Leonard and I thought up some funnies recently. Example, from me: "Oh, Robert, it would never work. You'd be jealous of my money. And I'd be jealous of your money."

I got to see Frances for dinner and breakfast. And I got to show her Cody's, including my recommendation tags.

I visited a book trade show. The floor wasn't very pleasant, except for the chance at free stuff, incl. advance copies of books. It's really more oriented towards buyers, which makes sense, but the lowly staffer who's just trying to familiarize herself with upcoming books either feels ignored or hard-selled.

I wore a Cody's Books t-shirt and a name badge that also identified my employer. "Can you guess where I'm from?" I joked with a booth attendant. "India?" she guessed. Er.

I did attend a useful session wherein publishers' sales representatives talked to staffers about their favorite offerings. The guy from Harcourt talked for seven minutes about The Life of Pi. He spoke longer about his initial prejudices than about the book itself.

Strike two: the author is Canadian. Now, I have nothing against Canada or Canadians, but in the last year we've seen a hundred books by Canadian authors. It's like publishers have decided that Canada is the new literary hotspot, which makes me suspicious. It's very similar to what we've seen with the previous hotspot, which was, of course, India for about five years. So this is a book by a Canadian author about an Indian boy. I mean, just throw a few Afghans in there...