Hey everyone,
I've been kind of off-blogging for a while because I'm traveling (which means I have to put our event slightly on hold :S), BUT I was in the US!! It was SUPER exciting, cause I FINALLY GOT TO GO TO ALA!! AHHHH!! Here's a little bit about what went down:
On the first day, I was a little late getting there... like I arrived around 9:30-ish? This was because my dad and I got a little lost trying to find the building and then I had to go up for registration. I must admit, I was a little intimidated by the many, MANY people that were there. But then I went ahead into the exhibits.
WOWIE.
Okay, I see people getting so many book hauls, and then talking about their experience, how they weren't able to grab certain books, so I went in thinking that I wasn't going to get anything! Hehe, I was totally wrong on that one :P I got my first book within the first 10 minutes. I just kind of stood there, wondering if I was able to just take it, kind of confused as to what I was supposed to do. By observing many others I was able to finally get what to take, like the ARCs they put out for free, swag, etc., and what not to, like the display copies. The first one I grabbed was Jessica Darling's It List #1 by Megan McCafferty (Goodreads), which is totally AMAZING because I loved Bumped and Sloppy Firsts, so getting the chance to read this was so great!
So, the signings guys, the signings!
On this lovely panel at the Lerner Publishing Group booth was Sarah Aronson, author of Believe; Ashley Hope Perez, author of The Knife and the Butterfly; and Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, author of No Crystal Stair. I was SUPER excited for this one, because not only had I read and LOVED The Knife and the Butterfly and get to meet the fab author behind the novel, but I'd heard of Sarah Aronson's book, and was pumped up to meet Vaunda Micheaux Nelson as well! BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. When I landed up getting The Knife and the Butterfly signed, I asked to get it personalised. AND GUESS WHAT??
She
recognized
my
name.
OH. MY. GOSH. I like had a little freak out moment because she's like, "I know your name!" and I told her I was apart of the blog tour for this book and we had a little yay! moment of finally meeting. I'm telling you, there was some serious freak out moments with signings at ALA.
Um, hello? DOES ANYONE KNOW WHO THIS IS?!?! IT'S A.G. HOWARD PEOPLE. THE A.G. HOWARD. I flipped out. Seriously. One of the "longest" (because the signing lines weren't too long fortunately pour moi) lines I had to stand in, but it was totally worth it because, HELLO: A.G. Howard people! ANDDDDDD... She knew who I was. Oh my god. Like seriously, I don't know how many times I think about it and still cannot get over the fact. SHE KNEW WHO I WAS. AHHH!!!!! We talk on twitter time to time, BUT OH MY GOODNESS YES, SHE REMEMBERED ME.
This awesome person right here (well, other than me of course.... lol no) is HANNAH MOSKOVITZ! And guyssss! She KNOWS MY BLOG. I like had a total fanning-myself-saying-ohmygosh-over-and-over-again moment when she recognized the name of my blog on my badge. She's like the COOLEST person ever. Seriously. She like talks super fast and I'm like woahhh like half the time, but there was no line (cause I came towards the end of it), so we got to chat a little bit, which was awesome! hehe, seriously, if you get the chance to meet this amazing gal, DO IT. You will not regret it!
And this is the part where I'm super lame, because I totally didn't take any more pictures with authors BUT I will tell you about the other signings I went to that were memorable.
This is the whole 2 stacks of books I got signed!
(The one hiding below Counting by 7s is Blood Red, Snow White by Marcus Sedgewick, and the one the wrong way round below Seeing Red is Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick)
Meeting Marcus Sedgewick was amazing, because I'd read his book for our independent reading unit in grade 8 (this is when I was living in Canada). He was really surprised to see Blood Red, Snow White because apparently it's not published in the US, so that was really cool :D
I'm With Stupid by Geoff Herbach was the first book I got signed at ALA, so that was pretty notable!
I got the sampler for United We Spy by Ally Carter signed, and this was a PRETTY long line guys. I ended up waiting probably like for 20-25 minutes to get this signed, but she was super sweet, totally worth the wait.
