Rick Riordan author signing

Tonight the King's English bookshop in Salt Lake City hosted Rick Riordan, fabulous author of the Lightning Thief series, and the Red Pyramid series, and the brand new Heroes of Olympus series. The thing I enjoy so much about his books, besides the killer plots with action that never stops, and wonderful characters, is the humor. It's so subtle but so funny. I found myself laughing so many times while reading his books. And that's one of the reasons why it was so great to go tonight. He's funny in person, too. Everyone was laughing at his jokes. He's also a very charismatic speaker, very interesting to listen to.

I tried to take some pictures. Except that I didn't have my camera because I let a friend borrow it so I just had my phone. The lighting wasn't the best.

And then the spotlight finally found Rick and it was even worse.

I really need to get a kid to go to these things with me. I'm going to have to borrow one. There were so many children and younger teens there with their parents. And then there was 30-year-old me with my 60-year-old mom. I felt a little silly. But the two girls sitting next to us were hilarious. They were probably about ten or eleven. Before hand they were talking about who their Olympian parent was and one of the girls was the daughter of Poseidon, Zeus, and Athena. Wow. Then while Rick was talking their giggles were so cute. When Rick said, in response to a question, that he hadn't watched The Lightning Thief movie, a couple of people hollered out that it wasn't very good and those two girls were very vocal about it, too. One yelled something like, "It's a good thing. It was bad." Seriously loud.

I get a kick out of going to hear authors speak. At the end of last month I went to The King's English to see Kiersten White and get Paranormalcy signed. She'd just had her book reach the New York Times bestseller list and she was ecstatic, to say the least. She read a part of her book and it was fun to hear Evie's voice with her inflections. Great time. Another phone pic since I forgot my camera. (I probably should've cropped it before posting--nice framing with an arm and an ear, eh?)

And then at the beginning of the month I saw James Dashner at a Youth Services Librarian conference. He talked about how libraries have influenced his life, which is awesome for librarians to hear about. Really. Also about the surreal experience of meeting Judy Bloom (who isn't dead), his book maybe becoming a movie and about his new book that was coming out, and now is out, The Scorch Trials. I think my favorite was when he told us he goes to a movie practically every afternoon because it keeps his creative juices flowing. Wow. I want to do that...I also got his signature in my book of The Maze Runner, which was FREE.

As much as I enjoy hearing authors speak and meeting them, I always act like such an dork whenever I'm standing right there. I never know what to say! So I either say nothing or say really silly things to the effect of, "I really like your book." Which I'm sure everyone tells them as they're signing books.