The two main floors are jam-packed with publishers hawking their wares, handing out galleys of new releases and wooing booksellers with bulk discounts only available here. The big publishers—Simon & Schuster, Perseus, PGW, Houghton Mifflin, etc—have elaborate booths, while on the sidelines there’s a little ghetto of self-publishers desperately trying to attract any attention. Talk live with Hilda the Animated Goat! Come to a free screening about the “biggest UFO event of modern times”!

There’s a booth where, for $99, you can get your teeth whitened.

The Tin House booth is serving martinis at 4 pm (which is, crap, seven minutes ago), which reinforces my general sense that most people here are just waiting until it's time to start drinking.

The Tokyopop booth appeared to be staffed by women dressed as anime characters, or geisha girls, or maybe just prostitutes. No comment.

Apparently there's a party at Prince's house tonight, but if anybody knows details, they're not telling. (I have never been closer in my life to using the phrase "Who do you have to blow...")

I'm trying not to overdo it on picking up books—most of them will be sent to me eventually anyway—but I couldn't resist a few:

John Le Carrés newest, A Most Wanted Man (it's hard to beat Le Carré for airplane reading)

Continuum's I Shot a Man in Reno: A History of Death, Murder, Suicide, Fire, Flood, Drugs, Disease, and General Misadventure as Related in Popular Song—seems of a piece with their excellent 33 1/3 series, which recently featured John Darnielle writing about Black Sabbath.

Vacation, by Deb Olin Unferth, a new title from McSweeny's Rectangulars imprint, out on Labor Day.

And, because I AM on vacation, Cecil Castellucci was signing copies of her new Minx title Janes in Love (the sequel to Plain Janes, IMO one of the least-annoying titles in that line) at the DC/Vertigo booth, so I snagged a copy of that.

OK, my "work" here is done. I'm going to hit a few panels tomorrow—Sex in Graphic Novels, anyone?—and will report on those.