Recently, Patrick Ness came to a bookstore in Seattle. I read and loved A Monster Calls (here's my review) but I already own a signed copy due to the loveliness of Jo over at Wear the Old Coat. What other Ness books have I read? Well, now that you bring that up....none. But that wasn't going to stop me from getting some books signed while he was in town, especially considering how much some of my blogger and reader friends love his Chaos Walking series. I couldn't physically be at the event because of work but I had an employee who was working the event get books signed for me and I cracked up at what he wrote in one of them:

I wish! Speaking of author events, though I won't be recapping ones I went to during my "lost time," I hope to be doing more of that. I recently got books signed by Lish McBride and Victoria Schwab and I am concurrently realizing that I flew to San Diego that night and my books have been sitting at work in a bag for about two weeks now. (Oops!) I bought copies of Vicious, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, and Necromancing the Stone...and maybe The Archived, I can't remember. While I was in San Diego, I spent a day with one of my favorite people, Maggie from Young Adult Anonymous. It has pretty much become commonplace for us to spend a day or two together every time I go down to California and one of our favorite places to go is BookOff. We have gone to *cough*a few other San Diego and Los Angeles bookstores but they were mostly letdowns. I didn't buy too much this time around but I did pick up:

Though there is really nothing on the blog to reflect it, I became addicted to short stories in 2013. I think, and they can correct me if I'm wrong but I'm 99% sure I'm right, all three of us did. We read, discussed, suggested, listened to, hated, and loved hundreds of stories last year and that also got me really into buying short story collections. Honestly, I went a bit overboard with it and I think I have every one of those famous-author-edited "Best American Short Stories of [enter year here]" from the past ten or twenty years. No kidding. Here's some of them to the left, along with another series that I seriously cannot resist buying: "The Year's Best Science Fiction." Those ones are chunksters and they usually put some sort of irresistible (to me) space-related images on the front. The extra bonus in this pic is a bunch of DVDs I found at Target for less than $10 each. In case you can't see in the picture, they are Silver Linings Playbook, Sherlock Holmes, Mean Girls (my old copy has scratches!), Gatsby, and The 10th Kingdom. Have any of you ever seen The 10th Kingdom? I was $5 worth of curious so I just went for it, though I've yet to watch it. Also, it has an 8.4 on IMDB! Speaking of television and movies, though, two recent recommendations from me, which I will probably mention in another post: The Bletchley Circle and Populaire. The former is a Netflix Instant-available miniseries about a group of female code breakers from WWII who help solve a serial murder crime a few years after the war and the latter is an adorable French movie about a businessman who enters his secretary in speed typing competitions. (also on Netflix Instant) Oh, and I also recommend Senna, a documentary about a Brazilian Formula One racer who is often considered the best racer of all time. I had close to zero interest in F1 racing and I still don't care too much about it, but I was super interested in the story of his career.

The books to the right are all from Half Price Books. I read Green Rider by Kristen Britain as part of She Made Me Do It this past fall. My friend Alexis dared me to read it and I'd been meaning to for ages. It was a lot of fun and I didn't have as many problems with it as some of my reader friends did in terms of originality. (or lack thereof) I liked it enough to buy two more installments when I was at Half Price. Coincidentally, I also went to the Half Price Outlet in Olympia with Alexis when she was last home and picked up a few of the books pictured then. Listening to Pat Conroy's My Reading Life has been one of my favorite audio experiences to date and I wanted to own a book copy of it. Daggerspell was mentioned by Kate Elliott at an event I went to as being the beginning of her favorite series. (I think I might've bought another copy then but I didn't see it in my shelves immediately so who knows?) I also bought a Marillier book, Cybele's Secret, The Floating Islands by Rachel Neumeier, Shopgirl by Steve Martin, and four more unnecessary but exciting short story collections.

