Weekend Update: Book Expo Insanity, Part the Second

Milk Eggs Vodka is an enjoyable book, well-designed.

Saturday

Saturday I tackled the BookExpo with my pal (and road trip companion!) Antony Van Couvering. It was overwhelming. Javitz center is a stinking pit of stinkingness and I hate it. Still, I did see a lot of cool stuff. I spent a good chunk of time at F+W Publications. My dear friend (and favorite former boss) David Steward is their big cheese CEO/Publisher and I was excited to spend a bunch of time with him and see what’s keeping him busy. And busy he is. F+W is a huge company with a bunch of divisions. Most notable to my readers (and me!) is that they’re the publishers of How, I.D. and Print magazines. There’s a How line of books, many of which I drooled over. David gave me a copy of one particularly cool title, Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found. They also have a lot of alterna-knitting titles, which have been added to my mental gift list but are not from me since I haven’t a crafty bone in my body. (The books are nice though.) Also also, two cool photo books produced by their British subsidiary David & Charles: Bible Road: Signs of Faith in the American Landscape and a coming-soon book of photos of Americans and their gun collections which is creepy weird and good. (I will dig up title info and update the post with it soon, it’s all escaping me at the moment and the book’s down at the gallery.)

Cover Image for Alec Soth’s upcoming book Dog Days, Bogota.

Wandering the aisles on my own was really just overwhelming. So many things to see and so many slow-moving, heat-emanating annoying people. It was a madhouse. I enjoyed my time at D.A.P, especially because I got to hold Alec’s upcoming Dog Days Bogota in my hot little hands.

I was also so excited to ogle the fine design of the books by small indie Meliville House Publishing. I love their edition of Bartleby the Scrivener (My favorite short story, evah. Well it’s neck in neck with Baldwin’s absolutely brilliant Sonny’s Blues [excerpt here]) Anyhow, Meville publishes awesome stuff that’s beautifully designed and the woman I chatted with there, Valerie, was actually friendly and helpful, which was something of an anomaly. Most people were downright rude! I want to blame Javitz, but it was annoying nonetheless.

Core Memory a beautiful designed bit of pure geek bliss, brought to you by Chronicle Books.

We also went to the Chronicle Books booth where after some considerable effort I managed to find someone to help me track down Core Memory a bad-ass book produced under the tutelage of the talented and excellent Alan Rapp, fellow RSF reviewer and all around smart dude. I’d seen it already at the photo eye Bookstore in Santa Fe, where I also met the photographer Mark Richards, but I was excited for Antony to check it out. (He was too!)

The Expo was a good thing to see, but I can’t say that the experience was big fun overall. On the plus side: I loved catching up with David, getting some more insight into the book biz and seeing some titles I’ve been keen on getting a look at and it did get me thinking… I’d love to figure out a way to stock a small selection of books at the gallery. Hmm.

All Expo’d out, A. and I repaired to the LES/Nolita area - interns Rachel and Mike were manning the gallery, working on preparations for a Summer art fair we’re doing and co-crafting a post to the jb blog, which has been woefully neglected. Go ahead and read the fruits of their labors, Upcoming Excitement!. Satisfied that all was well in gallery land, A. and I went off for a delicious refreshing lunch at Cafe Gitane and then I went home to collapse for a few hours before the very busy evening that was in store. (Are you tired yet? I am.)

Saturday night and Sunday, coming soon…