The Inkblotter at The King’s English

I just found out (how did I only just find this out!!!) that you can listen to the hilarious, belly-ache producing Children’s Breakfast from BEA with Jon Scieszka, Eoin Colfer, Sherman Alexie, Neil Gaiman, and Judy Blume online.

Not only can you listen to that (though I highly recommend you do that first, even though it is an hour, because it will be one of the funniest and most author-tastic hours of your life), you can listen to tons of other panels as well. If you don’t get to go to these things, this is your chance to get the inside buzz; if you do go to these things, this is your chance to catch up on all the panels you missed.

The Times has finally discovered Stephenie Meyer:

“Twilight” and its successor novels are about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. There seems to be a lot of this going on lately. If you want to become a best-selling novelist, I would definitely advise that you start by making your hero a little bit undead…

The attraction is clearly the vampire hero, who is a perfect gentleman, eternally faithful and — as the author points out repeatedly — quite a hunk. …

Before you make fun of this, I want you to seriously consider whether you’re interested in denigrating people who spend their leisure time actually reading books rather than watching “America’s Got Talent.” …

“Only a vampire, ladies,” said Jessica Valenti, the author of “Full Frontal Feminism.” She worries that in the real world, young men are spending so much time watching pornography on the Internet that they will never be satisfied with normal women and normal relationships.

This sure sounds like trouble to me: A generation of guys who will settle for nothing less than a porn star meets a generation of women who expect their boyfriend to crawl through their bedroom window at night and just nuzzle gently until they fall asleep.

That last bit makes me giggle — though I’m not sure how accurate I think it is. The YA book world seems full of lusty females, who have passions all their own — so much so, in fact, that I sometimes have to give “rating” warnings to concerned parents. What do you think?

KCPW was at our event with Stephen Trimble, last Friday at the downtown Library, for his new book Bargaining for Eden. In case you couldn’t make it (or couldn’t find a seat, considering that by 7:20 p.m. it was standing room only), you can download their podcast here!

One of the greatest feelings in bookselling is discovering a brand new author to obsess over read, and Carol Wiley Cassella is one of my most recent finds! Her debut novel Oxygen was a completely unexpected pleasure to read. Fans of Grey’s Anatomy, House, and ER MUST pick this one up — it’s an operating room drama that does not disappoint.  Cassella manages humanity’s heights and flaws exquisitely; there are no ‘tragically flawed’ characters or heroics, only people at their best and worst. Main character and doctor Marie’s struggles to understand what happened in the operating room and her doubts about her personal life are poignant and heartfelt, and will be immediately recognizable to other women who have put their careers first. As a reader, I’ll be following Cassella’s career with interest; as a bookseller, I can’t wait to introduce her to others!

Shelf Awareness ran an entertaining interview with Cassella today as well; how can you not love an author whose favorite sentence comes out of Lolita?

A “What Are You Reading?” Poll of Our Booksellers (who were in the store at 10:50 a.m. this morning):

• Sue: just finished Out Stealing Horses (”wonderful”) and The Loser’s Guide to Life and Love, currently working on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Supreme Courtship (due out in September), and The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
• Chris: in the middle of Death: A Life (due out in September) and The Pesthouse
• AB: The Two Kinds of Decay (”superb”)
• Bunny: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (”liking it a lot”)
• Anne: A Case of Exploding Mangoes
• Mary: all of Kittredge, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Eat, Pray, Love, and People of the Book
• Jenn (a.k.a. me): just finished Such a Pretty Face (utterly fabulous) and Does This Book Make Me Look Fat? (due out in January), in the middle of Please Don’t Come Back From the Moon, This is the Place, and (Not that You Asked)