Sure Sarvas may be crowing about his bilingual edition of Waiting for Godot, and his fine score of William Logan's collection of criticism, courtesy of Princeton University Press, but we feel fairly certain we got the swag bag score of the century with The Adventures of Captain Underpants, the first epic novel by Dav Pilkey. This is the "Collectors' Edition" in hardback with 3-D cover and bonus CD. The look on the face of our 8 year old was all we needed to know we scored the biggest crowd pleaser of them all. (Though the matching tote was still high on our list—anybody out there have an extra Capn U. totebag??)
We had a similar gleeful expression ourselves when we landed a beautiful Moleskine notebook, courtesy of Kikkerland/Moleskine company representatives Jeroen Kuiper and Laura Kellner. We stopped by the booth with the engaging Lauren Cerand who interviewed Kuiper for Moleskinerie, one of the coolest product fan sites going.
A few other titles also found their way into our bag and will probably serve as review fodder in the coming months for one of our many freelance gigs. Stay tuned.
Two authors personally handed us their books outside of the crazed BEA exhibit halls. The funny and delightful Katherine Lanpher gave us a copy of Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move. Her story of midlife and reinvention looks to be right up our alley. We also met Alan DeNiro who handed us his own copy of his promising new collection, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead . The first story (the only one we've read so far) "Our Byzantium," made us believe in second person storytelling again.
More info on parties and photos to follow.
Sounds like you snagged some good stuff! Was great to meet you this weekend. Hopefully, you'll keep me up to date on all the literary goings on while I'm in DC this summer.
Posted by: Max | May 22, 2006 at 10:54 PM
Yes, I've become quite the swag hag.
D.C. in summer? Not our finest season, but I will send all cool literary happenings your way.
It was great to meet you at the party! Wendi
Posted by: thb | May 23, 2006 at 01:11 AM
(Wish I'd had a tote bag as sturdy as the one in this picture!) Wendi, it was great to see you, and the litblog party was the highlight of it all.
Posted by: C.M. Mayo (aka "Madam Mayo") | May 23, 2006 at 01:54 AM
I've read about half of the Deniro and it's a good haul Wendi!
Posted by: Dan Wickett | May 23, 2006 at 08:44 PM