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Readercon Ramblings
Jul. 11th, 2009 04:51 pmAttended the workshop by Barry B. Longyear. Gave me things to think about and it was enjoyable listening to his anecdotes and meanderings.
Attended my first kaffeeklatsch, with Ellen Klages and a handful of other people. I think Wiscon should do those. It's nice to be able to sit, and talk, in a quiet room. I think I bought Firebirds Soaring.. need to find out if I did. And apparently I need to buy Eclipse 3.
It's been interesting tweeting while here. I'm probably not making the most use of it that I could. I find the quotes people are posting from panels and things to be really fun and interesting. Not everyone's using the hash tag #readercon though, so you have to search for Readercon to get some of them. A little weird to find someone's posting tweets from the same panel you're attending.
Spent too much in the dealer's room, even though I've only bought from 2 tables and one of those was 7 25 paperbacks (in two trips). Two Joanna Russ books I was having not-so-good luck finding to ILL and then 3 Samuel Delany books because he was right there to sign them. I'm in an essay-reading phase atm.
The dealer's room, aka 'bookstore', has lots of great stuff in it. There's recent stuff, from the publishers themselves, and there's cheap stuff for the frugal, and there's old stuff that may or may not be something you were looking for. And I feel like if I were a collector or enough of a book geek (apparently I'm not enough of a book geek!), I could spend a lot more time in there digging out finds and things I always wanted and maybe didn't know I wanted.
Stopped by the Broad Universe table yesterday and had a brief chat. May have to go back for some books I saw there. Thinking about it.
There was food at the Meet the Pros(e) Party. For a brief period of time anyway. But it's still so loud and noisy. Yes, loud and noisy. I couldn't really deal with it.
Did one of the two things I wanted to make sure I did, which was attend the Improv workshop run by Ellen Klages. Very good. Very interesting. Very fun. Very funny. I was not brave enough to give it a go. It just seemed like everyone's brains were working just a tad bit faster than mine could do. So between this workshop and the Longyear one, I now have some other versions of the try-fail loop from Clarion. Different ways of looking at story structure. But the same.
Consuite is ho-hum. I always feel bad criticizing a consuite because I know it's a lot of work, but dot dot dot. I did have pb&j on bread and hummus on pita yesterday, though I haven't seen a reappearence of the latter. And there were some muffin and danish quarters this morning, but once 'breakfast' is over, they disappear to be replaced by veggies and crackers. I was hoping for a banana, or a bagel. The hotel doesn't know what a sweet, sweet deal they've got going here. Usually at a con, you can avoid having any hotel food, by going out, by ordering in, by going to the consuite.. but here, between the restaurant, the pub, the coffee bar, and the attempt to sell overprice sandwiches between very defined 'lunch' hours, they'll get you one way or another. And I'm sure the con was hiring them for catering for a few things. Some of all of that is standard hotel contract with a con, but in this particular case I think the hotel has definitely got the long end of the stick. Or the entire stick.
Not even a microwave in the consuite.
Some of the panel topics didn't sound too interesting or too new and different, but they've mostly turned out to be interesting anyway. I'd say mainly to do with the panelists. A lot of them really know how to talk, discuss, entertain, be witty.
Internet is expensive and sucky, but I did manage to finally grab the last two days of Torchwood. Still need to watch them though.
More if and when I think of it. Tonight is the bad prose thing. Wonder how many people will twitter that.
Attended my first kaffeeklatsch, with Ellen Klages and a handful of other people. I think Wiscon should do those. It's nice to be able to sit, and talk, in a quiet room. I think I bought Firebirds Soaring.. need to find out if I did. And apparently I need to buy Eclipse 3.
It's been interesting tweeting while here. I'm probably not making the most use of it that I could. I find the quotes people are posting from panels and things to be really fun and interesting. Not everyone's using the hash tag #readercon though, so you have to search for Readercon to get some of them. A little weird to find someone's posting tweets from the same panel you're attending.
Spent too much in the dealer's room, even though I've only bought from 2 tables and one of those was 7 25 paperbacks (in two trips). Two Joanna Russ books I was having not-so-good luck finding to ILL and then 3 Samuel Delany books because he was right there to sign them. I'm in an essay-reading phase atm.
The dealer's room, aka 'bookstore', has lots of great stuff in it. There's recent stuff, from the publishers themselves, and there's cheap stuff for the frugal, and there's old stuff that may or may not be something you were looking for. And I feel like if I were a collector or enough of a book geek (apparently I'm not enough of a book geek!), I could spend a lot more time in there digging out finds and things I always wanted and maybe didn't know I wanted.
Stopped by the Broad Universe table yesterday and had a brief chat. May have to go back for some books I saw there. Thinking about it.
There was food at the Meet the Pros(e) Party. For a brief period of time anyway. But it's still so loud and noisy. Yes, loud and noisy. I couldn't really deal with it.
Did one of the two things I wanted to make sure I did, which was attend the Improv workshop run by Ellen Klages. Very good. Very interesting. Very fun. Very funny. I was not brave enough to give it a go. It just seemed like everyone's brains were working just a tad bit faster than mine could do. So between this workshop and the Longyear one, I now have some other versions of the try-fail loop from Clarion. Different ways of looking at story structure. But the same.
Consuite is ho-hum. I always feel bad criticizing a consuite because I know it's a lot of work, but dot dot dot. I did have pb&j on bread and hummus on pita yesterday, though I haven't seen a reappearence of the latter. And there were some muffin and danish quarters this morning, but once 'breakfast' is over, they disappear to be replaced by veggies and crackers. I was hoping for a banana, or a bagel. The hotel doesn't know what a sweet, sweet deal they've got going here. Usually at a con, you can avoid having any hotel food, by going out, by ordering in, by going to the consuite.. but here, between the restaurant, the pub, the coffee bar, and the attempt to sell overprice sandwiches between very defined 'lunch' hours, they'll get you one way or another. And I'm sure the con was hiring them for catering for a few things. Some of all of that is standard hotel contract with a con, but in this particular case I think the hotel has definitely got the long end of the stick. Or the entire stick.
Not even a microwave in the consuite.
Some of the panel topics didn't sound too interesting or too new and different, but they've mostly turned out to be interesting anyway. I'd say mainly to do with the panelists. A lot of them really know how to talk, discuss, entertain, be witty.
Internet is expensive and sucky, but I did manage to finally grab the last two days of Torchwood. Still need to watch them though.
More if and when I think of it. Tonight is the bad prose thing. Wonder how many people will twitter that.
