Wednesday, June 13, 2012

A night with Unbridled Books!

I'm a devoted fan of Unbridled Books.  They are a small elegant publisher of authors like Emily St. John Mandel and Timothy Schaffert, writers I adore.


And I'm not the only one! The entire state of Kentucky appears to be a fan!



Last night Unbridled Books was the guest of Greenlight Bookstore and we did not miss the chance to see four of their authors in person.

Our posse included Brooks Sherman (seen at the far end of the row, madly finishing a book he picked up at BEA so he could give it to me for my subway ride home); FPLM author and fellow Emily St. John Mandel fan Sean Ferrell; Soho marketing goddess Meredith Barnes; Erica and Laura. If you met me at the Backspace conference you also met Erica and Laura. They're the latest volunteer minions! So far, they seem to like us!




The Unbridled lineup was stellar! We had to buy all the books of course and order the one that wasn't available.

From left to right:

Edward Falco, author of most recently THE FAMILY CORLEONE (not an Unbridled title) and also ST. JOHN OF THE FIVE BOROUGHS  (the book he read from at this event.)

Richard Kramer, author of THESE THINGS HAPPEN

Greg Michaelson, Unbridled publisher and editor

Janyce Stefan-Cole, author of HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

Emily St. John Mandel, author of most recently THE LOLA QUARTET.



Each author read just an enticing snippet from their work then dove into the Q&A. I have such mixed feelings about Q&A: it can be great to see authors talk about different things, but I usually just want to run home and start reading their books!

Case in point from THE LOLA QUARTET:

"Anna had fallen into a routine, or as much of a routine as a seventeen-year-old can reasonably fall into when she's transient and living in hiding with an infant. ... There was a plastic shopping bag duct-taped to the underside of the stroller. It held a little under one hundred eighteen thousand dollars in cash."

I bravely stayed through the Q&A, and the trip to Habana Outpost after the event for cubano sandwiches and mojitos. I even stalwartly conversed with Mer-Bear on the train home. But let me tell you this: I dove into THE LOLA QUARTET so fast when I got home that the font spun.

And all I have to say is this: Emily St. John Mandel, please write me a note for the office cause I'm going to be late today and it's ALL YOUR FAULT.

I was very delighted to discover that Emily's agent is Katherine Fausset, whom I met at Muse in the Marketplace recently and gave me some great ideas about short stories.


And if you want to join us for our next round of festivities at Greenlight, you can bet we'll be there on Monday 6/18 for Jess Walter. Oh yes indeed!

8 comments:

Ali Trotta said...

Love this post. I'm going to check out these books. Plus, yay for photos of the event!

I wish I could make the one on the 18th. *pouts*

Thanks for sharing!

Leah said...

As is frequent, this post makes me homesick for the tri-state area.

But I'm coming home this summer!! So going to have to keep an eye on literary events in the city for the time when I'm there!!

Thanks for the notes and tip and pics - looks like a great time!

Colin Smith said...

Can the US center of publishing please move to NC so I can go to events like this? :)

Are you on Goodreads, Janet? I'm trying to keep up with your book recommendations and I'm losing track of them all! :)

Janet Reid said...

Colin, my LibraryThing account lists only books I've read BUT I will try to tag each post about books with "Books" and you can find them by clicking "books" in blog posts sorted by category found on the left side of the blog.

Stuart Neville said...

I had the great pleasure of meeting Emily St John Mandel in Paris, where we were hosted by our French publisher Rivages. I'm looking forward to reading Last Night in Montreal.

Janet Reid said...

Yes Stuart, she mentioned that and the odd sound you hear when you tilt your head to the left is me keening with envy at these author trips to Paris. Clearly I need to chaperone one (or more!) of the The Fabulosity to Paris VERY soon.

And don't get me started on RATLINES.

Emily St. John Mandel said...

Yeah, the Paris situation is crazy. I sort of feel like I won the foreign rights lottery.

Stuart, it was a pleasure to meet you too, and Janet, thank you again for coming to the Greenlight event! I feel that I need to figure out how to draw a shark for the next time I inscribe a book to you.

Janet Reid said...

Emily, here's how I draw a shark:

~~~~^~~~~