The act of joining a crowd of thousands at the tail end of a pilgrimage seldom produces an obvious path to enlightenment. But that's exactly what I'm doing in early June when I dive into the receding tide of this year's Book Expo America (BEA - named in honor of Bea Arthur...at least that's what I'm telling people). So even though I've been advised it can be an endless swarm of people with no particular utility, I'm all in. Woo. Hoo. I also mention it here to bolster my registration as an official "book blogger" - a job I've taken very seriously (wink, wink) for a very long time. To prove my bona fides, I'll even add in a few recent thoughts as a consumer of bookish products. Or is it book-y? Hard to decide - such is the richness of language-ing.

1. As someone who spends what most people consider a sick amount of time out running, I've graduated from podcasts to audio books. Less annoyance, more substance. At least that's occasionally so. Case in point - Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve is a deep pool of awesome road fodder. I'm about a long run and a cool down away from a full review. Greenblatt's book deservedly won last year's Pulitzer and National Book Award for non-fiction. Plus he's repped by my literary agency. All very good things. In whatever form, The Swerve moves along smartly and with real purpose.
2. The novel I desperately need to find a few hours to sit down and finish (in old-timey, dead-tree form) is Kevin Barry's City of Bohane. Irvine Welsh (who will never do anything better than Trainspotting, nor does he need to) gave him a front cover blurb - that and Pete Hamill's review in the NYTimes Book Review caught my eye. But once I dipped into it myself, Barry's melodic, mashed-up, bleak-future Irish brogue got all up inside my brain and turned things a wee bit off kilter. In a good way. Bohane dances a fast and brutal jig, while Barry writes like a house and barn and the surrounding grassy hills on fire. I give this book huge conversational props. It may even be great. I'll let you know when I'm through.

I could go on. Us "book bloggers" so often do. Maybe later.

I know this post's title is vague. At best. So please excuse me for going a bit "meta" in my introduction of what it means and why I bring it up.

I've not been operating here specifically as a "book blogger". That's a category of reviewer who is increasingly important to the reading and writing communities found via the web. That's not been my gig, although I've offered plenty of reviews elsewhere in the past. But I'm now modifying my plans to include reviewing "digital review copies" (DRCs) of new books. DRCs are advance copies, generally meant for reading months in advance of a book's upcoming release. DRCs aren't exactly lying around out there in the ether - I need to request access and do so with a purpose. Basically, this is how booksellers and certain enterprising bloggers keep an eye out for books they then read and - waa-lah! - review for smartypants readers such as you. Maybe before they're even out there in the bookstores. The rub being that I'm assuming bloggers need an established record of doing so to get access to these DRCs. A bit of a Catch-22, I would be say. Cyclical enough for you? Don't worry - my work on that front's all done now. Like one of those surreptitious immunization shots I imagine doctors gave back in the day when they rarely even put down their cigarettes in the exam office. Now everything's so carefully proscribed and above board. It probably hurts the kid more to know what's coming. But that's a thought to belabor another day.

Check back for book reviews on things that are new and interesting. I'll always identify them as such. I've even got my first request in. Expect things generally related to "Pelting Out" and what I'm writing there. Whatever that may be. Wink wink.