Relflections before venturing to BEA Tomorrow

Preemptive BEA Reflections 

 Tomorrow, I depart for BEA, and hopefully I'll continue seeking out new methods of improving this blog. By talking with other bloggers sometimes, I learn that a lot of the stressful elements of blogging are pretty universal feelings. Having books that are so mediocre that one can't possibly express their feelings about it is very difficult. How do you go about writing a review for a book that you get to "page 10," and suddenly find yourself feel uninterested in the author's prose? Yes, the premise might be so irresistible that it makes you offer to review it, but the writing itself makes all the difference for me in the end. Maybe, the premise is truly not enough to judge a book by.

   As I scan through the authors appearing tomorrow, I am positively overwhelmed. This is my third year at Book Expo America, and the experience still feels largely frustrating. Planning for it can be the most unexciting bit. I've seen some very helpful blog posts about "What to pack?" and "How to organize what places to go to?"
 I'm totally not good at that sorta of stuff. Once I enter the venue, the frenetic pace of the event itself makes me feel very overstimulated to the point of forgetting things quickly. My schedule and all my organizational pieces I put together are soon abandoned by the mad rush of morning people flitting from stand to stand in search of the most desirable Advance Reader Copy. It feels so terribly disorganized and serendipitous.

   Thankfully, the BEA website is slightly more organized than previous years. It is still largely overwhelming because this information is void of any information about the actual books. I organize my list therefore by author, and eventually I learn from Facebook or other blogs that these authors are not necessarily giving away a book that I want. Therefore, I start from square one once again to figure everything out. Why is there no website with the actual books listed?? Its just so damn confusing. Then, there is the feral pack of book hunters that infiltrate the entrance at about 9:30am every morning. I still have not discerned their pattern and where they receive their intelligence about stands to go to. For this one year, I might migrate away from the morning pack of book hunters and slowly seek out books that I might actually want to read. Its a lot more relaxing that way. For the last two years, everything I received from the early morning rush for free items was mostly undesirable items that I impulsively picked up. I thinks its better to be a bit more judicious and actually seek out books that one would actually read.

   Anyways, the updates will continue sometime on Thursday. On the right side of my blog there is a link to my Twitter account. Hopefully, I'll be making updates about BEA throughout the day on both Tuesday (June 5th) and Wedneday (June 6th).