My Favourite YALC 2k18 Moments!

Hellloooo. So to not overload you too much (I’ve posted quite a lot last week) I pushed this post to this week. But only slightly. And it’s still a lot of posting in a row. Ooops.

But anyway, with the excitement of YALC last weekend and everyone settling in to enjoy their new books I though I’d share a few of my favourite memories of the day.

If this post is extremely confusing, I have another friend called Hannah who I went to YALC with, I’m not just talking about myself in third person…

I got to practice my French

Not something I’d really expected at book con, but my friends and I attempted to answer a quiz whereby famous bookish phrases were translated into French and we had to work out which books they were from.

Alwyn Hamilton Recognised Us

Having seen her every year for four years, me and my friend were a little excited when she said she remembered us as she signed my copy of Hero at the Fall, completing my signed collection of the Rebel of the Sands trilogy.

My Friends can Pitch Impossible Pitches

My friend Hannah read her elevator book pitch at an agents arena talk and got a round of applause and high praise from the agents! Meanwhile I discovered that pitching a book in a sentence was near impossible 😛

On a similar vein, my friend Jo pitched her YA fantasy to an agent and got told it was very marketable! And she promised that if she’s ever signing at YALC I can tag along, defo not going to forget that one in a few years time 😉

We got Tonnes of Cute pics

I refer you to the image below:

Also in the pic with Alwyn Hamilton in I am wearing clothes! I’m wearing a strapless dress 😛

I ate Italian Food

Because all good days end with pizza, so we headed to Pizza Express and then a Pizza shop the next day. I may have an actual addiction.

Laura Stevens is just as Happy to see Us

I got to nearly the front of Laura Stevens, author of The Exact Opposite of Okay, signing line and saw her giddy excitement and enthusiastic crowd photo-ing as the attendant told her how long her signing queue was. It’s so nice how excited she was!

I got Cake, obvs

Feeling a bit bummed about missing out on meeting Tomi Adeyomi since her queue was so long, my friend and I got to fangirl about Children of Blood and Bone in the relaxing area and then got to scoff some very tasty cake. Not quite as good as meeting the author, but the cake was pretty great.

I got Books and Met some Fab Authors

My full list of purchases can be found here.

Despite the tricky signing lines and clashes I met Samantha Shannon, Alwyn Hamilton (twice because she was wondering round the convection and we bumped into her!), Laura Steven, Sally Nicolls, Louise O’Neil and Matt Kileen! And they were all fab!

So those are my YALC highlights! Did you go? Whats a cool Book con memory you have? Would love to hear from you in the comments!

My Top Ten Funniest Reading Memories

Is it really Tuesday already? I’m about to take my boyfriend to a job interview today (wish him luck!!) and due to the building works we have no shower, let’s just say I won’t be getting too close to anyone at his prospectus office.

But for now, being Tuesday, I will celebrate (because obvs Tuesday is celebratory day…) with the usual Top Ten Tuesday meme by That Artsy Reader Girl. This weeks topic is on Books with Sensory Reading Memories which is things you remember when you read a book. I’ve mixed it up a little bit and gone with ten funny reading memories.

1. The Book Thief

You’ve all read The Book Thief right? With that heart wrenching ending that just makes you well up for poor Liesel and friends. I decided to finish this known-to-be-sad novel sitting on a busy and stuffy summer train to Cambridge from London. Boxed in by men with trimmed hair and pristine suits all looking very important and not at all like they appreciated the girl stifling tears in the corner clutching her book in one hand and train tickets in the other. Suffice to say that was embarrassing.

2. Emma by Jane Austen

Emma is a civilised book I like to think. Old fashioned, fancy writing with completely unrelatable characters who sit in mansions all day and worry about marriage- all very quant. So where better to read this novel than a warm bath on a summer evening, surrounded by suds and blaring some less civilised music in the background? Suffice to say my copy of Emma is now sporting some very unsophisticated crinkled pages and dark watermarks, but hey you live and learn.

3. The Ruby in the Smoke By Phillip Pullman

I distinctly remember reading this little gem (see what I did there? Hehe) at school while staring in a slightly minor role in the play my school were putting on. I was a fairy in Midsummer Nights Dream with a grand total of one line, although this was actually an improvement because I was last a lepper in Jesus Christ Superstar which was a lot less dignified. Anyway, I digress, I remember getting to a particularly good bit in this book, all about opium, when I may have accidently missed my curtain cue and had to be shoved on stage by my very unimpressed drama teacher. Suffice to say I was not casted in the next school play.

4. Foundations of Computer Science Compilation by my Lecturer (I think he wanted us to buy his book….)

What’s this? A fact book??? And a text book no less. Don’t worry I’m not about to make a recommendation, this is just another funny story. Being the hard working and astute student I like to believe I am I dragged this hefty text book all the way to Scotland on holiday in preparation for the exams I had three weeks later. As it turns out I was a lot less studious than I wanted to be and my friends snapped many pictures of me using this particular page turner as a pillow before offering to throw it in the rather large Scottish Loch outside….

5. A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab

This story will drive the nail in the coffin on your delusions of me being at all studious. I remember during my January exams my housemate had played many hours of some latest game and we were discussing how much he was procrastinating. This backfired horribly when he pointed out I had read this five hundred page brick of a book during our exam week. Ooops.

6. Catching Fire by Suzanne Colins

I am rarely found without a book tucked into my bag. And I continued with this philosophy during my Duke of Edinburgh’s award, where we walk many miles and camp each night and because sod’s law it usually rains constantly. I’m sure you can tell where this going. Catching Fire got a nice little trip around the soggy Yorkshire Dales before I begrudgingly decided to keep the moth eaten copy and buy the library a new one…

7. My A Level Physics Text Book

Once again, not a recommendation, although this story might explain why my physics result wasn’t quite what I was predicted. It was the impossibly warm day before my exam and me and my friend climbed out of our sixth form window to the fire escape at the top of our school (potentially breaking a lot of health and safety regulations). With our legs slotted between the darkly painted rails and the sun glinting impossibly off my text book we spent much longer admiring the puny scurry of the school below, the great view and chalking our names into the bricks than I spent revising for physics. Oops.

8. Maximum Ride

This is a rare story where my two favourite things clashed- food and books. I studyed at boarding school and just in the midst of an exciting Max Ride flock against the mad scientists (I think I was just at the end of the third one) dinner was starting to be served. Despite waving my friends away and promising I’d catch up I soon found myself very hungry and dinner-less during homework time that night.

9. Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

Anyone else see those five minutes between being ready and needing to start your walk to school as reading time? Because while reading the wonders of Harry Potter I certainly did and naturally those five minutes were always longer than five minutes in practice. My form tutor got very annoyed that I was late not once, but every day for a week, while finishing this fantastic novel.

10. Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan

I can’t actually remember which of these I was reading at the time but I remember me and my friend having a very philosophical argument debate in our GCSE English class when we should have been delving into the motifs in Lord of the Flies. Anyway our intellectual debate soon required more substance and we started flicking through the book in a hunt for quotes that would embellish our arguments when a very scorned English teacher took the book of us for the rest of the lesson. She did not see it my way when I assured her we were improving our reasoning skills.

So there you have it! Ten funny book stories. Can you relate to any of these?  Do you have any of your own? Did you do Top Ten Tuesday and if so what was it on? Love to hear from you in the comments section!