This week was all about Broadway and Books!

I talked about my Broadway fun here and now it’s time for the book recap! 🙂 Like last year, I attended the Teen Author Carnival as my official kick off to BEA Week, the best book expo out there in my opinion. Before heading over to the Jefferson Library for the night’s events, I caught up with Susan Dennard (Truthwitch, Releases January 2016) and Adam Silvera (More Happy Than Not, Releases June 2, 2015) which was a delight! Those two are amazing and I am so excited to read their upcoming novels!

At the Teen Author Carnival, I attended two panels, the first was HULK SMASH OF EMOTIONS moderated by Andye of Reading Teen, where talk mainly revolved around how to get in the mode when writing and how to break free from certain moods when not writing. That was actually a really funny panel. Adam, Jesse Andrews (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), Tiffany Schmidt (Hold Me Like A Breath), Kody Keplinger (Lying Out Loud), Katie McGarry (Nowhere But Here), and Elizabeth Eulberg (We Can Work It Out) spoke on the panel but I think it’s safe to say Jesse Andrews stole the show. He is HYSTERICAL. Oh. My. Goodness.

The second panel I attended was THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED moderated by Claire Legrand (Winterspell), talking about these out of the box concepts and worlds created by participating authors, Susan, Alexandra Bracken (Passenger), Alex London (Proxy), Melissa Grey (The Girl at Midnight), Virginia Boecker (The Witch Hunter), and Jennifer L. Armentrout (Stone Cold Touch).

While there were two other panels, they were being conducted at the same time as the panels above so it was a choose your own adventure kind of night. After the panels, the autograph session began. I brought along my copies of Alexandra Bracken’s In the Afterlight, Tommy Wallach‘s We All Looked Up, Tiffany Schmidt’s Hold Me Like A Breath, Lance Rubin‘s Denton Little’s Death Date as well as Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton‘s Tiny Pretty Things to get signed. I also popped over to see Marieke Nijkamp (This Is Where It Ends) to say hello as limited ARCs were being given out there but regardless, I had to say hi to my lovely Twitter friend! Speaking of saying hello, it was great to run into Lili of Lili’s Reflections who was my Secret Sister during last year’s Bookish Secret Santa. Tuesday night was fabulous.

Then came a sound sleep before the madness of BEA. Of the 39 books that I set out to get at BEA, I managed to walk away with 21 plus a handful of others lovely surprises so…another successful year in the books! If you take a look at the photo above, note that all of the books on the left are up for grabs (see the entire book list here) to those who donate (you can donate here) $30 or more to YA Runs A 5K which is raising money for a We Need Diverse Books Grant (details here). The books on the right are for my personal collection. I will be reviewing as many of all of the above as possible this summer and fall so stay tuned!

My most anticipated read is easily Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. My top five most anticipated reads would be rounded out by This is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp, What We Saw by Aaron Hartzler, None of the Above by I. W. Gregorio, and Traffick by Ellen Hopkins with notable mentions to Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy and Under the Lights by Dahlia Adler because who can pick just five? So that’s what I’m reading first from the piles. Speaking of Ellen Hopkins, she has always been such an inspiration to me as a writer and I can’t even begin to explain how amazing it was to meet her! Ahhh!

I also took photos with Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries) and Jennifer L. Armentrout (Scorched) which was very exciting! As was meeting Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Zombieland) whose debut novel, Bream Gives Me Hiccups releases this September. I am an even bigger fan of Jesse’s after meeting him. He seems like a genuinely nice guy but he went above and beyond at the signing and that really spoke to me. I watched him as he shook everyone’s hands, made small talk with each person, and even move the line over to an empty table to finish signing for the people in line after his session was scheduled to end. Bravo to you, Jesse. That’s how it’s done! I had always planned on reading his plays as well but now I’m moving those up my list now!

I also had the pleasure of meeting Louise Fury of The Bent Agency who I interned for as a reader this past Fall, Winter, and Spring. That was fantastic! As was being able to run into and thank many agents in person for participating in YA Runs A 5K this year. It was also great to run into Katherine Locke (Second Position) as well as many bloggers including but not limited to the ladies of The Bevy Bibliothèque , Ciara from Lost At Midnight, Jamie from The Perpetual Page Turner, Octavia from Read Sleep Repeat, Alexa from Alexa Loves Books, Kristina Horner, Kristin at Super Space Chick, Julie of Bloggers Heart Books, Seirra of Dear, Restless Reader, Brittany of Book Rambles, and One Well Read Chick.

After three days of hauling books in the city, I headed home to Jersey…but not before stopping at Barnes & Noble. Because it’s not like I didn’t have enough books already, right?! Ha! Well, I went and got a few new and long overdue titles which you can see below.

Then, when I got home, I saw a few packages for me. Review copies! Behold:

Basically, stay tuned for a ton of reviews later this year. It’s going to be bananas! I’m kicking my reading into high gear this summer as I’ve got a pretty big reading goal and I need to catch up and then go above and beyond if I want to hit the mark!

Huge thanks to everyone involved with putting BEA together and making all of the above ARCs available to bloggers like myself. I had a wonderful time collecting books and meeting so many people in the community and industry. What a great year. I would say that I’m looking forward to next year but I’m grateful that it’s a year away because I have a ton of reading to do between then and now.

Happy Reading!