BEA Wrap-up……New York. FOOD!

Welcome to part three of my BEA Wrap-up. This one isn’t really about BEA at all. It’s about the most important part of the week for me. THE FOOD. Warning!! This is a long, picture heavy post. Go have a cupcake if you make it to the end.

My friend Kimberly (from Living Fictitiously) gave me a little Gumby keychain and he tagged along for the visit and maybe tried to grab a bite of a few of my desserts. (This is a little inside joke – Gumby is featured prominently in Carolyn Crane’s Disillusionists series – a favorite of mine.) So now you know why the little green guy keeps popping up in the following pictures. Don’t know who Gumby is? –> Gumby Wikipedia



~ My excitement began with snagging tickets for a Colbert Show taping!!!! This was SO much fun!!! SOOOO. Much. Fun!! They don’t allow you to take pictures once you are inside the taping but here are a few pics from the room where the keep you before they let you in. Yup – that’s me. You probably will never see another picture of me again so enjoy. That’s also teeny tiny Gumby in Stephen’s hand.


  








    

My ticket!



Stephen comes out to talk to the audience before taping out of character. The guest was civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis. What an awesome show! They play fantastic music before the show and between breaks.

~ Earlier that day & again after the taping we ate at Zen Palate, a highly recommended vegetarian restaurant. Kevin had Whole Wheat Noodles and Veggies. I had Rose Petals: homemade soy crepes w/wolfberry seeds & garden vegetables in a sweet rice ginger sauce. No clue what most of that is but it was delicious.





~ We also went to Shake Shack. A few times. Because these are my favorite burgers!!!






~ I tried to be a little experimental and went to JAPADOG – Japanese style hotdogs. The experiment was ….interesting. The hotdog (the Terimayo: JAPADOG's Signature Hot Dog: Teriyaki sauce, mayo and seaweed.) was delicious as was the sauce and bun but the seaweed was gross. And I like seaweed so I’m not sure what went wrong there. I would try the other flavors at some point though or get the Terimayo again – just without seaweed.

~ Another show taping! This time for The Daily Show!!! I am OBSESSED with Jon Stewart. I have seen every single episode except one of The Daily Show. I can’t even tell you how happy I was to go to this taping!! Again – you aren’t allowed to take pictures. He got in a heated discussion with his guest Edward Conard – former Managing Director for Bain Capitol and we were there for almost an hour as they kept rolling even after there segment was over. For a Jon Stewart geek like myself – it doesn’t get any better than that.

    

~ After grabbing our tickets we had two hours to kill before the taping. We were headed to Zen Palate again until I discovered people eating outside at the Italian restaurant Il Melograno. This was hands down my best meal in NY. The food was simple, fresh and delicious! We started with a salad and Kevin & I both had pasta dishes. We ended with the BEST tiramisu!!!

  


~ More Italian food at another restaurant we always go to while in NYC – Risotteria. The food is amazing here and they have dozens of varieties of risotto. We had risotto, pizza and tiramisu.

 


CUPCAKES!!!! This is my favorite thing about NYC. There are so many cupcake places. Everywhere!

Tea & Sympathy – I LOVE this place and go every time I’m in NYC. The scones and clotted cream are to die for.



Molly’s Cupcakes: They one the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars (berry and mocha cupcakes)

 

Magnolia Bakery – My favorite cupcakes! (coconut cream, pistachio) So light and fluffy!

   

Vosges Chocolate store: Good lawd! Look at all that chocolaty goodness!



I also want to mention Good Enough to Eat. This is my favorite restaurant to have breakfast when I’m in NYC. I forgot to take a picture first though

Thanks to Tori – The Book Faery – who helped me eat way too much a few of those days and shares my love of cupcakes. She also helped me discover Grand Central Station. OMG. THE FOOOOOD!!! (P.S. You’re not allowed to have classes next year! lol)

WAVES!! Hi! Did you make it to the end of this post?? I'm impressed. Sorry it was so long. I realized it too late and there was no way I was starting this sucker over lol

Until next year.......

BEA 2012 Wrap-up……part deux

You can read part one of my BEA wrap-up right here. That’s just an overview of the whole experience with a few author signing photos and a shout out to all the bloggers I got to meet while I was there.

Today I’m going to talk about a few more events/signings and the thing everyone ask me about the most. The books.

These are the stairs heading to the upper floor. They are decorated every year and this time around it was Cassandra Clare’s Shadow Hunter. It’s almost impossible to get a good picture of the stairs without someone walking on them but you get the idea.

                       

This is the Reached (by Ally Condie) display. Once it was set up everyone climbed inside to have their picture taken to resemble the covers. Cute idea.



There was quite a bit of man candy at BEA this year. Below are two angels to represent Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush Hush series. (sorry the pic is blurry)



Then the big unveiling of the new cover to the last book in the series “FINALE”  (before…..after)

       

Here are a few more author signing pics.



Jeri Smith-Ready signing “Shine”! This was a secret ninja – last minute signing but I found her!



John Green signing “The Fault in Our Stars”. This is the second time I’ve met him at a signing and he’s SO incredibly nice to everyone in spite of the looooong lines! Everyone brought ALL their John Green books to sign. lol



Chris Colfer (from Glee) signing his new book “Land of Stories” I didn’t go to this signing but managed to snap a picture while I went by. Crazy long line for this one!



The “Carnival of Souls” signing with Melissa Marr was another popular one with the lines starting over an hour early. I did manage to snag a copy of this one.



This is the autographing area. I have a TMI story to tell about this. I was at my very last signing for BEA sitting on the floor in the back of one of these lines surrounded by other people. The signing wasn’t starting for another 1/2 hour. You are enclosed in these blue curtain thingies. Someone farted. I was trapped. Not cool. NOT COOL.








