On Saturday, Alexa, Kristin and I went to Philadelphia for ALA Midwinter! It was mine and Alexa's second time to attend and Kristin's first so we were all very excited.
It was pretty quick train ride from New York Penn Station (under two hours) and we got to the Pennsylvania Convention Center soon after it opened. We didn't have much of a plan even though we had a list of books we were hoping to find. But once we got there we decided to just walk around and play it by ear.
We got nearly all the books we wanted in like 30 minutes! If you've ever attended BookExpo and felt overwhelmed by it, this is the event to attend. It's super chill and not overly crowded. (I also felt like attendees were more composed and polite.) It's smaller but I think that's why it has the atmosphere that is does. You can basically go up to the publisher booths, tell them which ARCs you'd like, and they give it to you. Or you can take them as you pass by. We ended up doing multiple sweeps to see if there was anything we missed or new-to-us books. Kristin and I definitely picked up more than we expected to (Alexa was so good!).
Then we met up with Jane, Madlyn, Chelsea and Alexa for lunch. We walked over to Reading Terminal Market which was conveniently across the street and then brought it back to the convention center since they actually had a nice seating area (I felt like I was internally side-eyeing BookExpo the entire time; this was seriously a much funner experience!). We got food from Profi's Crêperie and Keven Parker's Soul Food Cafe plus cookies from The Famous 4th Street Cookie. If you're ever in Philly, I can't recommend this market enough.
From there we did one last sweep of the exhibit floor, went to a 2pm book drop we were interested in (again, calm and well-organized lines that didn't involve people lining up 2 hours beforehand!), hung out with Janella Angeles for a bit (she's the debut author of Where Dreams Descend and an all-around awesome human being) and then headed home! We were on a train by 4:20 and back in NYC before 6pm.
I can't wait to go to ALAMW again if/when it's just another short train ride away!
And in case you're curious, here's my book haul 😊
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Have you been to ALAMW before?
And if you were also here this past weekend,
which books did you pick up?
I'm so glad we went to ALA this past weekend! I had so much fun and despite our very early morning, it was such a relaxed and calm experience!! Plus we have so much new reading material!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad we got to go to ALA Midwinter again! It was really fun, and we did manage to get some really great books too. Plus, spending time with you and Kristin and the rest of the gang and meeting Janella were definitely highlights of that day too!
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