Book Group Expo 2008: Day One

[fashion_piranha]

The first day of Book Group Expo was today, and it was terribly fun, although I didn't have a chance to talk to too many people because I had to rush off to work before the panels were over.  I will try to put up a full-blown report later this week, but here's some quick notes from today:

- My camera decided it was too much bother to function properly today.  First it ran out of batteries before the convention even started, as I was taking a walk around downtown because I had arrived early so I could get free parking.    I pulled some brand-new batteries out of my bag and stuck them in; nothing happened.  I got my  backup-backup batteries; no dice.  The camera didn't pick up any juice from them at all!  Very frustrating, since the batteries are supposed to be good through March '09 and they were unused.  Also, I did check like ten times that I put them in facing the proper directions, and then I swapped them a couple of times JUST TO BE SURE.  Stupid camera.
So hopefully BGE's official website will put some photos up that I can steal.  Because that just wasn't cool.

- Apparently, the "target market" for book groups is professional women between the ages of 40 and 65.    85% of serious literary readers are women, after all.  I think I spotted only two other people potentially under 30, and one was a guest author.  I was in a sea of middle-aged white women.  Well, that's not fair.  I saw quite a few Asian faces, too, but very few Latino and African-American women.

- Andre Dubus III sure likes to quote people.  I think he must've swallowed several volumes of Bartlett's Quotations as a kid.  Very funny man, tho'.  He got major bonus points for referencing Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" during the opening salon.

- Weirdest entrepreneur in the Marketplace?  That would definitely be the professional bra-fitters ready to help you find your perfect bra size.  It was like stumbling across a Victoria's Secret lingerie display while at the library.  Very weird.  But why not, right?  So a lovely, friendly woman named Maggie helped me determine that my bra size was 32A (which I already suspected, as my chest refuses to grow any larger) but one magical bra was actually a 32B, which I almost had to buy just so that I could claim my boobs were nearing a size of noteworthiness.  And this was probably far too much information for most of you.
(But really, how often do you think about your brassiere while reading?  If the book is a bodice-ripper, it doesn't count.)

- Hundreds of women talking about books and not a single mention of Twilight.  It was delightful and refreshing.

- Convention food, however, was not delightful at all when it's priced at $8.25 for a lousy half-sub sandwich.   What the french, toast?

- Salons attended (to be elaborated on in future post)

• Write and Wrong: The Unreliable Narrator Defines Virtue (Opening Salon): Andre Dubus III and Diana Spechler with Susanne Pari as moderator 
• Historical Friction: Characters in Conflict w/ Maggie Anton, C. W. Gortner, Gail Tsukiyama and Julie Robinson as moderator
• Foodies: Writers eat, Eaters Write (It was right after lunch and I was still hungry!) w/ Erica Bauermeister, Nicole Mones, and Bich Minh Nguyen with Jason Headley as moderator 

- I saw Bruinonia Barry ( The Lace Reader) and Kathleen Kent ( The Heretic's Daughter) as I was heading out, but I didn't have a chance to talk to either of them.  I think they were prepping for their panel Which Witch is Which: Covens and other Cliques, which I am totally bummed that I missed.

Can't wait to go back tomorrow!