Saturday at ALA

No wireless in the hotel this morning. Boo! So I’m writing now and will post later. [Finally able to get on but boy do I hate it when I have to wait.]

Saturday at ALA was full of interesting people and events. I started the morning at a program on graphic novels and popular culture books for reluctant readers. The speakers were Holly Black, Barry Lyga and Kazu Kibuishi. Two other authors couldn’t make it. It was a great panel discussion with lots of give and take. Interesting discussion on genre blending in YA. The panel thinks that we will see more of that in YA but it wouldn’t work in adult fiction.

I then went to All Committee to meet up with the YALSA Tech for YA committee. Our program is on Monday morning -- a poster session on best practices. I can’t wait. Then we discussed our program for the 2009 conference. I think we pretty much have it fleshed out. We just have to find speakers!

Got to the exhibits a bit after noon time. It turns out you can have a rolling bag if you ask. So now my bag has a cute little pink tag and no one hassles me! By the time I got there, there were very few ARCs left. Pretty disappointing. I did talk to a couple of vendors who took pity on me and brought out the stash for me. I just can’t get to the exhibits before noon any day.

I got into the science fiction program in the afternoon. Vernor Vinge, Brandon Sanderson, Eric Flint and Cory Doctorow. Very interesting discussion on copyright issues. Also how fantasy and science fiction are similar and have similar aims. Cory was amazing. We were all hanging on his every word. Fortunately I have read Little Brother. TOR gave us free copies of the books and we were able to get them signed afterwards.

I then went to Disney for the ProQuest event. I am not too big on theme parks like that but I certainly couldn’t come to Anaheim and not go. It was fun. The fireworks were amazing. And everything ran like clockwork. The ProQuest people know how to get us where we need to go. Came back to the hotel exhausted and reading to sleep. Another long day on Sunday awaits.