xoxo You Know You Love Me

Is there anything better than meeting your idol? I mean, when one reads the amount of teen fiction that I read and aspires to someday author a series of modern classics of teen fiction, is there anything quite so awesome as a conversation with Cecily von Ziegesar? I can think of only one thing that would be awesome to a corresponding degree, and that is a conversation with Meg Cabot (Ms. Cabot, if you're out there, call me! I just know that we could be the best of friends!)

And that is why I love the city! When I can enjoy a Sunday afternoon book reading in the park by the author of Gossip Girl, get my copy of GG signed with a personal xoxo from the woman who made the xoxo what it is today, and be encouraged in my writing career, that's a fabulous good time. What can you do on a Sunday afternoon in the midwest? Shuck some corn and attend the local spelling bee? (I should be nicer to local spellers... I won the local spelling bee several years in a row. I still have the enormous red hardcover Webster's Dictionary that I won when I was 12 (what a prize!) and I use to reduce my sister to tears every time we play Scrabble (I wonder if this is why she now refuses to play?))

But can you meet a best-selling author? Can you chat at the book-signing table? Can you make everyone at work jealous because they did not meet the creator of Gossip Girl (well, I suppose that depends on what your co-workers are like. I happen to work with people who share my affinity for low-brow popular culture... we have recently discussed starting a book club, with the first book being Tori Spelling's autobiography, Stori Telling, which a) I have already read, and b) is that not the most clever name ever? I can only hope to come up with something equally fabulous when the Lifetime Original Movie of my life (starring Tori Spelling as me, if I can get my way) is ready to be filmed!)

So thank you Brooklyn Book Festival, for reminding me why I moved to this city. Thank you Ms. von Ziegesar, for writing your wonderful books and coming to talk about them. Thank you Mrs. Campbell, my first grade teacher, for encouraging a love of reading and writing that to this day draws me to places like Borough Hall on a humid Sunday afternoon to rediscover why I love words, pictures, and the New York Dream.