Where many other bloggers have offered specific BEA reports of what transpired during last week (meaning, you know, actual encounters with human beings and the like), leave it to book editor-turned-blogger Bob Hoover to expose the real issues, which is apparently not the confluence of authors and publishers and exhibitors, nor the sightings or the conversations, but the food served at all the various parties (see May 23, 2006 entry; again, permalink unprovided):

The gold standard (for me, at least) was the HarperCollins affair at the Smithsonian Castle Saturday night where the prosciutto ($23 a pound where I come from) was spread out in yards like ribbon.

Well, thank you, Bob. So glad you bothered to go into detail on the interesting social climate.

Of course, it’s possible that Bob’s still getting his sea legs at this blogging thing. Then again, Bob confesses that he had intelligence of the Knopf party time and location, but didn’t bother to storm the gates. I must posit something: Would a real journalist refrain from crashing the gates?

Certainly Jeremy “VIP Mothefucker Ringleader” Lassen had no such qualms.