Sunday 20 October 2013

America: The Bloggers

This post is a bit delayed because I spent the weekend at home in Somerset, celebrating that (a) Colin had passed his driving test - first time, donchaknow, which is no mean feat in the UK, and (b) I had handed in my DPhil thesis.  There will be more on that soon, honest, I just have a lot of catch-up posts to write, not to mention a pile of ten or fifteen books to review for your infotainment.  But first things first; I told you about the books I bought, and now I want to tell you about the bloggers I saw.


Well, you probably already know - it was Thomas from My Porch and Teresa from Shelf Love.  If you click on the 'My Porch' link there, it'll take you to Thomas's report of our time together - I'll be doing a more emotive version, and probably thus less coherent!

When I decided I was going to visit Lorna in Washington, I knew that I wanted to catch up with two of my favourite bloggers (both of whom I had previously met on English soil) but that I only really had weekdays free, as I wanted to spend my weekends with Lorna, since that was the main purpose of my trip.  Well, I ended up being lucky enough to see a lot of Thomas (who is, may I just say, one of the kindest and nicest people I've ever met - blush from afar, Thomas) and both of them were free to go for a Friday drive around bits of Virginia, looking for bookshops.

I've already told you the books I got; Thomas's pile are in the post linked about, and Teresa tweeted hers here.  Yes, that is Miss Hargreaves in her pile, guess who put it there?  There was a tense moment when I spotted a Virago One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downs (such a good book) for only $1.40 and both bloggers wanted it - in the end they flipped a coin, and Thomas was lucky, but Teresa certainly didn't do badly for Virago books that day.  Both of them came away with wonderfully teetering piles of books; I only bought four, but that was because I'd bought so many others already, and was worrying about baggage weight... and I think you'll agree, book shopping is huge fun whether or not many books are bought.  There's nothing I like more than browsing shelves of secondhand books in great company.

We took it in turns to take photos outside the various bookshops...







...and I was introduced to the joy that is Dairy Queen.  I realised later that I had been to DQ a few times in the Philippines, but this trip (and my delicious double fudge cookie dough Blizzard) made me all the more sad that the UK is sadly lacking in DQs.  Get on it, UK.



All in all, it was a delightful day and I think we all had a great time, chatting away about bookish things nineteen-to-the-dozen, and I'm sad that it's likely to be a long time before we can have a repeat of the day.  I came to the US to see a very dear friend and her husband who had moved away from England, and ended up leaving four good friends behind.  Poor friendship/geography economics, perhaps, but a price worth paying for a wonderful time.

10 comments:

  1. Looks like you had a great time! :o)

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  2. So nice your friendship is based on books:) i envy you have so many these Used Books shops!!

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    1. Absolutely :) And I was impressed by the US book stores, I must confess.

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  3. I laughed at the coin toss, Simon! Mary and I were browsing for books together and at one point she said she worried there would be a tug-of-war should we spy a great book at the same time. You are so civilized.

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    1. Haha! Oh, that four-blogger book trip was SUCH fun, even if I ended up already owning all the books Rachel picked out for me. How would a coin toss have worked if more than two bloggers wanted a book, I wonder? A series of heats?

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  4. I have really enjoyed reading of your American visit. I will be there for 4 weeks in November. I hope I have as good of luck as you did re: book shop visits. I'll be 2 weeks in Nashville TN area and last time I was there found a very large bookshop in the area. HOpe it's still there. Glad you had so much fun even if the country was technically closed for business.

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    1. I look forward to seeing what you bring back with you. I don't know if we were just very lucky with bookshops, or if they're throughout the country of this quality... fingers crossed for the latter!

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  5. Ha! This looks like so much fun. And I do love a good DQ. Yum!

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  6. I'm so glad it worked out that we were able to spend the day together. It was so much fun!

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