ROAD VIRGINS: WEBFOOT COUNTRY

     The latest from the Book Babes on tour: Last weekend netted scores of book sales -- and could have sold more, had Powell's Books stocked 75 books instead of the 40 that quickly ran out at our reading Friday night. We had a full house (100-plus?), and even Ellen's older brother tossed off an email saying how proud he was. So we must have kept  'em entertained with our Thelma & Louise/Lucy & Ethel routine. When we did the "Better TV" taping Friday morning, Meredith, one of the store managers at the Burnside Powell's, said we could prowl the store hawking our wares anytime. Apparently there's an opening in the Burnside store for clown-in-residence!

Wordstock seemed well-run, well-attended and a definite plus for the Babes. It was great to catch up with old colleagues like Nena Baker, who was touting her well-researched and well-reviewed book from FSG, "The Body Toxic." But not much time for chitchat: Besides the Book Babes' presentation, Ellen kept up a lively discussion with Stewart O'Nan and Mark Sarvas on the "Book Review Crisis," moderated by friend Floyd Skloot. Panelists ended up agreeing that it was less a crisis in reviewing as it was in the love and appreciation of our favorite pastime -- small comfort, that! But it was fun to spend time with Mark, who was creator of the original "Dump the Book Babes" campaign when we wrote our weekly column for the Poynter Institute. At the time he thought we didn't write enough about literary books, which we didn't: Our constituency, journalists primarily, was more interested in politics and current affairs. But we love attention of almost any kind, so we never harbored hard feelings (it's neglect that hurts).

Portland has a slew of art galleries located around Powell's, so Friday night we staged a post-function at the Froelick. Saturday night, friend Cheryl Tonkin hosted a dinner and served an excellent cioppino. Will the party ever stop?

    Margo's panel on first novelists showed that each author arrived at the Holy Grail taking a different path. Selden Edwards took his time getting there. He started his novel "A Little Book" back in 1974 and, after numerous rejections, endless rewrites and countless bouts of self-doubt, he landed a contract with Dutton in 2007. Sheesh. That's more than three decades of blood, sweat and tears. Luckily he had a teaching job.

    New Zealander and first-time author Rachael King, author of "The Sound of Butterflies," admitted that her first novel was the first she published but it wasn't the first she'd written: She'd shelved a more autobiographical novel when she realized that even she wouldn't want to read it. What a waste of time, her friends told her about the failed attempt. Not at all, she said. That's how she learned to write. By the way, she used to play guitar in a rock band.  She sold her guitar to buy a laptop, a sure sign of commitment if there ever was one.

    Randa Jarrar, author of "A Map of Home," kicked off her novel after a single sentence popped into her head: "I don't remember how I came to know this story, and I don't know how I can possibly still remember it." Once she wrote down that line, the rest of the novel poured forth. That line still is the first line of her first novel, the story of a girl who sounds an awful lot like Jarrar: the daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father who grew up in Kuwait, Egypt and ended up in Texas. Edwards may have taken longer in time to finish his novel, but Jarrar certainly wins the award for most distance traveled.

    Next stops: Seattle's Elliott Bay bookstore and Portland's Annie Bloom's.