Last week I had the opportunity to meet Gary Corby, a genius writer from Australia who is represented by the agency I currently intern with. He discussed his two manuscripts with us brilliant interns. He writes historical mysteries set in ancient Greece, and his main character is the older brother of Socrates. I read one of them, and it’s quite spectacular. His first book will be pubbed in Fall 2010. You should all buy it. Then he took our photo and wrote this awesome blog post about us, called “How to Poison an Intern.”

Note: Joanna, who is wearing the blue and gray stripped sweater, is not an intern but an agent. She also likes Vegemite.

Oh, and check this out. This is the annual fund-raiser/world-record-breaker “Thrill the World” dance. My sister Amanda participated this year. Watch this video. At about 1:10 in, you can see her doing the “booty bounce” and “swim together” parts of the dance. (And yes, those are the technical terms.) That’s her on the far right, wearing the red corset and black pants. She also gets screen time later, so watch the whole thing. And if you do, check out the young girl in the front row. Just awesome.

Joe’s visit was a blast. Did some touristy stuff, some not-so-touristy stuff, and some stuff I don’t remember (so it could be touristy or not, I have no idea).

Went to BookExpo America, which was held in NYC this year for the first time in a few years, and will be held here for the next few. Basically it’s a professional conference for the book publishing industry, where lots of publishers hand out advanced copies of yet-to-be-pubbed books; I got at least 30 free books.

Started my internship with Caren Johnson Literary Agency. Both Elana and Caren are super nice, and are probably not that much older than I am. I’ve been reading manuscripts and advanced galleys of the books/authors that they represent, or are looking to represent. I’ve read some good, some bad, and some kinda ugly stuff.  More on this to follow, in a not-already-bloated post.

Between the internship (for which most of my reading is on the computer. How I wish I had some sort of e-book reader) and the advanced books from the book expo, I’ve read 6 books in the past two and a half weeks; i’m in the middle of three more, plus trying to read the first three chapters of about 3 more books. I’ve got 5 critiques to write by Tuesday, so I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed, but I think I’ll manage. I’ve been nothing but productive since Wednesday. It helps that I have only like 15 hours at work (wish i had at least 10 more…), and no summer courses.

Well, anyway…. then I was googling Mark Liberman (PS, how weird is it that spell check doesn’t red-squiggly under googling? or squiggly for that matter… ) and I stumbled upon a linguistic analysis of Barak Obama’s inaugural address, it wasn’t particularly fascinating, to a normal human, but I found it pretty neat. I’m such a nerd when it comes to word usage and perception. JEEZ. I need a life, people!