Friday afternoon

I had very little to do with getting Aqueduct Press set up in the Dealers Room this morning. Mostly I stood around and admired the clever new bookmarks Kath had made and snapped pictures of Tom, Kath, and Lynne cutting open boxes and arranging books on the tables, making order out of chaos. And then I had a pleasurable lunch (perch!) with Lesley Hall, after which we visited a store that calls its the Community Pharmacy to buy aspirin-- a pharmacy that prominently features homeopathic remedies in its window and is redolent of the scent the soaps it also sells.

On my return to the hotel and the Dealers Room, I began dispensing Aqueduct's yearly swag for authors attending. (Since I'm an Aqueduct author, I get one of these, too.) Kath made these, using beads that spell out AQUEDUCTISTA. Since Kath and Tom have the sales apparatus working just fine without me, I've been doing nothing but talk to our first visitors to the table. In one such conversation, Margaret McBride told me that she recently counted up all the books on the Tiptree lists-- winners, short list, Honor Books, and long list-- and that are almost 400-- and she's not only read all of them but own copies of most of them. That made me recall how I did that myself for the first few years, but somehow eventually fell behind...

Oh, and by the way: Karen Joy Fowler is organizing a book club for reading Tiptree winners and Honor Books. There's an ad in this year's souvenir book about it. It says that to join the Tiptree Bookclub, one needs to "send an email tobookclub@tiptree.org and tel us why you'd like to join the bookclub. You will be enrolled and given a password with which you can participate in the on-line discussion."

Now I've come upstairs to lie down a little, but I thought I might first post a few pictures. I particularly wanted to get some pictures up showing the full complement of stock on display.