Last night on the news, I saw hordes of people lined up to get their pictures taken with and autographs signed by a football player.  I have no idea who he is.  Probably someone fantabulous.  This blows my mind.  These fans were freaking out upon meeting Mr. Fantabulous Football.  Hip Hip Hooray.  I don’t get it.

I would have no idea what to do if I were suddenly dropped into one of those “red carpet” fan crowds before awards ceremonies.  Ordinary folks line up for hours?  days?  to be near the stars as they make their way from their cars, through the Joan Rivers gauntlet and into some giant venue to receive swag bags worth more than my house.  I think I would be embarrassed to be there waving and snapping photos.  Like what am I going to do with an out of focus shot of Cameron Diaz?  Frame it and stick it my living room next to the beautiful (and perfectly focused) black and white of my kids playing on the beach in Maine? 

HOWEVER.  I’ll go hear authors read. I’ll sit twitching in the audience trying to think of a question that isn’t so lame that it reveals my total lameness.  I’ll NOT ask the lame question because it is so lame.  I’ll force myself to get within earshot of said author and make eye contact and then mutter something pathetic about how great they are AND STUFF and then wish I were invisible from the sheer shame of the magnitude of lame.  I’ll think about following him/her out of the bookstore to see where they go and who they are hanging out with but I won’t because that is creepy and stalkerish. 

Imagine my delight (horror?  delight?  horror?  delight!  yes!  delight!) when not just ONE author I’d written about but TWO responded to me personally. 

I haven’t written much about my BFF Cindy Guidry lately because she’s been very busy.  Too busy to send me cat pictures and web links to hot New Orleanian sanitation moguls.  This degree of busy is to be expected, by the way, because she wrote a hugely wonderful book and is a world famous Viking Hunter and she is also putting together a little thing we like to call a hit television series that will catapult her into wealth and glory and personal satisfaction.  She wrote me after I wrote about her book, The Last Single Woman in America, and now she’s my email friend.  Because I am a freak (did I mention kind of LAME), this is, in WRH Land, something akin to meeting the Pope (in Catholic Land) or having lunch with the President (in a Land I’m not particularly interested in visiting, but you get the point). 

Then, after I reviewed Narrow Dog to the Carcassone, by Terry Darlington, Mr. Darlington himself wrote me back.  He was kind enough to refrain from mentioning specifically that I’d compared his book to the Bataan Death March WHICH I THEN ALL BUT RETRACTED BY THE WAY, and included some personalized cliff notes, some commentary, come compliments (whoohoo!), and the funniest closing in a letter I’ve ever received (“Chaste manly regards, Terry Darlington”).  Best of all, he told me about his newest book, Narrow Dog to Indian River, in which he, the intrepid Jim and the Saintly Monica travel through the Intercoastal Waterway from the Chesapeake to Florida.  I take great pleasure in the simple coincidence that the day I received his email with this detail, I was, myself, sailing on the Chesapeake.  I can’t wait to read it. 

Among the many books I’ve got lined up for which I’d like to write reviews, two in particular have been nagging at me.  The first is a travel AND food narrative.  Honestly, it’s WRH porn.  Mediterranean Summer: A Season on France’s Cote D’Azur and Italy’s Costa Bella by David Shalleck and Erol Munoz is something I picked up one day without ever having heard a thing about it.  I devoured it in a day this summer at the beach.  I couldn’t put it down, but  I sort of loved it and sort of didn’t.

Practically Perfect in Every Way by Jennifer Niesslein, on the other hand, is a book I loved from page 1 to the very end.  Unequivocally.  But I’m freaked out.  I’m catch myself hoping against hope that she, or Shalleck y Munoz, will see what I write and I’ll get the nod of approval.  I’m also terrified that she, or Shalleck y Munoz, will see what I write and be appalled.  I did OK with Guidry and Darlington, but maybe that was just a fluke?  Now that I know that the possibility exists that someone might actually read something I write and, you know, BE THE PERSON I AM WRITING ABOUT, I’m a little spooked.  In the case of Jennifer Niesslein this is especially true because I’m pretty sure that she and I were separated at birth and are living one of those twins studies.   Except that she’s the twin with the writing career and, at this moment, I’m the twin with an assload of papers to grade and a headache that won’t quit. 

Maybe tomorrow I’ll put on my big girl book reviewer pants and get down to it.