BOOKS!
I know this is what you all really want to see. If you are one of those people who hates these things and thinks I’m bragging turn away now………

 
 

I know it looks like I have a few duplicates there but I took multiple pictures before & after shipping so some of the piles got rearranged and books are in multiple pictures. I already unpacked and shelved everything so I can’t take the pictures again.

A few books that caught my eye were:



Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry (I’m reading this right now) Said to be for fans of Simone Elkeles.
Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter – I didn’t have much interest in this one until I started skimming. It looks awesome!
Eve and Adam by Katherine Applegate & Michaek Grant – a dystopian novel that sounds pretty cool.
Breathe by Sarah Crossan – another dystopian. This could be bad – I get dystopian burn out but this sounds too good to pass up.

I’m going to be spotlighting a few of the lesser known titles in future posts. The frenzy at BEA usually focuses on a few MUST HAVE books like Carnival of Souls, Prodigy, Raven Boys etc but there were a lot of books that the publishers were quite excited about that sound amazing.

For my final BEA post coming up next week…..CUPCAKES! Food! The Daily Show! and The Colbert Report!

BEA 2012 Wrap-up……Part 1

I’m back from Book Expo America 2012! I’m still recovering and needed a few days to process and unwind before starting my wrap-up posts.

It’s one of those events that nearly kills you and when you’re in the thick of it almost have a near breakdown but look back on it fondly afterwards and can’t wait to do it again.

This was my third year attending BEA and as always I brought my husband Kevin. I honestly don’t know how anyone accomplishes anything without a Kevin of their own. He’s just the best! He waits in lines patiently, knows all the books/authors, keeps me organized and on schedule. He also really doesn’t want more than 1 or 2 books for himself so that helps since he doesn’t need to go to his own signings. I make sure I find a few good zombie books for him though!

A few things were different this year. They are always adjusting, adapting and changing a few things. Some things make it easier, some things make BEA a clusterf*ck of epic proportions.

It seems to me that BEA and the publishers continually underestimate the popularity of YA books and their authors. The lines to get a YA book or attend a signing are INSANE. Especially for the more popular authors like Mellissa Marr, Lauren Oliver, Veronica Roth etc. Speaking of Veronica Roth….who the heck’s idea was it to put  FOUR popular YA authors at one signing in a booth in the middle of the BEA floor?


Harper’s Dark Days signing powerhouse hour with Elizabeth Norris, Veronica Roth, Bethany Griffin and Aprilynne Pike

Veronica was signing Insurgent along with Aprilynne Pike (Destined), Elizabeth Norris (Unraveling), Bethany Griffin (Masque of the Red Death). People started lining up about an 1 1/2hrs early for that signing and Harper seemed confused as to why we were there or how to keep us from blocking all the other booths. This happens every. single. year.


Harlequin signings with Maria V Snyder, Rachel Vincent, Aimee Carter, Julia Kagawa

Harlequin, who always has multiple author signings packed into a "*themed* hour, seemed to get their act together for the first Teen Hour giving everyone numbers, assigned people to keep the isles clear, and handed out goodies like ARC’s of Gena Showalter’s Alice in Zombeland and Speechless by Hannah Harrington along with swag. Even though you are still trapped in a line for over an hour it does ease the pain to know you’re guaranteed a book at some point. So I was completely baffled that none of the other Harlequin signings had this level of organization. Even other teen themed signings. Again – they were confused when people started showing up.

Oh well….maybe next year – they will understand the enthusiasm for YA.

Having said that – things went much smoother this year overall. I felt like the publishers were much nicer to bloggers, taking the time to explain upcoming releases or buzzworthy new authors. I saw several of the publishers reps talking to new bloggers and explaining their review requests process. That is very different from my experience last year where you said the word “blogger” and received a glare or glazed over look in return.

Books were handed out on a schedule which they had printed out for you at each publisher. Past BEA’s had the publishers dumping books on the floor throughout the day leading to mass hysteria and the infamous biting incidents. This new method really cut down on about 99% of all bad behavior.


Penguin’s bookdrop (aka: giveaway) and author signing booth schedule (sorry about my looming shadow)

It did take some getting used to though. Your day is already tightly (& over) booked because of all the scheduled signings. Adding in scheduled book drops when I didn’t know about them in advance made the first day of BEA crazy. I don’t think I saw my husband for more than 30 minutes all day. We just got our schedules, split up and got stuck in line after line all day. Days two and three went much better once we had the book drop schedules in hand.

I also got to catch up with my blogger pals and meet a few of my Twitter friends for the first time. It was so crazy though that there just wasn’t enough time to spend with everyone which always bums me out.

I got to see Lindsi – Books, Sweets & Other Treats, Pam – Midnyte Reader, Kate – I Just Wanna Sit Here and Read, Tori – Book Faery. And I got to meet for the first time The Norwegian Book Girl, Jen YA Romantics, Amber – The Musings of Almybnenr, Sandy - Scribing Shadows. Nikki – YAReads, Tegan Not Your Faerytale.  (If I’m forgetting anyone I’m SO sorry and please remind me so I can add you!)

I did feel like people were nicer this year and the librarian/blogger rivalry seems to be coming to a close (I hope). I had great conversations with them and booksellers who were really interested in understanding exactly what it is we do and why we do it.

I’ll be posting more about BEA – the singings, the books and of course NYC and FOOD!!!!

P.S. Please forgive any mistakes and typos. I’m still not recovered from the trip and all the things I have to catch up now that I’m home. I hope to resume a regular blogging schedule this week. *crosses fingers*