Notes from the Road: On Fortune Cookies

At the Boston Book party my friend, Electa, gave me a large cardboard box full of hundreds of fortune cookies—the kind you get with the bill in Chinese restaurants—wrapped in plastic and a little bit stale. It had been such a fun party—professors of mine from the old days at Middlebury and colleagues from when I taught at Emerson College and old friends I used to wheel baby strollers around Boston's South End with and all kinds of new book friends.

We brought the motherlode of fortune cookies down to Chatham, New Jersey and got them into people's hands at the great book party there. I had never danced at a book party before. Nor had the bookseller I don't think. Good fun.

And then Tony and I took the box—it's big and hard to carry—but by now I know it brings the book tour good fortune—to New Haven and gave the fortune cookies out at that very special reading in the beautifully restored Lyric Hall that I posted photos of.

Then we didn't get them out again until Philadelphia and the great book signing party in Mt. Airy. It was the first time I did an open Q and A at one of these book parties and what a nice idea that was. A hundred people all standing and sitting together in this wide open living room talking about the book and about China and life there and about breast cancer and hope. I felt lucky to be there.

Tomorrow we are on to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and a reading at River Run Books. I'm bringing the box of fortune cookies with me in the car. Aidan and Thorne are still devouring handfuls of them every day. They say yeah, they're a little stale, but still tasty! And we still probably have close to 500 fortune cookies. Enough good luck to last Tony and me up and down the West Coast when we fly out there next week for more of my book readings!