Michael Grant was AWESOME. Like so awesome. Luckily, when I got there, it was around the end of the signing time, so there wasn't too many people ahead of or behind me. He saw my badge and got to talking about Singapore, and hopefully, he (and hopefully his amazing wife Katherine Applegate, who's line was unfortunately too long) could come over to this side of the world for a signing! AND SOME AWESOME OTHER STUFF HAPPENED. Right behind him was THE Katherine Tegan and Peter Lerangis! Peter Lerangis I caught up later with at his signing the second day, but that was super cool. This was like the signing of awesomeness, I tell ya. However, I totally regret not taking a picture with him, because I mean, HELLO. It's MICHAEL GRANT. Ugh at me -_-
I also got to meet Julie Cross! This was kind of away from the YA booths, so not too many people were there. I got a hardback (still amazes me how many books are just HANDED out) of Vortex and I'd brought my own copy of Tempest. Kind of embarrassing, because I only just noticed that my younger brother had scrawled a birthday message onto the first page. Luckily, she kind of just looked past that and signed my books :) Kind of like what happened with Marcus Sedgewick, my version of Tempest was different so she was like "oh wow! This is a different edition!" and stuff like that, so it was pretty cool.
Kind of a blurry picture, but here's Sara Zarr! Super cool meeting her, because even though I haven't read any of her books (yet) I managed to get a copy of her upcoming book Roomies as well as The Lucy Variations! Totally can't wait to get started on those :D
Speaking of meeting people... I got to meet the very awesome Lindsay from Live To Read and her mom, who was super nice :D Since I wasn't there for the 29th (which I heard was super crowded) Lindsay was AMAZING and got me these books!
I have a feeling that I'm missing out on 1 or 2 of the books she managed to grab for me, but wowie! I'm so lucky, cause seriously, all of these are on my TBR and now I can't wait to get to them :D
I also went to the Flux booth and the publicist there RECOGNIZED ME! She was then super amazing and like got me a copy of The Truth About You and Me by Amanda Grace! EEP! TOTALLY CAN'T WAIT TO START IT!!
The second day (the 1st of July) was a little less crowded than the first day I went, but because they were clearing out a majority of the booths, there were HUGE lines for everything. I'm not joking. For the Simon & Schuster booth I ended up waiting like for 25-30 minutes. Grrr... but was worth it, 'cause you know, clearing out books! WOOHOO! But, sadly I wasn't able to get some of the ones that I wanted like The Coldest Girl in Coldtown and such, but you know, coming home with like 80 books is enough anyway, so yay!
That pretty much sums up the entire experience of ALA. And I mean, I thought this was awesome just for the 2 days I was there! I know why people get all hyped up about events like these because it's just such an amazing time. I'm totally looking forward to the next round! Hopefully I'll be studying in the US by then ;D
ANYWAY, so here are pictures of the books I managed to get at ALA! I'm not including any of the ones which I got pictured above, so yeah... these are all the unsigned + the ones Lindsay did not get me:
I've been kind of off-blogging for a while because I'm traveling (which means I have to put our event slightly on hold :S), BUT I was in the US!! It was SUPER exciting, cause I FINALLY GOT TO GO TO ALA!! AHHHH!! Here's a little bit about what went down:
YAY! My badge :D
On the first day, I was a little late getting there... like I arrived around 9:30-ish? This was because my dad and I got a little lost trying to find the building and then I had to go up for registration. I must admit, I was a little intimidated by the many, MANY people that were there. But then I went ahead into the exhibits.
WOWIE.
Okay, I see people getting so many book hauls, and then talking about their experience, how they weren't able to grab certain books, so I went in thinking that I wasn't going to get anything! Hehe, I was totally wrong on that one :P I got my first book within the first 10 minutes. I just kind of stood there, wondering if I was able to just take it, kind of confused as to what I was supposed to do. By observing many others I was able to finally get what to take, like the ARCs they put out for free, swag, etc., and what not to, like the display copies. The first one I grabbed was Jessica Darling's It List #1 by Megan McCafferty (Goodreads), which is totally AMAZING because I loved Bumped and Sloppy Firsts, so getting the chance to read this was so great!
So, the signings guys, the signings!
She
recognized
my
name.
OH. MY. GOSH. I like had a little freak out moment because she's like, "I know your name!" and I told her I was apart of the blog tour for this book and we had a little yay! moment of finally meeting. I'm telling you, there was some serious freak out moments with signings at ALA.
And this is the part where I'm super lame, because I totally didn't take any more pictures with authors BUT I will tell you about the other signings I went to that were memorable.
