Books! Booze! Buns! My World Book Night

Yesterday was the Best Day. Seriously, best day I’ve had in a long time. I don’t know how much of this impression was coloured by it coming straight after the sheer, unmitigated awfulness of last week, but still. Awesome day.

Yesterday was World Book Night, which I spent in the White Swan in Leeds, flinging copies of Good Omens at people in the company of some wonderful people I know from Leeds Book Club (including @leedsbookclub herself), and some other people who I’d never met before but who were instantly AWESOME. There were books, there was booze, and oh my gosh there were certainly buns as well (everyone baked. Everyone. I think we had more cakes than books).

In addition to the WBN books – which included, as well as Good Omens, copies of Player of Games, The Road, Misery, I Capture the Castle, The Time Traveller’s Wife, and Let the Right One In – there was also a book swap. Once people started arriving at the pub, it was so much fun watching it dawn on people that yes, we were really giving away all these books for free. Some people were baffled, some were delighted, and nearly all left with big grins and stacks of books.

I did manage to come away with a bit of a haul: I picked up WBN copies of Misery and Let the Right One In, plus a WBN title from last year, A Life Like Other People’s. From the book swap, I picked up Orham Pamuk’s Snow, and – this one I am most excited about – Point Horror: Twins.

Point Horror! Oh, the nostalgia! I have @gazpachodragon to thank (profusely) for that particular treasure – she brought along a whole stack of Point Horrors to the book swap. Once I spotted them on the shelf, I started grabbing anyone nearby to point at them excitedly: “Look! There are Point Horrors! Loads of them!!” The reactions I got were a pretty even split between:

“ZOMG Point Horror??” *runs to grab handfuls*

and

*blank look* “Point… what? Is that a series or something?”

Now that I think about it, that was a pretty even gender split too… I suppose Point Horror was probably more of a teenage girl thing.

If I haven’t quite stressed this point enough: it was a brilliant night. The day had actually started amazingly well too, despite my sore back from lugging a bag full of 20 books and two tins of cake on the train with me (not a fun commute). When I got to work, a package arrived for me, containing a copy of A Wind in the Door, the second in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet. I’d mentioned this on the blog and on Twitter before, having been very excited to find out that there were actually sequels to A Wrinkle in Time (one of my all-time favourites), made a mental note to keep an eye out for cheap second hand copies, and hadn’t really thought about it since. Turns out a good friend of mine had seen a cheap copy and just decided to buy it for me. Is that not the loveliest thing you’ve ever heard?

Today has actually been fairly meh in comparison, but I’m still in the best mood I’ve been in for ages. Never underestimate the power of books, booze and buns – and lovely people – to make everything better

Photos from the night courtesy of @Becca_Lou18

Posted by woodsiegirl on April 24, 2012

http://woodsiegirlwrites.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/books-booze-buns-my-world-book-night/