In My Mailbox and ALA Day One

Phew! I am tired but pumped after my first day at ALA. I got to the conference at 8:00AMto hear Gregory Maguire speak, who was awesome. Then it was off the exhibits, which was fun but tiring. I got distracted and overwhelmed so I did not make it to Scholastic for Catching Fire in time, but I did come away with TONS of other awesome books, so I had a good day. Then I attended the panel on blogging, which was very cool to hear professional bloggers and author John Green talk about how important blogging is and how book reviwers are cool-yay! Then the evening ended with a book signing by Sarah Dessen and Laurie Halse Anderson who were both super sweet. I met up with Chelsea (The Page Flipper), Kristi (The Story Siren) and Andrea (Awaiting Serenity) and it was cool to actually meet bloggers in person and talk books. (I also caught up with Abby (the librarian) at ALA!) Then after all that, I came home and unpacked the books I'd gotten and made up my schedule for tomorrow.

Highlights of ALA-Saturday edition:

-Meeting Kathryn Fitzmaurice-Kathryn and I have been chatting online ever since I reviewed her book for TeensReadToo.com. She then interviewed me for her blog, I interviewed her on my blog, and we've become Facebook friends. When I found out she was signing, I knew I had to meet her and she was so sweet and excited to meet me which I found a little strange since I was so totally fangirly over meeting her! She signed tons of books for people today and I hope they all come away loving her debut novel, The Year the Swallows Came Early, as much as I did!

-Egmont Booth-This booth was one of the first I visited and they were so delightful! They even gave me some ARCs from the secret stash and said they'd get me signed up for their galley program, which was super sweet! Thanks Egmont!!

-David Lubar winning over my brother-Just yesterday when I was talking to my family my brother told me to not get him any books anymore (sad, I know). When I ended up in line for David Lubar's signing of Hidden Talents I called my brother and said "I know you don't want any more books, but I'm in line for David Lubar, he's really funny and I think you'd like this book. He's signing them-should I get it made out to you or me?" to which my brother said he would gladly take a signed copy! When I told David Lubar he won over my brother, he signed the book "To Michael, you have a cool sister." :)


I'll post a list of all my ALA finds when it's all over, but aside from my ALA books, I did some mail this week:

Fairy Tale by Cyn Balog
Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella
Graceling by Kristen Cashore (audiobook)-we started listening to this on the ride up and I'm really enjoying it!!