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ALA: Day Two

Day Two

Day two started out a little slow... We were still totally psyched to see everything, but we were extremely wore out from the day before. Chelsea set the alarm for 7, but it didn't go off. Luckily I can't sleep-in in hotels so I was up by 7 and starting the coffee pot for Chelsea and Emily, they are caffeine addicts. Chelsea practically lives on the stuff!

We were hoping to make it to ALA by 9 because Chelsea really wanted to get a copy of Catching Fire. I still haven't read The Hunger Games... I know, I know... I do own it, I just haven't read it yet. So, I thought it would be nice to get one, but I wasn't dying to have it, but I knew Chelsea was. Unfortunately by the time we made it, they were already gone... (luckily Chelsea was able to borrow it from fellow blogger that snagged a few!)

But we didn't let that damper out day! First on our itinerary that day was Melina Marchetta. However when we showed up where she was signing, she seemed to be mia. She was probably running late like we were! Luckily for us we happened to see that Kate Messner was close by signing ARCs of her debut novel The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. It's a MG book, and it sounds adorable! I was so happy that we got to see Kate! Awesome author!

(We saw Cindy come in at some point during the day, totally not stalking.)

On our way back over to Melina we decided to get in line to see Kristina Springer (The Espressologist). We ended up being second in line for this one! Another lucky line day! We snagged an ARC and Kristina signed them for us, she signed "Love and Lattes." Isn't that cute!? She let me snap a picture with her too, she's super sweet. I can't wait to read her book, I LOVE the new cover! Hopefully they stick with this one... fourth times a charm right?

After that we headed back over to the Egmont USA booth where Janet Lee Carey was signing ARCs of her new novel Stealing Death. Janet is also one of the Readergirlz authors! While we were in line waiting for Janet we chatted with one of the Egmont reps. We ended up having a conversation about another one of their titles Back Home, and found out the author would be there later than day, so we made a note to come back and check it out.

Luckily we had went and saw Sarah Dessen the night before at Anderson's because her line was insane!! Instead we headed over to Julie Halpern signing and picked up an ARC of her new novel Into The Wild Nerd Yonder! It's that such a cute title and I the cover is really cute too. Julie had some really cute swag! Buttons! We had planned on seeing Christina Meldrum (Madapple) next, but her signing was canceled for some reason.

We stopped at the Simon and Schuster booth to have a chat with Lisa McMann. While Chelsea and Emili chatted it up I headed over to see LHA again and bought a copy of Chains for her to sign. I actually got to talk to her this time, unlike at the Anderson signing where it was just a little to busy. She is a very cool lady! And an awesome author. Not that I prefer LHA over Lisa, because I love Lisa's books too, they are two of my fav's.

On our way back to see if Melina was signing, we passed the Houghton booth and there was an author signing there. We initially just walked by but the cover snatched my eye... "Hey, I've seen that book!" It was author Garret Freymann-Weyr! I have her new book, After the Moment, so we bought copies of her first book Stay With Me and she signed those for us! She was hilarious! I'm so glad that we happened to walk by at that moment! She even asked me to write down my blog so she could stop by!

Finally we made it to Melina Marchetta! Bought a copy of Jellicoe Road for her to sign. I've heard nothing but awesome things about this book, so I'm really looking forward to reading it. Chelsea totally named dropped Adele from Persnickety Snark, and Melina said she was excited to be meeting her next month! I loved listening to Melina's accent! And she was so nice too!

Lunch Time! Where we again spent money on insanely overpriced food. And we might have ran into Cindy Pon again, but it was her that yelled at us this time! She was totally stalking us and not the other way around!

Next we headed to see Stephanie Kuehnert. I wished I would have asked her how to say her last name. But we bought a copy of Ballads of Suburbia for her to sign. She is so awesome and cute! She let us snag a picture with her, and she even wanted one of us too! She had just gotten a tattoo, so she said she was trying very hard not to get the new tattoo goop in my hair! I told you she was nice. It was also her birthday the next day and we totally spaced on telling her like we planned on. I blame it on being in awe of her awesomeness.

We had found out earlier in the day from Kristen of Bookworming in the 21st Century... I'm pretty sure it was Kristen that told us... that there was a group author signing over at Scholastic around 1. So after Stephanie we headed over there. There was already a huge line, but we couldn't pass this one up! Plus, we got to see Maggie Stiefvater again, she was signing copies of Shiver this time. We also got to see; Karlijn Stoffels (Heartsinger), Patricia C. Wrede (Thirteenth Child), Mark Teague (The Doom Machine) and Patrick Carman (Ghost in the Machine).

While we were in line, we met up with Sarah Ockler the author of Twenty Boy Summer! She had a signing on Monday that we missed, but we were super excited she came early so that we could hang out with her. She has lost her voice the day before, but I think her soft voice only added to her cuteness! She hung out with us for around an hour and hit up the Scholastic signing with us and some other booths too!

Luckily we remembered we wanted to head back to the Egmont USA booth to met Julia Keller (Back Home) she's a Pulitzer prize winner! We were able to get an ARC signed and talk to her for a bit too. I will admit, I was a little intimidated, but she was so nice! She loved that Chelsea and I were bloggers too! We also ran into Kay again. I also got to meet EdgmontGal!

Next we headed to the Random House booth to see Libba Bray. We didn't get any books signed by her, but we did do a walk by pic-ing and snapped a photo of her. She has very cool glasses.

We did however get some books signed by E. Lockhart. I bought The Boyfriend List and The Boy Book, since I had gotten The Treasure Map of Boys for review and hadn't read the first two. E. Lockhart even said you should read the series in order or you will be very confused to I'm going to take her advice and start with the first one!

Other books I picked up that day:

  • Break by Hannah Moskowitz
  • Another Faust by Daniel and Dina Nayeri
  • Lockdown by Alexander Gordon Smith
  • Candor by Pam Bachorz
  • Fortune's Folly by Deva Fagan
  • Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin
  • The Witch's Guide to Cooking with Children by Keith McGowan

And that was the end of ALA. I did make it home in time to watch True Blood, so it was a fantastic day all around! I absolutely loved meeting everyone! And thanks again to Chelsea!

Here is a picture of all the books and bookish swag that I picked up.

Would you be interested in me doing a vlog of what I got... or would that be overkill?