I can’t quite figure out where the month of May is going. In four days I”ll be on my way to New York City to attend Book Expo America, the publishing industry’s biggest event of the year. This will be my fourth trip to BEA, but I still never really feel prepared.

I’ve been slowly going through the jam-packed schedule to pick out the books and events I’m looking forward to this year.

I’ll be arriving in New York City on Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday is BEA Bloggers, a day of programming that’s supposed to be focused on book blogging. I went to BEA Bloggers two years and really, really wasn’t impressed with the result. I’m hoping that a couple of years of feedback will have improved the programming and general focus of the conference to be on things bloggers want to hear about rather than the things publishing wishes bloggers to want to hear about. I’ll keep you posted.

My plan is to spend Thursday and Friday up at Javits going to book signings and education sessions. I don’t have a huge list of “must grab” books, but I am excited about a few:

• Daring: My Passages by Gail Sheehy (Table 19)
• The Men We Reaped by Jesmyn War (Booth 1749)
• Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by A.S. King (Table 15)
• Dangerous Odds by Marisa Lankester (Booth 1426)
• The Memory of After by Lenore Appelhans (Table 18)
• Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer (Table 3)
• The Three by Sarah Lotz (Table 16)
• A Deadly Wandering by Matt Richtel
• On Immunity by Eula Biss
• Geek Sublime by Vikram Chandra

Another big part of BEA is the Education Sessions, basically panel discussions about different aspects of publishing. I didn’t get to may when I was at BEA in 2012, but I’m hoping to get to several this year as timing permits. Here are a few that caught my attention:

• How to Reach Book Consumers: Could the Best Campaigns Have Been Ever Better (Thursday, 9:30 a.m.)
• Goodreads 201: Advanced Tips for Driving Book Discovery (Thursday, 1 p.m.)
• Beyond Authors: Self-Publishing and the “New” Agents (Thursday, 2 p.m.)
• Sourcing the Crowd: New Methods of Finding Authors and Engaging with Readers (Friday, 9:30 a.m.)
• Girl Books, Boy Books, Gender Hooks (Friday, 11 a.m.)
• Journey of a Book: From Writer to Reader (Friday, 1 p.m.)
• Discoverability: How to Target New Digital Audiences (Friday, 2:30 p.m.)

And finally, you can also catch authors and panels at a couple of stages up on the expo floor. These are interesting (and a great way to rest your feet for awhile). If the timing works out, I’m going to try to head to these panels:

• BEA Memoir (Uptown Stage, Thursday, 3 p.m.)
• The Best in Fall 2014 Graphic Novels (Uptown Stage, Thursday, 4 p.m.)
• Hot Fall Fiction 2014 (Friday, Downtown Stage, 10 a.m.)
• Women of Contemporary Fiction (Downtown Stage, Friday, 1:30 p.m.)

All that listed, so much of my past experience of BEA has depended on my mood. If lines are too long or crowds are too big, I will find something else to do. And some of my favorite books from the conference have been titles I picked up just casually chatting with representatives at the various books in the expo floor. So really, who knows what the conference will look like — that’s part of the fun!

Title: The $11 Billion Year: From Sundance to the Oscars, an Inside Look at the Changing Hollywood System
Author: Anne Thompson
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2014
Publisher: Newmarket for It Books
Acquired: From the publisher for review consideration
Rating:

Review: Why do some movies succeed while others fail? How does marketing — domestically and across the globe — impact the financial and critical reception for a given film? How do low-budget indies and studio blockbusters actually get made? These are some of the questions that entertainment journalist Anne Thompson attempts to answer in her book The $11 Billion Year.

The $11 Billion Year is a look inside a little more than one year of the movie business, starting with the Sundance Film Festival in January and following through to the 85th Academy Awards the next February. In case your memory of movies is as bad as mine, the Best Picture nominees that year were Argo (the winner), Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark Thirty. Other blockbuster movies included The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games and Skyfall.

Although Thompson’s choice of 2012 for her year in film was based, in part, on when she wanted to write this book, it turned out to be a good exemplar of a year — the 2012 domestic movie box office brought in a record-breaking amount, $11 billion (about 8.4 percent over the previous year). It was also a year of major retirements (George Lucas), a growing shift of actors and producers to television, and the ongoing tension of digital media.

A bit like Console Wars (which, coincidentally, was also published by It Books), The $11 Billion Year is a business book informed heavily by the characters in the industry. Thompson brings her years of experience as a critic and a blogger (Thompson on Hollywood) to look at the global business of movies as well as the specific people making waves in the film industry today. It’s a comprehensive and largely interesting overview of how Hollywood works and doesn’t work today.

I really enjoyed the way this book was structured. Thompson was smart about her focus — the nine Best Picture nominees — and how those movies can tell bigger stories about movies that succeed and fail. Choosing these movies offered a balance between the extreme ends of the film spectrum, $500 million blockbusters and low budget indies. Not knowing much about the movie business, I was fascinated.

My one critique of the book is that it got a little repetitive at the end. Her final chapter, “Ten Things That Changed the Oscar Race” is largely a repeat of observations from the preceding chapters. I would have rather closed with a little broader picture of the industry and some educated predictions about the future — topics covered briefly in the afterward. Overall, I think this is an interesting book for people curious about how movies are made and encourage you to pick it up if you get the chance.

