Cliffs Notes

Booksellers, Start Picking Roomates – Hotel ABA, in Hollywood this year for BEA is already sold out and the ABA is creating a wait list. Can you believe that? Nothing about the show or the ABA programming has even been announced (OK, we announced Lewis Black yesterday) and yet the hotel is already jammed. Bookselling this Week covers it here.

Good Con, Great Guy - Jim Demonakos runs Emerald City ComicCon in Seattle and Comic Book Resources did a nice interview with him here. I know Jim in his role as the guy who isn’t Bill or Gene at the librarian comic site Unshelved. He’s a good guy who runs a pretty killer con – I don’t know what he does exactly at Unshelved, but if he keeps the lights on for Bill and Gene and runs a con you know he's quite the yeoman.

Only Interesting to Me? I just finished The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History by Jim Walsh (I was reading it on and off while juggling a few other books) and freaking loved it. Again, if you don’t know about The Replacements, then I’m very sorry for you. Quoted in the book is David Carr of the New York Times who runs a blog called Carpetbagger, has a new book out this fall (if I remember correctly) and apprently has some ties to a really cool band from Minneapolis.

On My Nightstand – The Editor in Chief and I spent a night in Atlantic City this week (I now refer to it simply as The AC) to catch Don Rickles (who was extremely funny, but either I can’t repeat the jokes here, or they invovled sexual innuendo that was written in the 50’s and I didn’t really get it, or didn’t want to think too hard about it considering Rickles is 85) and it became clear to me that The AC is the leopard print clothing capital of New Jersey. Think about that, it’s really saying something. Anyway, after seeing the green felt of the tables it made me want to grab Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker by James McManus off my shelf where it’s been perched since Len Vlahos of the ABA hand sold it to me at Third Place Books in Seattle late last year. One chapter in and I’m hooked. Damn, it opens with drugs, sex and murder….I think it won the Caldecott when it came out…..

-L