Authors at Large: Museums, Game Shows, Draw Alongs, Panels.

1. Here's Cristina Henríquez at the Lynden for the paperback of The Book of Unknown Americans. A very nice evening! The addition of attendees from the Hispanic Professionals book club gave us a new audience. The Lynden has just announced upcoming events with Jenny Blum on Wednesday, August 12 and P.K. Duffy on Wednesday, September 16. More info on their website.

2. Coming soon! The Lizzie Skurnick word game. If you have played around with Skurnick's new book, That Should Be a Word: A Language Lover's Guide to Choregasms, Povertunity, Brattling, and 250 Other Much-Needed Terms for the Modern World, you can see that you can't browse the book without turning it into a quiz, asking innocent bystanders, "what would you call a person who is a fierce proponent of natural pregnancies?*" So it wasn't surprising that our event with Skurnick did turn into a game. Not that we're claiming obvious superiority in all things wordy, but Mel, our fielded bookseller, did come in first.

3. Our easel is getting quite a workout of late. When Carson Ellis visited Boswell for her recent book Home, she brought along the mysterious twins Evelyn and Eleanor. While Ms. Ellis read from the book, the twins drew their own images of home. As for the first two books listed on the blog, we've got signed first editions of Home. I'm still convinced this book is going to win something.

Up close, here is what the twins drew...very mysterious!

4. We inherited several folding tables and truth be told, the 8 footer gets a lot of use, particularly as it's light enough to move easily. On the other hand, this 12 foot table is heavy metal (much like the music that was playing at a coffee shop this week, for the barrista's enjoyment) and gets moved out only occasionally. But when you have a five person event like Middle Grade Mania last week, it comes in quite handy. Of course it wound up being scheduled on the the championship game of March Madness, but despite this, it was fairly well attended. This was also practice for a teacher appreciation night, which we're hoping to start doing once each spring and fall. Thank you to Greg Trine, Marcia Wells, Faith Harkey, Steve Arntson, and Stacy DeKeyser for participating.