Goodness and Percy Shall Follow.

I hit ALA yesterday, and tried to cram a week's worth of exhibitor visits into one day, plus 3 hours of conference meetings. I am quite sore, but the upside is that I have ARCs! There were definitely fewer free books to be had this year, so here is a word to you book dealers: catalogs will only get you so far. Give me an ARC (or two) with your catalog web address printed on the back cover and a few pages at the end showing some of your soon-to-be-released books, and I will be much more likely to visit you. Awesome stuff I saw: a book vending machine, Andy Runton (and he signed a copy of Owly and Friends for me!), and awesome microfilm reader that is part microfilm reel-part computer, Bill Barnes (who sold me a T-shirt!), Sherman Alexie (whom I did not wait in line to have sign anything for me), part of a few of the Book Cart Drill Team finals (it sucks to be short), a $9 hot dog, one of my previous library directors, and a line of librarians 50 feet long waiting for Starbucks. I also got to see many of my friends from SLIS at a party that evening, which was awesome. I got to talk about the plague and vampires/cannibalism with Laura, the only person who isn't grossed out by that stuff (she re-introduced me to medical nonfiction last year and it's awesome) and talk to other friends about the tough adjustment period in starting a new job/breaking in to the profession, which made us all (well, definitely me, anyway) feel better. I only got lost three times and only by a little tiny bit two of those times. I did finish The Battle of the Labyrinth, by Rick Riordan, before I left. Like other series for young teens (Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events), we are facing some dark themes as the story progresses towards the last installment. The writing keeps being awesome, but, although we're tiptoeing around the idea of Percy and Annabeth being more than friends, Percy still feels like a child. He celebrates his 15th birthday at the end of this book, but he acts the same way he did when we met him, when he was 12. I'm waiting to see what happens in the next book. I'm very anxious about it.