No cute pictures of the kids today. I’m far far away in New York City at the Book Expo – the big trade show for book folks. So, what happens at the book expo? I don’t really know because this is my first time. I’ll try to update this post as I go.

First impressions? We flew in yesterday – pretty good flight – except the whole board the plane, sit on the runway, get back off the plane, then 2 hours later a second plane… you get the picture.

We had dinner last night at the amazing new restaurant ABC Kitchen. It’s Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s newest restaurant and is actually in the famous ABC Carpet and Home flagship store. We’ve carried Jean-Georges cookbooks for years – his book Simple to Spectacular is iconic. Anyway, the food was great. It’s the kind of place where everything is bought somewhere local – or at least within 100 miles or so of the city. Instead of ordering entrees we all shared a bunch of appetizers and a great mushroom and egg pizza. And of course the service was world class. (our server was our friend Liz Elkins – she’ll be famous soon so don’t say I didn’t tell you.)

After dinner we headed to the first book event of the week – a Random House cocktail party. I met some folks face to face that I’ve talked to on the phone for years. Got to talk to Steve Berry who we’re hoping will come back to the store this year – it’s been about five years since he last came to see us. Most exciting to me, however, was meeting Justin Cronin. His book The Passage is going to be huge this summer. It’s a big fat book that is already scheduled to be a Ridley Scott film. I read about 150 pages in various airports yesterday and am hooked – I could always skip the expo and sit somewhere and read…

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