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Imagine, if you will, your intrepid if sporadic-at-best blogger at the ALA convention. The one that’s full of librarians. I will be a librarian in not very long, so it is good for me to hang out with my peeps and learn the lingo.

Picture, if you will, your friendly and terribly-well-blending-in blogger wandering the exhibit hall, faintly footsore and in need of sustenance. The hall is a large and confusing place full of vendors, some of whom offer things for sale and some of whom offer things for free and some of whom offer things that can only be looked at and lusted over without the option of actual obtainance and keepage. Not all of the things are clearly marked, so one must be very careful about what things one yoinks lest one wants to have angry Penguin representatives chase one down with a Taser. Many of the things offered are alcoholic (those are usually free, on the grounds that drunk people buy more stuff). I cannot imagine that this increases the rate by which things that are not meant to be yoinked fail to be yoinked.

Picture, if you will, your humble but excessively-attached-to-overused-literary-devices blogger finally giving up on said overused literary devices and beginning to refer to herself in the first person.

Any second now she’ll do it.

Any second.

I wander out of the exhibit hall, footsore as mentioned and overwhelmed by crowds as well. I had spotted a few cafe-booths while wandering but my spatial sense had checked out for the evening (this was a bit of an issue when I had to find my car at 1 a.m.) An information desk looms before me. I walk past.

I reverse abruptly. If I were a cartoon, there would have been one of those grey motion-blur thingies. It was that abrupt.

In front of the information-booth lady lies a book. It is the ALA convention, so this is not all that surprising.

The book in question is a largeish blueish-black paperback. It’s not actually very standoutish.

I walk up to the information-booth lady. I stammer slightly as I point at it and ask, “Wh-wh-where did you get that?”

“Oh,” she says, “some lady left it here. She didn’t want it.”

“Oh,” I say. I wipe some drool off my chin and try to stop caressing its gleaming cover.

I point at the author’s name. “He’s just a really amazing author. He’s one of my favorites.” I wipe more drool off.

“Do you want it?” she asks.

I try not to seize it from her. I feign disinterest. Poorly. “You mean you don’t? You’re serious? I can have it?”

“Yup!” she says. “I started reading it and then figured out it was a children’s book. I don’t read children’s books. Did he write any books for grownups?”

Your slavish devotion to arbitrary age categorizations is MY TOTAL WIN, I think. I do not say it. Librarians are polite. I am polite.

“Yes,” I say. “He’s written several. I particularly like Neverwhere and American Gods.”

She scrabbles for a pen and writes these down. I very suavely increase the firmness of my hold on the book and inch it closer to me.

“Thanks!” she grins brightly. And nods. “Go on. You can have it.”

The book disappears into my bag. It will be kept on my person for the rest of the day. Possibly for the rest of my life. It will earn me major geek points at the Metafilter meetup later that evening. It will need to be protected from theft and damage and those who would try to take it from me. The book is mine.

The book will not be released for thirteen weeks, two days, one hour, fifty-three minutes, and twenty-seven seconds at the time of its yoinkage.

It is The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman. And it is mine.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 9:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.