Last of the bunch of random-books-that-are-only-about-half-of-what-I-recently-acquired-but-that-I-saw-at-first-glance-and-took-pictures-of are these two books I picked up at the University Bookstore semiannual book sale. All the books on a few long tables were 50% of their lowest price so I ended up paying about $5 for both of these. I think that cover for Alif the Unseen is ridiculous. The color and outline are lovely and the wall of text just completely ruins it. I am going to see how well I like the book because I'm not sure I can have that eyesore on my shelves. I have Eclipse One and Eclipse Four now so we all know what that means...

Anyway, I am sneaking this post in near midnight on the weekend so I am counting this as my weekly post. I didn't let myself down yet! Have any of you read any of these books? I am specifically interested to know if you've read any of the shorts in any of these collections. Happy Monday, everyone!

Oh hey, remember me? I used to regularly post here with my two partners in crime, Tatiana and Catie. No? Not ringing any bells? Well, regardless of whether or not you've missed our regular updates, I have missed them. I still email with Catie and Tatiana but I want to know every minute detail of what they think about every single thing they consume in the book, television, or movie worlds. Here are a few other things I miss when I'm not blogging:

• Reading other blogs. (There are definitely a few of you whose blogs I still semi-regularly check and some I need to go sign up for email notifications from because, if I'm being honest, that is the only way I am going to blogs these days.)
  
• The feeling of interconnectedness that comes with comments and Twitter.
  
• Knowing what the heck is going on in the book world. The funniest bit about this is that I work in a bookstore and the time when I knew most about what was going on in the book world was when I wasn't working in a bookstore. In all seriousness, bloggers are some of the most informed people when it comes to bookish information.
• Having goals and keeping track of what I read. Want to know what I've read in 2014 so far? Eight audiobooks and three graphic novels. Is this some sort of joke? I haven't even read one novel? This is truly pathetic.
  
• Processing what I read. If I was the type of person who used gifs, I would search for one of a person who picks up a book, reads its, then tosses it aside and picks up another, because that is what it feels like to me when I don't review books. Though I am very happy in my life right now it makes me sad to see how many books I read in 2013. I wanted to review them and I wish I could have shared the love. (or share the meh, as it was in some cases) I suppose I could always review some of them at a later date but I don't remember tons of details for most of them. *sigh*
  
• That exciting feeling when you find a book, hype it up online, and convince another person to give it a go. 
• Recapping events I go to. I'm pretty sure all of you know I don't really care about traffic on our site but it makes me happy to see how much traffic recaps get and I love taking notes and sharing all the information I glean from authors at book events. When I don't recap them, or even when I don't take notes at events, I forget almost all of the event. In the past few months, I've gone to see Chang-Rae Lee, Kate Elliott, Margo Lanagan, Lish McBride, Victoria Schwab, Kendare Blake, Sara B. Larson, Lucy Christopher, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Ned Vizzini (:(), Cornelia Funke, Amy Spalding, Andrew Smith, Josephine Angelini, Francesca Lia Block, Patricia McCormick, Gretchen McNeil, Kristen Kittscher, Bill Konigsberg, Lindsey Leavitt, Maureen Goo, and a bunch of other people I CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER. I can't even remember going to these events. I'm not kidding.
  

Of course, there are a ton of things I definitely don't miss when I'm not blogging but the things I love and miss are weighing down the scale right now and every fiber of my being is hoping I can start back at it. So here it is, my first goal of 2014: To post at least once a week. I make no promises for my amazing cobloggers because they lead hectic lives and, truth be told, I am writing this post while they are sleeping and I am contemplating not mentioning it to them to see how long it takes them to notice I posted something. (I go for weeks without visiting our blog so it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't notice at all.)  I hope they do contribute every once in a while at least, though, because I read our own blog with the same enthusiasm I have for my favorite blogs--I can't wait to see what those two have to say. I love to agree with them and I also love to disagree with them.

Anyway, I miss my online reading buddies, I miss recapping book events, I miss reviewing things, and I miss being a book blogger. So I'm going to try to be a book blogger again. Check back every once in awhile; this ought to be good.