Waiter, There’s a Penis in My Book Soup

Me at the Book Soup signing.

Book Soup has a great location on the Sunset Strip and is a satisfyingly stocked store to poke around in for hours.  It doesn’t exactly cater to the family crowd, unlike my beloved Village Books.  Its clientele seems to be more of the West Hollywood variety–mostly young singles and young couples of the same gender variety.  Which makes it maybe not the perfect place for a housewife like me to read her most recent chicklit novel, although once we had stuffed the place with our friends, it worked out fine.

I don’t think I read or spoke as well as I had at Village Books and I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out why.   Every once in a while I would lose my train of thought because something was distracting me, something in the corner of my eye.  Then I’d shake myself free of it and go on.  It wasn’t until I was completely done speaking that I turned and looked at the books stacked up next to me and realized it wasn’t my imagination, that that really WAS a close-up photo of a man’s crotch in tighty-whities spread out across the cover of a book quite appropriately titled, “The Big Penis Book.”  (Next to it was a stack of “The Big Breast Book,” but that hadn’t caught my eye in quite the same way.) 

Needless to say, nothing like that had happened to me at Village Books.

And just so you know, I’m perfectly happy that Book Soup stocks “The Big Penis Book.”  I think they should.  I just wish they’d move it out of eyecatching distance when you’re trying to read there.  That’s all. 

Did anything else interesting happen at Book Soup?  Let me think . . .

Oh, right: my husband arrived late at the booksigning because he had just won an EMMY earlier that afternoon.  Hardly worth mentioning, really. 

And the kids did their usual incredibly supportive thing, busying themselves setting up the food for me and talking up the crowd and asking me questions when no one else wanted to and generally making me feel well-loved and taken care of even when I was in total nervewracked anxiety-filled mode. 

I’m done with bookstores for the moment.  I’m appearing on a panel at the West Hollywood Book Fair and then I have a party to celebrate the launch of the book in New York in October and then it’s all about up to people to buy the book or not.  Fingers crossed.  Toes, too.