A Little Extra Reading

In the introduction of the book, Thompson notes that this book was inspired by another classic piece of entertainment reporting. Since I finished the book, I’ve stumbled across a bunch of books related to movies and entertainment that I wanted to share:

• The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway by William Goldman — the book that Thompson mentions, a look at a season on Broadway
• The Devil’s Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco by Julie Salamon — an inside look at the production of a movie version of The Bonfire of the Vanities
• The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell — I saw them speak at the LA Times Festival of Books and they made this sound fun
• Tales from Development Hell: The Greatest Movies Never Made? by Dave Hughes — essays on how even the most promising movie development projects can fall apart

Like many readers, I love the feeling of getting so caught up in a book that you just can’t put it down. That’s what happened with both of the books I’m sharing with you today, We Were Liars by e. lockhart and Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

We Were Liars by e. lockhart

A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

It’s tricky to say much about We Were Liars without risking giving away the Big Plot Twist, so this will be an especially mini mini-review. Cadence Sinclar, a member of the “beautiful Sinclair family” spent every summer of her childhood on her family’s private island off Martha’s Vineyard. In Summer Fifteen, Cadence has an accident that destroys her memory and leaves her basically an invalid. In Summer Seventeen, Cadence returns to the island for one last summer where she tries to figure out what happened.

This book is going to get talked about this summer, I think for good reason. The writing is just beautiful — sharp, smart, sometimes funny — and the story sucks you in immediately. I read this one in a single long evening, staying up well past my bedtime to finish it. It’s really good. If you’ve read the book, I recommend checking out Nymeth’s (things mean a lot) discussion post on the book and the marketing Tumblr made for the story.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon away from life as a San Francisco web-design drone and into the aisles of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after a few days on the job, Clay discovers that the store is more curious than either its name or its gnomic owner might suggest. The customers are few, and they never seem to buy anything — instead, they “check out” large, obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. Suspicious, Clay engineers an analysis of the clientele’s behavior, seeking help from his variously talented friends. But when they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, they discover the bookstore’s secrets extend far beyond its walls.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a book basically written for book people who also love the Internet. Robin Sloan is really smart about mixing the old and the new, the nostalgia for books and bookstores with a reverence for the power technology can have. The book is a bit of an adventure story, a bit of a mystery, a bit of a romance and a bit of a love letter to readers. I started this one at the end of the Readathon in April and finished it within a couple days. It’s a fun story although perhaps not as ultimately mind-bending as the setup suggests that it might be.

Disclosure: I purchased both of these books with my hard-earned cash money. 

Briefly // Yesterday was the first perfect summer Saturday of the entire year and I could not be more blissed out about it. All of the photos above are from yesterday — blue skies, relaxing in the yard after doing a morning of garden cleaning, and hanging out with Hannah outside with an awesome dinner of pork, potatoes, salad an wine. Today promises to be just as gorgeous.

Time and Place // 8:45 a.m. at my desk

Eating and Drinking // Just some Tzao Awake English Breakfast tea for the moment

Reading // Overall it was a decent reading week. I spent a lot of time with Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town by Sarah Payne Stuart (June 12 from Riverhead) before realizing I didn’t love it enough to include in an upcoming Bloggers Recommend newsletter. After that I needed a reading reset so I started and finished We Were Liars by e. lockhart, a buzzy summer title, in one long evening. It was an awesome read. Since then I’ve been jumping back and forth between The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara and Rock Breaks Scissors by William Poundstone (June 3 from Little, Brown).

Watching // The most exciting television of the week was the season finale of Arrow, which played with my heart so much. I still have hope for Oliver and Felicity.

Listening // I also finished the audio book of Veronica Mars: The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line this week. If you enjoyed the show and/or the movie then definitely pick up this book — it’s a really fun addition to the whole world of Veronica Mars.

Appreciating // Thank you to everyone for your kind words on my sixth blogiversary post. I love when personal posts like that bring out people who don’t comment as frequently — it’s a nice way to get back in touch with my community of readers.

Blogging // Since I last did a Currently post I wrote about The Empathy Exams and Console Wars, shared more nonfiction recommendations, and admitted how many books I’ve bought in the last month. Thanks, also, for your suggestions on what to read next — at the push of Jenny (Reading the End) and Jeanne (Necromancy Never Pays) I grabbed The People In the Trees and it is not disappointing.

Promoting // Becca (I’m Lost in Books) shared some advice she’d give to herself as a new blogger that I thought was very smart.

Hating and Loving // I spent so long reading outside yesterday that I got a weird sunburn on my bent arms. I’m hoping to avoid that today.

Avoiding // It’s my turn to do the dishes and there is a mountain waiting in our kitchen. I’m trying to psych myself up with the promise of a favorite podcast, Pop Culture Happy Hour, but I’m still dreading it.

Wanting // I’m so excited to leave for Book Expo America in nine days, but man, so I wish I had more time! I feel like the conference just snuck on up on me this year.

Anticipating // The boyfriend starts a new, full-time job, on June 2 where he won’t be working weekends much anymore. I’m so excited for him and for us, but I can already tell it’s going to be a transition from having weekends mostly to myself. This was his first weekend off and it was wonderful and challenging all at the same time.

Happy Sunday, everyone! What are you reading today?