Monday, May 01, 2006

Run the table

Who uses it: Billiards players
What it means: Sinking every ball on the table, without giving your opponent a chance to take a shot.
How you can use it: When you're unstoppable.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books ended this afternoon when the UCLA clock struck five, and the people in the booth across from ours applauded. We might have, too, but we still had customers shopping.

It was a very successful weekend for The Mystery Bookstore, and everyone I saw -- readers, authors, dogs, Freaks of L.A. -- seemed to be having a good time.

Watching the freak show is a big part of the fun of anything in Los Angeles. Before 10:00 this morning, I saw a man in a khaki skirt with tattoos all over his calves, and another man dressed head-to-toe in buckskin.

I didn't see or do much outside the bookstore tent, so I don't have much to report. But before I pass out with exhaustion, here are a few random thoughts:

-- Diane Mott Davidson, Joanne Fluke, and Gayle Lynds didn't need to bring us cookies in order for us to like them -- but they did anyway, so they get bonus points.

-- Harlan Coben is hilarious. Several people came to the booth to buy his book after his panel, just because "he was so funny," one woman told me.

-- Mary Higgins Clark and Rochelle Krich are the two most elegant ladies in the world of crime fiction, and remind me of the days when being a "lady" was the highest aspiration of any good girl.

-- Susan Kandel dresses beautifully.

-- An alarming number of excellent crime writers are younger than I am, some of them by quite a few years.

Tomorrow's another action-packed day, as I tool around Los Angeles in the extra-glamorous Chrysler minivan the rental car company gave me. A minivan! How could I possibly be someone who drives a minivan?

1 comment:

Stephen Blackmoore said...

It was very nice to have met you at the Festival yesterday, Clair. Sorry you had to squint so much into the sun to see me. ;-)