Knock knock! Time for a reading + life update!
Yes you are reading this correctly – an actual blog post after 2.5ish months. Seeing as this is a hobby for both me and Shari, I don’t feel guilty about taking some time away but I do miss blogging! It’s fun 🙂
So it’s time to come back! For me at least haha. Shari, as you may or may not know, is a BOSS who is following her dreams at animation school!! How cool is that?!? But that also means she’s quite busy with projects and art and all that incredible stuff. I have no such excuse – I just got out of the habit of blogging lol.
What have I been up to these past 2.5ish months? Well, I’m glad you asked. If you didn’t, too bad. I’m gonna tell you anyway.
1.) New York Comic Con!!!
Over the summer, my friend and I decided on a whim to sign up for the waiting list for tickets to NYCC. I have never been to any comic con before and have always wanted to go, so yknow why not? When we signed up we were like #250 in line or something so I didn’t think it would happen. But somehow!! Two weeks before the con we actually got tickets!! Which is crazy.
I knew there were going to be a lot of authors there, but after looking through the schedule I was kinda shocked at how many book events there were! Like, that’s pretty much all my friend and I did each day and our days were filled. And of course we didn’t even make it to all the book events! But there were all sorts of panels (Magic x Mayhem, Not Your Mother’s Tinkerbell, Magic Space Opera/Science Fantasy, etc), spotlights on authors (Robin Hobb, Garth Nix and Veronica Roth, Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda, etc), in-booth signings (Marie Lu, V.E. Schwab, Tochi Onyebuchi, etc), and even ARC drops!
The events that I just listed are some of the ones that we went to. And after every panel/spotlight all the authors did signings!! I brought like 12 books of my own to get signed, and I somehow acquired like….20 or something books there that I either bought and got signed, or they were free (ARC drops, etc).
Of course there are an insane number of panels about every pop culture thing you could possibly imagine – it’s very overwhelming! We stuck to just book things but even that was barely manageable. The other things we did attend were a handful of events with Travis and Clint McElroy, who are two podcasters that my friend and I love.
Clint is the father of Travis, Justin, and Griffin, and the four of them run a Dungeons & Dragons podcast called The Adventure Zone which is INCREDIBLE. Hilarious and creative and great for fantasy fans. The three brothers also run an advice podcast called My Brother, My Brother, and Me. Each of them also do a few other podcast but those are the two I listen to. They have also turned the arcs of The Adventure Zone into graphic novels! So one of the panels was promoting the newest one. We got to meet them and get our graphic novels signed and ahhh they are just so cool.
Just walking around the con was amazing too – people are SO creative and come up with some really fantastic costumes/cosplay. And there are tons of vendors selling anything you want! Pins, D&D dice, tea, books, video games, t-shirts, etc. That’s more for like companies and stuff (all the big publishing houses had booths). And then there’s a whole separate Artist’s Alley where artists can set up their own booths and sell their artwork! Gah. It’s really amazing.
If you have the chance to go to a comic con near you, I highly recommend it. Although obviously it is very intense and wicked crowded so if that makes you uncomfortable, then I don’t recommend it. Or, if you ever wanna go to NYCC hit me up because I will most def be going again haha.
Now to get around to reading all the books I acquired…
2.) Reading a lot!
Highlights include:
- Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (Goodreads review here – dark and not for everyone but I LOVED IT)
- The October Daye series by Seanan McGuire (THIS SERIES IS AMAZING!!!!!! Urban fantasy and Seanan is an incredible writer – I binged six books in a row and she is now one of my top 5 authors probably. READ THIS YOU COWARDS)
- Well Met by Jen DeLuca (a romance that takes place at a renaissance fair! so cute)
3.) Other random life things!
- dogsitting some very cute pups!
- drinking lots of boba/bubble tea!
- traveling to Vermont and going to Oktoberfest and visiting cool bookstores!
- hanging out with my parents when they came to visit me!
- going apple picking!
- carving pumpkins!
- aaaand more reading of course 🙂
So that’s pretty much it! Have you all had a good few months? What have you been reading? Anything I need to put on my list?
I’m so jealous that you got to see Robin Hobb! Sounds like you’ve had a great couple of months. 🙂
Have you met her?? If not I really hope you do one day. Thanks Maraia, it’s been pretty good 🙂
I’ve fallen out of the habit of commenting on blogs, so I’m kind of similar to you there, haha. But here I am commenting on this one! 💁🏻♀️
I loved hearing about your time at Comic Con! Ever since falling head-over-heels for Saga, I now want to go to a comic con and I think I’ll check out the London one next year. 😏 (Fingers crossed I actually try more comics by that point instead of just, you know, reading Saga over and over. 😂)
Your and Karina’s binge reads of October Daye have made me SO curious! I can’t wait to try the series but I think I still need to wait till this silly Saga obsession passes, haha. 🙄😂
Haha well I’m very happy to see your comments here!!! ❤️
Oh god seeing you read Saga made me want to do a reread SO BADLY haha. OOoooo yes I hope you can go! That would be so much fun. Let me know if you want a couple comic recs, or if you wanna try something out together!
Yesss I think you will like this series hehe.
Welcome back. I’m glad you had a good time at Comic Con.
Thank you so much! I’m happy to be blogging again 🙂