Happy Tuesday!  I’m back to work after a four-day weekend that was honestly everything that I needed.  I left early Friday morning, delayed actually leaving the state because I had to get gas and pick up snacks at Target, and then it was on the road for four hours.  I listened to Apple’s Dance radio, which is actually my favorite thing ever, got bored until I found out that Escape the Fate had released a new single, and spent probably 40 minutes listening to that on repeat and pretending that I was Alex.

Does anyone else do this?  I always get into a character’s mindset (“a character” like that character isn’t 90% of the time Alex, and the other 10% a mix between James or Landon) while I’m driving or as I’m getting ready to sleep and just pretend to be them for a little bit.  If that’s weird, oh well.  It helps me write sometimes.

So, four hours.  Damn.  There wasn’t any snow in Massachusetts when I left, and it was so sad to cross into Maine and just bam.  There it is.

Where was I going?  ERIN!  We only get to see each other about 3-4 times a year, and I always seem to pick one of the stupidest winter months to visit.  The snow really wasn’t that bad, realistically, just a lot compared to how I’ve been living lately.  We didn’t do much on Friday–watched Victor Frankenstein (I don’t know why I haven’t seen it before either), spent some time giggling over Grace & Frankie, had Panera mac n cheese (oh my godddd, it’s so good), and just generally stayed up late being excited that we weren’t communicating solely through the Internet.

Saturday was the big day.  We left early to go to Bangor, and just spent way more money than either of us should have.  We started in TJ Maxx, both got these huge, gorgeous crochet dream catchers, and then hit up AC Moore and Old Navy before lunch at Olive Garden.  Everyone always asks me why I’m so excited to go to OG with Erin and it’s because literally no one else will go with me.  After that, it was off to Bull Moose, where the bookshopping began.

So my plan was to specifically buy some middle grade, and then to buy my usual stack of young adult.  My plan was not to buy 13 books.  I would like to say I don’t know how these things happen, but I’d probably be lying to you.

I’d never been to Bull Moose before, but it reminded me a lot of FYE or Newbury Comics.  However, Bull Moose has a pretty huge book section, which FYE & Newbury Comics don’t, so I skipped right on over to there, started to look at YA, and then saw this wonderful little nook of middle grade and children’s.  I honestly didn’t mean to buy all five of these.  I had more in my stack, actually, and convinced myself to put back a few.  I’m super excited about all of these, obviously, but two more than the others.  A Wrinkle in Time, I’ve never read, and I want to before the movie comes out, and Sparrow just sounds so beautiful.

So, huzzah!  Part one of the plan has happened successfully.  I had a new stack of middle grade books that I’m stoked to dig into, and then we went over to BAM where I promptly forgot about how many middle grade books I’d bought when I sat down in front of the young adult section.

This is not actually a lie.  I did forget.  I was so excited to be in a bookstore again (the last time was in August, guys) that I just started pulling books off the shelves and stacking them in a basket.

Alright, so I know that most people probably pick up one or two books when they go into a store, and they probably don’t get asked by the staff if they want one of the rolling baskets, so I thought it’d be fun to let you in on what bookshopping with me looks like.  I can reel it in, but if we’re going out with the specific goal to bookshop, this is what’s going to happen.

After I’ve looked at anything specific (I really wanted to check out the biographies, so we stopped there first), and made sure that my partner in crime is all set (Erin wanted to look at the comics), I plop myself in front of the young adult section and start with the letter A.  No joke, guys.  I take books off the shelf for one of three reasons:

1. intriguing title
2. cool-looking spine
3. author I know/book that’s been recommended

This is a terrible way to look for books, but oh well.  And this is how it goes.  I look at every single shelf for every single letter, and read the summaries of any book that catches my eye.  If I like the book, it goes in the basket.  At the end (of letter Z), I go back through the stack and make sure I definitely want all of them.  How do I decide that?  Normally, I’ll sort out the summaries that I really, really like separate from the ones that were just okay, and then I’ll read the first couple of pages of everything and make my decision from there.  This works, I promise.  I ended up putting three books back on the shelf, though I’ll probably get them somewhere along the line.

Two of them, Caraval and Salt to the Sea, I was super stoked because they were in the bargain section, so they both were only $6, and while I’ve been wanting both, I didn’t want them enough to spend nearly $20.  I did want to pick up a book that’s been recommended to me, but they didn’t have a copy of it, so that’s a bummer.  Next time, hopefully.  The only other book that I went in knowing that I wanted was Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda because guys.  How have I not read this before?  This was actually the point when I got asked if I wanted a rolly cart.  And then asked if I wanted someone to carry the basket up to the register for me.  Guys, I’m not a weakling, I’ve got this.

(It was pretty heavy, though, considering all of my eight books, plus Erin’s seven, were in there.)

After that, we got Thai, went home to watch–oh, I totally forget.  Ha!  Gifted.  We were trying to decide between a RDJ or Chris Evans movie, but Erin had just bought Gifted, and Chris Evans is actually the most attractive man on the planet, so.  Sunday was Kill Your Darlings (if you’re a writer and you haven’t seen this, find it and weep, and then go watch On the Road) in the morning and Black Panther (easily one of the best Marvel movies I’ve ever seen, 10/10 would recommend) at night and Cantonese followed by most of A Young Doctor’s Notebook because apparently we were having a DanRad weekend.

On Monday, we hung out for a little bit, and then it was back to MA with my huge dreamcatcher and bag that was ripping at the seams because hello, thirteen gosh dang books.

Let’s not even talk about the fact that one of my preorders is arriving today.  Oi.

My TBR shelf currently hates me.  I’m going to take a picture of this shelf eventually and post it.  I honestly just cleaned off a shelf that was already in my room when I moved in (cleaned off = moved my yoga bolster) and put everything I haven’t read that I want to read this year onto it.  It’s currently organized by YA, middle grade, adult, and nonfiction, and then alphabetized.  It’s really nice having it, too, because I don’t have to fuss about trying to remember what I haven’t read, and, now, trying to find it in my impossible rainbow shelves.  I honestly might change them soon.  I tried to find something last night, and it took forever.

Right now, I think I’m up to 30 unread books for this year that I’m hoping to read by the end of the year.  I’m currently only one book ahead of schedule, too, so I gotta get my butt into gear.  Erin’s also coming to visit at the very end of March, which we’ll use as an excuse to buy more books, so I really need to read a ton in the next month.

Until then, though, this has been a long rambling post about books and adventures.  I didn’t actually get any reading or writing done this weekend, though it was really nice to just be with my witch sister and not need to do anything.  But I am writing!  I started part two of Saints 2 last week, and I’m very close to hitting 50k, so I’m sure I’ll post again when I reach that small milestone.  It’s turning out to be a very wild story, and I’m so excited to get to the end.  I have so many ideas for what’s going to happen while I’m wrapping everything up.  Just cute, fluffy things, but that’s the good stuff, isn’t it?  I’ve been doing some more character pinning for Saints at sea, as well, so I might start figuring out what the heck is going to happen in that story soon.

If you’re writing, I hope it’s going well.  And if you’re reading, happy traveling!