My Day at the Brooklyn Book Festival

11:58AM: I tumble off the subway and into an inappropriately warm day in downtown Brooklyn. Already late, yikes!

12:14PM: "Cheetah Girls" creator Deborah Gregory is head-to-toe in animal print and reads an excerpt featuring a character named Shalimar. I always thought it was a TV show first, and then a novel; I was mistaken. "Gossip Girl" creator Cecily von Ziegesar reads from the opening of her very first book and confides that when she wrote it she was a YA editor and "some people are very happy being editors," but she wasn't one of them.

1:22PM: My partner in crime and I are one of about six people willing to sit in the sun for Lily Koppel and Sean Wilsey, although turnout isn't bad when you include all the people on the shaded benches. They're ostensibly here to talk about coming of age -- her book deals with finding a diary of a Manhattan teenager struggling with her own issues three quarters of a century ago, and his with his adolescence in the shadow of his society parents' messy divorce. I must also mention that Koppel is wearing a really nice red dress and I wish I had one.

2:36PM: I desperately need to get hydrated so it's off to Duane Reade across the street. On the way back I wander through the booths looking at schwag. A lot of places have free pins, like the New York Review of Books' title-proclaiming series, which I love; my friend Pearl prefers the bookmarks. Harper Perennial has a nifty deal of old-looking editions of MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING and EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED. Buy three and you get a free tote bag and "surprise"! Somehow I resist. Instead I wander into a food panel where Steven Rinella (I think) is telling a story about how meat in Europe gets mad cow disease. Curiously, this reminds me I haven't had lunch yet.

3:15PM: Smith Magazine's Write Your Own Six-Word Memoir event is full of boosters and good cheer. When co-host Larry Smith suggests that some people have written one for Jesus, a few audience members take the bait. There's a moment of grace after you hear each one, like a Zen koan. I'm still working on mine -- six words aren't that many. Last night I really liked "Always struggling against dumb blonde jokes," but I am dissatisfied today.

4:37PM: So disappointing: I and everyone else in Brooklyn in line for a NYRB event featuring Joan Didion are turned away after being allowed to stand in a fruitless line for 40 minutes. Here is the point where I ought to have persevered, but the heat's really getting to me and my nose is striped with sunburn. (Stupid sunglasses.) The air-conditioned subway is a sweet relief.

Well, all right, so my patience runs out in under five hours. I still had a good time, and while I managed to resist the siren songs of the many books for sale at the fest,* I have a list of indie bookstores to patronize when next I need to pick up a book. (I'll be back, BookCourt in Brooklyn!) If I had any criticism of the festival, it's in the ticketing system for high-demand indoor events (Didion, Russell Banks/Jonathan Franzen, etc.) and not just because I got screwed over: When you're enjoying a reading, the last thing you want to do is stop engaging in the fest in order to wait in line with people. (Though I did enjoy the copy of the Brooklyn Rail someone handed me.) I suggest an online lottery in which winners are chosen Sunday morning pre-Fest, so they have time to plan their days accordingly.

*Titles I nearly bought on the spot: Didion's WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES IN ORDER TO LIVE, Sean Wilsey and Matt Weiland's STATE TO STATE (ed.), Lily Koppel's THE RED LEATHER DIARY and many more.