[LMB] (News & Chat) Beguilement a Book Sense pick for November

[Lois McMaster Bujold]

Hiya --

    I am pleased to report that _The Sharing Knife: Beguilement_ is one 
of the Book Sense picks for November 2006.  This is a monthly list of 
recommended reads from independent booksellers.  _The Curse of Chalion_ 
was also a Book Sense pick, way back when.  An excellent list to be on; 
I see _Beguilement_ was one of the few F&SF genre books to make the cut, 
this month's outing.  This is an especially interesting list because 
it's chosen for content, not sales numbers, and it cuts across genre and 
other boundaries to encompass a huge range of books.

http://news.bookweb.org/booksense/4743.html

    I see _Fleeing Fundamentalism_ is also on the list; I sat across 
from this author, Carlene Cross, at one of the tables at the Author's 
Tea last weekend at the Midwest Bookseller's Association meeting in St. 
Paul.  She, and her book, sounded exceptionally interesting.

    I suppose I should describe the tea.  ( It wasn't open to the 
general public, so I hadn't put it on my posted travel schedule.)  It's 
set up as a chance for booksellers to meet authors of upcoming hot 
works.  Publishers send their authors to the meeting (I was easy, being 
local); they have booths, signing lines to give sample books to the 
booksellers, and this tea, which is a chance for the bookstore folks to 
meet writers if not one-on-one, at least six-on-two.  The room was set 
up with about 15 round tables, and every twenty minutes or so the 
writers would switch to a different table, so about 24 booksellers all 
told got a shot at each writer.  (Comparisons with the Mad Hatter's tea 
party were inevitable and amusing.)   It was especially helpful for me 
to listen to the other writers talk about their books and pick up their 
techniques, since I find talking off-the-cuff about my work very 
difficult.  From the first table to the fourth, I could watch myself get 
better at the task, as I got to see what worked.  Enough signed copies 
of each writer's book were supplied to each of the tables on their 
rotation so that all the booksellers a writer talked to would have one.

    Thoughtfully, the organizers fed the writers a separate tea before 
the main one, so we didn't have to try to talk with our mouths full.  It 
also gave the chance to round us all up, pre-sign the books, and supply 
us with our instructions.  I had a good time; to find out how I sounded, 
one would have to chase down one of the booksellers in our little 
audience, but I hope I did OK.

    Ta, L.





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