New York Social Diary

You know this is special because I’m posting on a Friday. But as it looks ever unlikely I’ll be blogging again until sometime on Monday, I thought I’d pop my head in and play some catch-up.

So first, thanks to Bryon for holding the fort the last couple of days (and to John for doing his best to make trouble in the backblogs) as I traipsed around the city in a sea of social whirl and activity. Naturally, practically everything I did has been accounted for in some way or another, and since I’m about to board a bus soon, better to let others describe than offer my own, extended take. So herewith:

Tuesday was spent attending this, though what I’d like to add is that I would look forward so much to reading Robert Gottlieb’s memoirs, if he ever decided to write them. Or if someone wrote about him. That man, no doubt, has many, many stories to tell…

Wednesday I was here, and as you can read, it was fantastic. I think I’ll dream about Bill Charlap’s playing for a very long time.

And Thursday, I participated in the WNBA panel, which Ron briefly wrote up in this report. I hope the attending audience got a lot out of it, but I know I had an excellent time explaining how this blog got started, why the sense of community is important, and how I’d never presume to be competing with mainstream media. As well as catching up with Maud and Ron, it was also wonderful to finally meet Michael Cader (as without him, a good chunk of the content here would cease to exist) as well as fellow panelists Wendy McClure and Technorati’s Adam Hertz. So over the span of a month, litbloggers have appeared on radio twice, on a panel, and will be forthcoming on television. Slowly, ever so slowly, we’re taking over the world…

Enough from me. I’ll leave you with Jennifer Jordan’s compiled list of favorite books of 2004 as submitted by many of my favorite crime writers (as well as one case of “what to look forward to in 2005.”) Me, I can’t narrow it down to ten–though I will give it my best shot in the next issue of Crime Spree…