How to Survive Bookexpo America

My dad and I went up to New York last month for BEA's Power Reader Day. Next year I plan to go for the whole conference. Here's my survival tips: 

1) Wear comfortable shoes. The Javits center is HUGE and most of the exhibitors don't have extra carpeting. I cannot stress this enough. The women wearing heels were not the women who spent their day in lines.

2) Plan ahead of time. BEA publishes the map and schedule in the weeks before. I wrote up a short spreadsheet of when and where authors are signing. You definitely add more to your schedule as the day goes on, but this way you won't miss anything important.

3) Bring some cash and a rolling suitcase. For $3 a bag you can leave the suitcase in a monitored part of the lobby. Throughout the day you can stop by and move your piles of books from your tote to the suitcase.

4) Bring a big and strong tote bag.

5) Bring your phone charger. There were charger "stations" set up by the author stages (actually just power strips on tables, but they worked).

6) Unless you really want the swag, don't bother getting tickets for the author events. The stages are in the middle of the floor. I watched Jim Gaffigan from the perimeter of the stage and had a perfect view.

7) I wouldn't recommend going around with a big group. I wouldn't want to risk missing something important to wait in a line for a book you don't care about.

8) Don't bring books to the conference. Any book signing will include a copy of the book, and you really don't want to carry around more weight than you need to.

9) Follow along and participate with the social media! #Bea13 was huge on twitter, tumblr, facebook, and instagram this year, and I expect it to be the same next year.

Review: Out of the Easy

I'm not going to lie. When I found out I won this on Librarything, I did a dance. Ruta's first book Between Shades of Gray (not the sex book) was absolutely incredible, and Out of the Easy is no different.

Our main character Josie is the daughter of a New Orleans prostitute  and that has followed her around her entire life. At 17, she's done pretty well for herself. She's graduated high school and works at a bookstore in exchange for a place to live. But she wants out. She wants to escape the Quarter and start again. She has her eyes on a college education, which was rare for a  blue collar woman of the time. But with every step she takes forward, the city seems to pull her back.

Like Between Shades of Gray, Ruta excels at describing Josie's world and her friends so that you feel you are there with her but the pages aren't clogged and slow with unnecessary explanations. 

Out of The Easy grabs you from page one and keeps you entertained until the very end. 

Review: The Thief of Auschwitz

The Thief of Auschwitz is the story of Max and his family through their time during the Holocaust and life after.

The story is told through two narrators: Max, and his mother Eidel. With this narration style, the reader is able to learn about life in the men's and women's camps. Men needed to rely on their strength and usefulness to survive, while the women had to resort to more cunning tactics to make it through the day.

I've always been fascinated by novels set during the Holocaust, and this was no different, except for two major issues:

1) Most of the book takes place in Auschwitz, but there are small chapters that take place in present day New York City. The present day scenes are very out of place and confusing. I think they would have been better placed at the end.

2) The parents’ ending was abrupt. Clinch spent 200 pages forming these great characters and there was no closure for them. I would have loved to find out what happened to them after Max escaped. 

This is a must read for any fan of the genre and for anyone who supports self-published authors.

Review: Level 2 (The Memory Chronicles #1)

Felicia is dead. That's not a spoiler, nor a huge cliff hanger reveal.

She hasn't gone to heaven or hell, she's stuck in a giant waiting room. She spends her day watching and sharing her memories on a sort of in-house Youtube with her pod mates. As Felicia starts to get restless for what seems like a future of eternity in this pod, weird things start happening. A friend goes missing, she notices glitches in her memories, she sees a boy she once knew walk by a window that wasn't there a moment ago. Soon after, Felicia finds herself wrapped up in a war between heaven, and those who run Level 2.

Throughout the book we revisit Felicia's life through her memories. She visits them out of order so every time a question about Felicia is answered, three more questions pop up. I found myself much more interested in learning about Felicia and her story than the war and the other residents of Level 2.

Level 2 ends with a pretty definitive final note so I'm curious to see how this turns into a series.