I'm off to the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute in Portland, Oregon today! This is the second occasion of the WI and it will be chock full of education sessions, author receptions, and wise words from the darlings of independent book-selling. It should prove to be a wild and crazy booksellers mini-convention. It's not quite the annual BookExpo trade show in size and scope, but will be an opportunity, nonetheless, to commune with other trades-people and learn a bit about what's going on in the book world at large and what's working for other independents around the country.

I'm also looking forward to the trip because I've never been to Portland before and I'm taking a couple of extra days to wander around the city and take in all the sites. I picked up a copy of the Eat.Shop city guide series for Portland to help me wend my way through a few tasty meals and some crafty shopping. The series is very cool and is quite literally a square and simple design mixed with lush, enticing photos. They focus on smaller, independent, locally-owned restaurants and stores; it's no wonder I have an affinity for them. I'm happy to say they have a Washington DC eat.shop guide and we carry it at Olsson's, but some of the other cities they cover are Austin, Seattle, Chicago, and Paris. So I am eagerly awaiting my flight when I'll get to map out my meals, plan a little window shopping excursion, and then read, read, read. A ton. And then some more. And then maybe the in-flight magazine crossword puzzle. And then some more reading.

This brings me to the book aficionado's great dilemma: what books to take on the plane. I usually make a huge stack and then whittle them down and still end up with a bag half full of books and good intentions. But in this circumstance I can likely look forward to bringing more books back with me, which further complicates my decision making process. So some highlights from my pile so far are The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee. These two are not yet available but I'll definitely be getting back to you about them here nearer to their respective releases. I'm actually about halfway through the Hall book now and it is pretty fantastic. It owes a bit to Thomas Pynchon and Haruki Murakami, but also reminds me of Jim Dodge's Stone Junction, which I'd have to check to see if it's still in print.

Anchoring my pile of books right now is the must-have polito-cultural book of the month Power, Faith, & Fantasy by Michael Oren. It's a heavy one, but worth the haul. He offers a comprehensive history of America's involvement and interest in the Middle East from the Barbary Wars to the present day. He takes a broad approach, contextualizing our current entanglements through past involvements and perceptions, political and cultural, and manages to navigate a fraught landscape and tell a fascinating story along the way. Obviously, this book is inside-the-beltway material, but it also is a rich and engaging history that will appeal to a much wider audience.

I hope I can get all my clothes and sundries in my bag along with my books, but if not, my fellow bookies probably won't notice if I wear the same pair of jeans two days in a row... I hope.

Nestled in between all opportunities to mingle with my bookish brethren and discuss the finer points of author corralling and point-of-purchase displays I'm looking forward to teasing out some good, clean fun and re-invigoration. There really is nothing like geeking it up with a bunch of booksellers to get one fired up for the springtime.

So I'll report back soon, probably with some new books to ramble on about and maybe even some cool tales of the fabled and magisterial bookstore of Portland, Powell's Books.