Bookselling Ladies Who Lunch

I had lunch today with a friend who's a bookseller at another store. She and I were friends for years before we got into this business, so we have plenty of other things in common, but guess what the vast majority of our conversation was about?

Have you read Delirium yet and what audience is Gregor the Overlander best for and how do you pronounce "Scieszka" and how do you manage without shrink-wrapping your picturebooks and do you adore Mo Willems as much as I do and what did you think of the ALA awards and Silverlicious and Matched?

We exchanged belated holiday-and-in-her-case-birthday gifts. I tore the David Shannon-themed paper from Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children's Book (thanks!); she unwrapped Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom and The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets.

She had some time to kill before her train. So we walked around the library.