Books! Booze! Buns! My World Book Night

Books! Image courtesy of @becca_lou18Yesterday 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 Buns! (and some dubious advice...) Image courtesy of @Becca_Lou18Road, 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.

Twins book cover. Oh! Point Horror!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

When you’re smiling…

Are you Happy?Time for another “reasons to be happy” post! Here’s some things that have made me smile this week:

1. Fish babies!

One of the fish in our tank has had babies! There are now lots of tiny fish babies swimming about – hard to count as they’re tiny and fast, but we think there’s at least 9 of them. We were a bit worried they’d all get eaten – most of the other fish in the tank will eat fry, including the mother (a platy) – but so far we’ve not noticed a drop in numbers. We’ve got lots of plants in the tank, and they seem mostly to be hiding among the leaves, presumably to avoid being eaten. I guess that’s what they’d do in the wild. Not sure what we’re going to do when they get bigger, as there’s not really enough room in the tank for 9 extra platies – I guess we’ll probably need to take them back to the pet shop. But for now – teeny tiny surprisingly cute fish babies!

2. Snow!

Freak snowstorm on Monday night meant that we woke up to about 1-2 inches of snow, making everything white and pretty and magical. (Then I had to get up and go to work, and it was cold and wet and the wind was blowing the snow horizontally – but we’re focusing on the positive here. Snow=pretty!)

Also, I completely love that less than a week after writing that the warm, practically summer weather was making me happy, I’ve listed snow as a happiness-maker. Ah, British springtime. Never change!

3. Books!

I found out yesterday that one of my favourite books of all time, A Wrinkle in Time, had not one not two not three but FOUR sequels!! How this fact escaped my attention for so long, I have no idea. I must have read that book dozens of times as a child – I could practically recite it by heart. I re-read it last year and it’s lost none of its charm. I can’t really justify buying the extra four books just now, but I’ve added them to my wishlist and will be keeping an eagle eye out for cheap/second-hand copies.

Been a pretty good week really, all in all! Plus, I now have the long weekend to look forward to – and I will be spending it with my family, on a canal boat in Wiltshire. Bliss!

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