A year and half ago, when Tasch & I first made this blog, she posted about BEA 2015 and I posted about why I wouldn’t be attending BEA 2016 (Me, BEA, and the Undying Will). At the time it was largely due to expenses as well as a feeling of…malaise. I’ve been attending BEA since 2007 – when I attended as an educator to meet an author I fervently admired after convincing my then boss I should try to expand our pitiful Center library. I had no idea what I was getting into; I wasn’t blogging and bloggers as a group had yet to start attending(1).
I didn’t come home with many books that year (ten?), but I also didn’t make any friends. It was an overwhelming experience to put it frankly. I almost didn’t attend in 2009, but at this point I was blogging and due to health reasons I wasn’t working, so my ability to read “new” books or meet other book lovers was severely limited(2). Book blogging as a community was just building itself together (anybody remember how great the book blogging community on “Ning” was? Does anyone even remember “Ning”?) so again there was maybe several dozens of us at BEA that year.
2010 it exploded. Continue reading “BE(not A), a Changing Landscape Part 1: History”
In the enchanted kingdom of Brooklyn, the fashionable people put on cute shoes, go to parties in warehouses, drink on rooftops at sunset, and tell themselves they’ve arrived. A whole lot of Brooklyn is like that now—but not Vassa’s working-class neighborhood.
An idealistic young student and a banished warrior become allies in a battle to save their realm in this first book of a mesmerizing epic fantasy series, filled with political intrigue, violent magic, malevolent spirits, and thrilling adventure
For the Sake of Reading 