As I write this note, I am making lists and making piles. I leave tomorrow for the Miami Book Fair International, the fifth time I have attended this wonderful multi-day booklover's dream event. More than 350 authors will gather there to talk books this week and through the weekend. Nirvana. I travel a lot, which the Sagittarian in me just LOVES, and have made lists of what I need for day trips, short trips and long trips that I click down when packing. But somehow, the night before I still find myself up way later than I planned, adding things to my itinerary, making notes on places and people I want to see in whatever city I am headed to, winding yarn for projects to knit while traveling, deciding what books to take with me, making last-minute notes for the staff in New York, and plotting little details to make my hotel room comfortable and my trip just a bit more special.

On Wednesday evening I had the pleasure of seeing Jeannette Walls, the author of the mega-bestselling memoir The Glass Castle, talk about her new book, Half Broke Horses, which is just in stores this week. Before she spoke, I was invited backstage along with members of the Clinton Book Shop book club to meet her; the store was sponsoring the event. We all had read The Glass Castle and thus dropped into a conversation with Jeannette almost at mid-sentence. Each of us had different parts of the book that had resonated with us, and, though I knew none of these other women, I found myself chatting with them like we were old friends with our only bond being a book we all had read. As we shared our observations, I tried to imagine what it must be like for Jeannette to have moments like this all the time when people are talking about your work, which actually is your life.