The Midnight Bookworm: BEA Wrap-Up: Day 1 (6/5)

Photos from BEA can also be found on The Midnight Bookworm's Facebook fan page (they may be easier to see on there, and there's more)

I had originally planned on writing up individual posts for each day of BEA the evening after each day's events. However, when I got home every night last week I was so exhausted from running around BEA that I decided I’d just do them later. Today seemed like a good day to start, seeing as it's exactly one week after the event and it seems like many bloggers are posting their “Mailbox Monday” type posts as BEA editions this week. So anyway, here’s the beginning of my BEA wrap-up with all the goodies I got :) (this is just day 1 of BEA, days 2 and 3 will come in the next two days)

Tuesday was an early morning again to catch the train into the city. When we got in we checked our bags and headed up to level 3 for the exhibits. The Carnival of Souls army was out already by the time we got up to the line to get in.

Since this year was my first BEA, I essentially had no clue what was going on, so I missed all of the first day’s galley drops at 9AM (most of which must have taken a ton of time to set up because they were almost all circle stacks that were pretty high).

Walking around the exhibit hall was completely overwhelming. I had an Excel spreadsheet listing all of the books I definitely wanted to get (most were signing events that I had found on the BEA website). At 11, the Harlequin teen hour was starting so my parents and I started milling around the booth around 10:30 so we’d get a good spot in line. I saw a group of girls talking to one of the Harlequin people about where the line would start, so I kinda stalked them so I’d be behind them (at the front of the line). That’s where I met Tegan and Tash, who I pretty much followed around for the rest of the day because our schedules were pretty much the same. Tegan & I stuck together for the rest of the week, which was great and we even found out we only live like 20 minutes from each other. We found a bunch of books by accidentally being in the right booth at the right time (like Wake by Amanda Hocking in the MacMillan booth during the time of Gennifer Albin’s Crewel signing), as well as getting to many of the books we had marked as “must get” on our pre-made schedules.

I don’t think I felt much less intimidated by the size of the exhibit hall by the end of the day, but I ended up with some awesome titles! Tegan & I also got T-shirts for “The Survivors” series by Amanda Harvard. (Pictured below: All swag from Day 1… the shirt is down at the bottom)

After the event, we had planned to get to go to the Teen Author Carnival. The Javits Center however, had other plans for us. There’s a really big sign outside the center that says “TAXI LINE” so that people can line up where the taxis can drive into the circle and line up at the curb. Apparently because of the buses, Javits (or BEA, or some other idiot) decided that taxis weren’t allowed in at the end of the show, only the shuttle buses that went around the city. We only knew one shuttle route – to Penn Station – because that’s the only one we’d used in the morning. So we had to go to Penn Station to get a taxi from there to get to the Library where TAC was being held. BEA must have hired a third party bus company to run extra shuttles at the end of the day because we had a different company’s bus taking us to Penn Station. So we get on this shuttle and the driver starts asking the guy that’s directing the buses how to get to Penn Station! Like WHATTTT?! What person who’s driven anywhere in NY before DOESN’T know how to get to Penn Station? The 8th & 31st street stop comes up (right next to Penn Station) and the driver blows right past it. The entire bus starts screaming because people had planned on catching trains that were leaving in like 5 minutes, so the driver pulled over right away and let us off randomly at the side of the road. Finding a taxi wasn’t so bad though, (my mom’s not the jump into traffic for a taxi type so we had to go next to the train station where the taxis were already lined up). I figured if I told the taxi that we needed to go to the library (even just a branch) they’d know where it was… false. Apparently, you MUST have a street intersection for the taxis to know where the hell they’re going.

After all this fun, we headed to a little pizza place near the Jefferson Market Library before the Teen Author Carnival. My parents and I were totally exhausted before TAC even started, but we stayed for the first panel so that I could meet Jeri Smith-Ready & get her to sign my copy of Shine (which was totally awesome)!!

My mom’s advice to NYC: When you know you have out of town guests coming, clean up the city! At least just from the train station to the Javits Center… the view was not fantastic. The city looks pretty run down in that area.

At the end of the day, my haul was really heavy and pretty obnoxious to take on the train back home. I’m very glad I had my parents with me or I’d have been in some trouble with those bags (well, I wouldn’t have had near as many books I suppose).

These are all the tote bags I got during day 1… the Angry Birds one that my dad picked up was probably my favorite. I also love the Clifford one because I was able to get my picture taken with Clifford at Scholastic’s booth! (I’ll have that picture on the blog’s Facebook page soon)