My most exciting personal development at the American Library Association conference was shipping back two huge boxes of free books. I learned from various attendees that running around the expo floor madly grabbing freebies is a sure sign of a publishing conference newbie and even a little bit gauche, but hey, nobody was reimbursing me more than $1000 in conference and travel fees.  Gimme my damn free books.

After the initial rush I felt silly shipping back all these books that, as one librarian said, “nobody ever reads,” so I’m going to make an effort to at least give all of them a chapter’s worth of a chance. There are 26 books in total.

The big score of the conference was a pre-release copy of the new Neal Stephenson, Anathem:

Spoiler-free summary: it’s good. I didn’t read the Baroque Cycle because I was waiting to find out if I’d like it, and I’m told I wouldn’t. I enjoyed Anathem though. So did Dan, although we liked different parts in different measures. It comes with a CD of various styles of chant, and while I like my music slow, repetitive and hypnotic, I had to rip it out of the player after track 3 to avoid escalating hostility.

If you already know you will read this then you’ll probably like it, and if you enjoy math and physics — well, then you would’ve read it anyway. I’m not sure if anyone who wasn’t already a nerd would be into it, although it might be possible to make it into a decent popular film.

I don’t like fantasy as a rule, but The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss had some pretty enthusiastic reviews on the back (”One of the best stories told in any medium in a decade” the Onion AV Club, wrote, breathlessly).

It’s… okay. It’s part one of three and pretty much stops rather than ends. Without giving away too much of the plot, I will say that it about a talented orphan boy at a boarding school for students of magic where he must use his skills to battle evil. Quite.

It’s actually not much like the Harry Potter novels, in fact, but a set-up like that is going to invite comparisons. The writing is pretty good. There aren’t any names with apostrophes in them. I’ll read the other two books in the series when they came out. I’ll probably even pay for them.

A victory for free content: positive advance word on a new book and two future sales in a series I’d have never read.

Dan and I got married.  It was a pretty awesome party. I’m sorry we couldn’t invite all of our friends and family, but I’m thrilled that those who did come made it a great night.

I didn’t take enough photos so please post yours if you get the chance.  Some of these are more blurry than I would normally share (it was really dark in there) but I didn’t have a lot to choose from.

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