As this issue goes to press, thousands of bookish types are descending on New York for BookExpo America, the annual publishing trade convention that has been housed at the Javits Center on the West Side of Manhattan since 2009.
Hundreds of authors are on hand to sign books — many in a particularly charmless area at the back of the hall. The days are stuffed with panels on everything from running a store to the latest literary gadgets. (Among this year’s offerings: “Your Christian Shopper Could Be Buying More” and “Libraries + Tumblr = Connecting Readers + Writers.”)
Larger publishing houses use the expo to promote titles they want everyone talking about come fall. This year, that includes Elizabeth Gilbert’s first book of fiction in more than 12 years, “The Signature of All Things”; Jonathan Lethem’s novel “Dissident Gardens”; and “Blowback,” the first thriller in a planned series written by Sarah Lovett and Valerie Plame, the former C.I.A. operative whose cover was famously blown by Robert Novak’s column in 2003.

Penguin Hits the Road
BEA marked the debut of the Penguin Book Truck and the Penguin Book Pushcart, which will both travel the country, selling the publisher’s books at beaches, farmers’ markets and sidewalks. The 27-foot-long truck will be in New York for the Shakespeare in the Park festivities before heading west. Asked if there was a date scheduled for taking the book truck off the road, Erica Glass, a spokeswoman for Penguin, told me, “We hope it keeps going forever to festivals, bookstores and other events.”

A New Post for Banks
This week, Eric Banks reviews “The Science Delusion,” by Curtis White. Banks was recently named director of the New York Institute for the Humanities. He will oversee current fellows and recruit future ones. He will also manage programming, and said he looked forward to “promoting conferences that will be of interest to the institute’s fellows as well as the public at large.”