(The one hiding below Counting by 7s is Blood Red, Snow White by Marcus Sedgewick, and the one the wrong way round below Seeing Red is Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick)
Meeting Marcus Sedgewick was amazing, because I'd read his book for our independent reading unit in grade 8 (this is when I was living in Canada). He was really surprised to see Blood Red, Snow White because apparently it's not published in the US, so that was really cool :D
I'm With Stupid by Geoff Herbach was the first book I got signed at ALA, so that was pretty notable!
I got the sampler for United We Spy by Ally Carter signed, and this was a PRETTY long line guys. I ended up waiting probably like for 20-25 minutes to get this signed, but she was super sweet, totally worth the wait.
Michael Grant was AWESOME. Like so awesome. Luckily, when I got there, it was around the end of the signing time, so there wasn't too many people ahead of or behind me. He saw my badge and got to talking about Singapore, and hopefully, he (and hopefully his amazing wife Katherine Applegate, who's line was unfortunately too long) could come over to this side of the world for a signing! AND SOME AWESOME OTHER STUFF HAPPENED. Right behind him was THE Katherine Tegan and Peter Lerangis! Peter Lerangis I caught up later with at his signing the second day, but that was super cool. This was like the signing of awesomeness, I tell ya. However, I totally regret not taking a picture with him, because I mean, HELLO. It's MICHAEL GRANT. Ugh at me -_-
I also got to meet Julie Cross! This was kind of away from the YA booths, so not too many people were there. I got a hardback (still amazes me how many books are just HANDED out) of Vortex and I'd brought my own copy of Tempest. Kind of embarrassing, because I only just noticed that my younger brother had scrawled a birthday message onto the first page. Luckily, she kind of just looked past that and signed my books :) Kind of like what happened with Marcus Sedgewick, my version of Tempest was different so she was like "oh wow! This is a different edition!" and stuff like that, so it was pretty cool.
Speaking of meeting people... I got to meet the very awesome Lindsay from Live To Read and her mom, who was super nice :D Since I wasn't there for the 29th (which I heard was super crowded) Lindsay was AMAZING and got me these books!
I also went to the Flux booth and the publicist there RECOGNIZED ME! She was then super amazing and like got me a copy of The Truth About You and Me by Amanda Grace! EEP! TOTALLY CAN'T WAIT TO START IT!!
The second day (the 1st of July) was a little less crowded than the first day I went, but because they were clearing out a majority of the booths, there were HUGE lines for everything. I'm not joking. For the Simon & Schuster booth I ended up waiting like for 25-30 minutes. Grrr... but was worth it, 'cause you know, clearing out books! WOOHOO! But, sadly I wasn't able to get some of the ones that I wanted like The Coldest Girl in Coldtown and such, but you know, coming home with like 80 books is enough anyway, so yay!
That pretty much sums up the entire experience of ALA. And I mean, I thought this was awesome just for the 2 days I was there! I know why people get all hyped up about events like these because it's just such an amazing time. I'm totally looking forward to the next round! Hopefully I'll be studying in the US by then ;D
ANYWAY, so here are pictures of the books I managed to get at ALA! I'm not including any of the ones which I got pictured above, so yeah... these are all the unsigned + the ones Lindsay did not get me:
All the books I brought home!
ANNNDDDD here's all the swag :D
I got 8 posters, including a HUGE City of Bones one! (and a small Allegiant one! :D)
All of le swag. :D
And... some swag I forgot about for the first pic below :P
Basically, I got a gajillion Antigoddess bookmarks, so any giveaways that I host and I'm mailing it, you'll be getting some :D
So yup! That's all the books and swag I got, and the experience I had at ALA! I won't be able to attend next years, 'cause I'll be graduating from high school, but hopefully I'll be able to attend the Winter one... who knows!
Anyway, if you do get the chance to go to these events– not just ALA, but TLA, BEA, etc. – definitely go to them because they are SUCH A BLAST.
I think that's a long enough post, and that's basically the reason why I haven't been posting since a while back. I've just come back from holiday, basically visiting 25+ universities, and it's all been extremely exhausting, but I hope to be back to blogging this upcoming week! Thanks and if you went to ALA, I'm sorry I couldn't catch you, but lemme know what you thought and hey, we can always meet up next time :P
xoxo
Rabiah
I love your freak-outs hahah xD So much awesomeness in this post!
ReplyDeleteWauw, awesome :D I'm happy that you had such a good time!
ReplyDeletei'm dreaming of attending such an event but i think i would feel lost too^^
ReplyDelete