushed wineglasses have led to a place where there is “no need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company—in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one’s kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window–seat.”

Dinner at the International Spy Museum didn’t quite live up to these heights, but it was still lovely nonetheless. I was seated between Karen Rinaldi, the publisher of Bloomsbury Books, and author Walter Mosley, whose book from that publisher (I can’t remember the name!) comes out next February. He described it to me as an existential sex novel; it made for some rather….interesting dinner conversation. (I’ll admit that I brought back a galley of the book.) I also met William Boyd, a British novelist that my colleague Bookdwarf is a big supporter of. Earlier in the day, I had picked up a copy of Boyd’s new novel Restless (coming out in September from Walker Books), and became engrossed with it during the Metro ride back to the hotel. Bookdwarf had me get a copy signed for her — I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get my copy signed if we can convince the publisher that they should send Boyd to Cambridge. Even just talking to him for a few minutes, I could tell that he’d be a riveting reader.

The evening ended at a crowded party in a bar next to Politics and Prose, the famous DC bookstore. A lot of us independent booksellers ended up in the parking lot out back, drinking and swapping gossip about the dinners we’d just come from, and figuring out our schedules for the next few days. It was a relaxing way to end the day.