Nick Hornby

Yup, yup, that's us with Nick Hornby!! By a sheer quirk of fate, we were in Chicago the weekend of a kezillion festivals including the Printers Row Book Fair. Nick Horby was going to read from his latest book, "A Long Way Down" and there was also going to be an interview with him. But we got so carried away shopping we missed the reading. Hurried down to Printers Row just in time to buy the book and get in a block-long line for his autograph. I love Nick Hornby- not many people would consider him a serious fiction writer but he's wonderful because he writes with so much heart, and he's funny as *$#%@! "High Fidelity" is my favorite (Jude's too- a crash course in love, life and music) and "A Long Way Down" looks like it's got a lot of potential (I read about a chapter of it while waiting in line. It was a really surreal experience actually- reading a book written by an author whose books you enjoy, and who you're going to meet very soon if only the forty-seven other blokes in front of you would hurry and not have bought five copies of the book each for themselves, their relatives, and one to be auctioned off on eBay one day I suspect...)

Predictably, we didn't get to speak much to him- the poor guy looked tired (he must have hung around for three hours more after his reading just to autograph all those books), but happy. He refused to cut the line at any point and promised to sign as long as there were people waiting. That was really the highlight of my day- well, the shopping was great (finally got the kate spade wallet of my dreams at 50% off!!) and the company was even better, but meeting Nick Hornby was just about as awesome as it gets :) Some other writers I'd love to meet (in no particular order):
1) Jeffrey Eugenides
2) A.S. Byatt
3) Salman Rushdie
4) Kazuo Ishiguro
5) Gabriel García Márquez
There's definitely more, and this is not counting the dozen others who are no longer living. Oh man, and don't get me started on poets...

By the way, we've posted the Chicago photos up. Check them out!