Books and Me, Out in the World!
Hi everyone!
I feel like I have a MILLION things to blog about and no time, because I should also be packing and working on my school presentations and making lists of what’s OK to give my kids for lunch while I’m gone and figuring out what to read at bookstores and taking books back to the library and…
Well, let’s just say, thank GOODNESS all this excitement is starting in a place I love with people I love. Check out this beautiful poster!:
Oh my goodness, don’t you wildly want to come to this now? Look how beautiful all those covers look together! I am so so so excited to sit down with these amazing authors and talk about their books and the writing life. And I get to go back to Williams, which I adore, and I get to hang out with Kristin and Dayna, who are two of my best friends, plus Caragh, whom I met while she was in Boston a couple weeks ago on tour and who immediately felt like someone I would be best friends with.
Actually, one of the best things already about this event is that it prompted me to go read Caragh’s Birthmarked trilogy:
YOU GUYS. This is the dystopian trilogy we should all be talking about! These books are so incredibly smart and thoughtful and complicated and romantic and WONDERFUL. Everyone should read them! Teens OR adults would love them. It’s one of the rare trilogies I’ve read that really digs into the dystopian world-building, lays out these very believable complex post-apocalyptic societies (two of them!), and then commits to doing the very hard work of resolving their problems. But at the same time, they’re character-centered, and you love this heroine and completely understand her–and there’s humor and fantastic romance, too. If you liked Legend by Marie Lu, or Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, or A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, definitely try Birthmarked. I can’t tell you enough how much I loved it!
And how awesome is that, to really love something written by a new friend? Now I can’t wait to read her new one, Vault of Dreamers, which combines a number of my favorite subjects (gifted children, reality TV, sinister secrets, lots of sleeping…). 🙂
So, my excitement about going to Williams with these ladies (and then the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT on Friday!) is definitely helping a lot with my nerves about the tour next week. OH MY GOODNESS. Will I make it to all the events and schools and flights on time? Will I wear the right outfit every day? (Is it REALLY going to be 80 degrees in Denver next week???) Which scene from book 6 should I read? What if nobody comes to the bookstores? (Except now that you know I’ll be reading a SNEAK PEEK of book 6, you’ll totally come, won’t you?) 🙂
The only part I’m not nervous about is meeting you guys — talking to readers is basically even more awesome than ice cream, and I love all your questions (come with lots of questions!), and really I wish we could just all hang out in our pyjamas with our dogs and talk about books together for the entire tour. (OK, we can talk about TV, too — has anyone else watched Gotham? Who wants to watch the premiere of The Flash with me on Tuesday? When is The 100 coming back, SERIOUSLY NOW?)
Have you all checked out my Events page to see where I’ll be next week? The Provo Library in Utah on Monday at 7pm! Barnes & Noble in Boulder, Colorado, on Tuesday at 5:30pm! Tattered Cover Bookstore in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, on Wednesday at 6pm! And the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sunday — panel at 12pm, signing at 1pm! I hope you can join me for any of those! 🙂 And we can celebrate the fact that Spirit Animals 5: Against the Tide is now out where you all can read it, hooray!
(Oh, I hope you like it! I hope it at all lives up to the awesomeness of Brandon, Maggie, Garth, Sean, and Shannon!)
OK, I should go to bed, since I have to drive to the other side of the state tomorrow! Yay hooray! Oh, wait! One more link — my lovely friend Annie is doing a great thing on her blog Annie and Aunt this month, where you can send them any book-searching questions you might have (like: What’s the best book to get my six-year-old sister for her birthday? Or: If I really loved Eleanor and Park, what should I read next?) and they’ll answer it. Isn’t that cool? 🙂
Happy October, everyone!
Quote of the Day: “Rabbit,” said Pooh to himself. “I like talking to Rabbit. He talks about sensible things. He doesn’t use long, difficult words, like Owl. He uses short, easy words, like ‘What about lunch?’ and ‘Help yourself, Pooh.’ I suppose, really, I ought to go and see Rabbit.” — The House at Pooh Corner, by A. A. Milne