ALA 2010: ARCs from the Stacks

My bag of books from last year's ALA Annual in Chicago remains unread (and I promise this photo is new). This year my plan was the same, take no more than a one bag of books I would read. I was lucky enough to get two titles autographed and stuck to my plan. Of course, traveling by car made it a bit simpler as there was a serious lack of room in the trunk for our return trip home.

The autographed titles? I happened to be walking past a booth where Nikki Grimes was signing ARCs of her latest, A Girl Named Mister. and in the next aisle was Janet Mullany and her ARC Jane and the Damned. Both authors were extremely gracious with a smile and friendly word for each person in line.

Other ARC's included:

• The Clockwork Three
  by, Matthew Kirby
• Dark Song
  by, Gail Giles
• The Danger Box
  by, Blue Balliett
• Monster High
  by, Lisi Harrison
• Misty Gordon and the Mystery of the Ghost Pirate
  by, Kim Kennedy
• Exley
  by, Brock Clarke
• You Killed Wesley Payne
  by, Sean Beaudoin

It remains to be seen how many I read, but the list is definitely more varied than ARCs from past conferences. There is one title missing, a book I read waiting for a session to begin ... if only I could remember the title.

ALA 2010: Book Cart Drill Team

A trip to ALA Annual is not complete until the Book Cart Drill Team competition! View the rest of the videos, including the opening and closing "ceremonies," on the Demco YouTube Channel.

ALA 2010: The Hotel

ALA Annual 2010, Washington DC, is here and gone; I'm still unpacking my small bag of goodies and uploading pictures. For the first time, I was able to not only stay at an official ALA hotel, but also reserve said hotel through the ALA web site.

As is often the case when preparing to attend ALA annual, my blog narrative begins with procrastination; I waited to register until I knew funds may be available from work.  I waited to find a hotel until I knew family traveling with me to the conference could finagle time off work. The chain of events worked well for registration, I got in the final day for advance registration, but not so well with my initial hotel search.

Several evenings of searching usual travel sites (Travelocity, Orbitz, Hotels.com, AAA, and Expedia) returned single hotel rooms starting at $250 and I needed two rooms for four days.  I checked the ALA conference site for available hotels on a whim and half an hour later had reservations - two rooms, plural, at the Holiday Inn Capitol at a significantly lower conference rate. Not as grand as my hotel accommodations while at ALA Annual in 2007, this hotel was one block from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, an open air pool on the roof (pictured above), and free Internet access. Even better, the Gale shuttle bus picked up right outside the lobby doors throughout my conference stay.