Showcase Sieves

Friday featured an interesting shift. This weekend marks the last opportunity to polish the preparations for moving the showcase books. Everything has to be in neat and correct order.

There were four of us, so we had, as Mike called it, team alpha start at one end of the alphabet and team bravo start at the other. Who knows which was which, but Mike and I began at Z, and Emily (a long-time assistant) and Emily (just started yesterday) began at # (which comes before A). Mike and Emily held a printed catalog of the database as it stands now and me and...the other Emily read titles that were on the shelf until there was a discrepancy.

There were many discrepancies. The problem is that once one mistake is made, others will make a contingent mistake (for example: if I put a book from Pleiades Press before Penguin Books by mistake, then someone else might see my book and put another Penguin book before it, thus fueling more inevitable mistakes.

Today I talked to Stellan, whoose name I have finally realized as Stone, about Jorie Graham. I first encountered Graham's work in the tangled Overlord last year upon a dare to read and understand it. I suppose I didn't take the dare too seriously, and I only a bit, and it's tone suggested a few themes. Stone picked her new book Sea Change from the shelves last week and came back the next day half-done and loving the material. I'll have to get a copy of her book and see how she's evolved.

Enough for now, I'll report on today tomorrow =P