Another Birthday!

So, it was my birthday yesterday, and a few of the most exciting gifts I got were:

-A $30 gift card to BORDERS from my friend! I've spent $13 of that already!

-A $35 gift card to BORDERS from my grandparents! Awesome!

-A $10 gift card to BARNES & NOBLE from my fourth-grade teacher. Yea!!

(You see all of those are bookstores, and I am very excited)

-I also got this boxed set of "Classics for LDS Homes" from Deseret Book. I had seen it in the catalog a long time ago and thought it was awesome, so I was excited that my parents had bought it for me. It has in it:

Jane Eyre
Emma
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Secret Garden
Anne of Green Gables

and...

Little Women

They are all in hardback, and have a little ribbon marker. They have sort of the same format, but then every book has a different color spine and a different design on the cover. They're so cool! The main thing I was excited about was that they are MINE. Before, when I read Pride and Prejudice or whatever, it was Mom's book. Those books that I end up loving a lot, I like to have for myself. It's just kinda cool, because you can read them again and again without worrying the other person wants to read it, and you can leave bookmarks in it or whatever...you can just make it your own. I love owning books! Nothing against libraries, (I love libraries in fact,) but the books I really like, I don't want to have checked out from a library. Books I kind of like, I'm okay with getting from a library. That's the beauty of libraries. But ones that I love, I want to own for myself. Is that selfish?

Anyway, I had a pretty awesome birthday.

Ummm...

I'd just like to copy and paste what I read the other day on Shannon Hale's website.
She sort of has a blog type of thing, and posts new stuff all the time. So this is what she said the other day...I didn't read the whole post, but I just skimmed to the bottom...anyway...

"Thanks a bunch. I wish I could give you all a great big hug. Or make you a pie. Which is basically the same thing."

I guess she was thanking we readers, or something, but I didn't read it all so I'm not sure...

Anyway I just thought that was funny.

I'm reading a book called Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. This is my second time reading it. Overall I would recommend it, but it's historical fiction about African-American slavery and is kind of depressing. Also it just...ends, at the end, like almost mid-paragraph, and then says the author is going to write a sequel. I find that irritating. But yes, I would recommend it. It's really interesting.

I love Book Signings!

A while ago, I don't know exactly when, my mom, my friend McKenna, and I went to a Shannon Hale book signing!

And here we are:

(This is big news because I just figured out how to put pictures on a blog!)

Anyway, it was really fun.

Also speaking of book signings, the very same McKenna in the picture went to a Brandon Mull book signing. If you've read all the Fablehavens, you'll know there is a place called Zzyzx. McKenna told me that Brandon Mull pronounces that Z-ee-zix. I always said Z-ih-zix, but I don't know about you.
Thought that was interesting!

Cheating?

Last Tuesday my friend Olivia said "Guess what my mom brought home today. Fablehaven Five!" I immediately had to find out where her mom had gotten it from, and she had gotten it from the Smith's in Pleasant Grove. I had Dad drive me there and I bought it, feeling excited, but appalled at the same time. Why was it there at Smith's, of all places? Is it fair to read it now, when it isn't technically out yet? What is going to happen to Kendra and Seth in this book? What should I do? This seemed like a perfect solution...I'll know what happens! Yea! But isn't that sort of like cheating, because it isn't out yet?
So I kept on reading my current book, (Book of a Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale. This was probably my fourth time reading it-SO GOOD) and after a day or two read a couple chapters in Fablehaven Five. But I felt so guilty! It's not out yet, and there I was reading it! I tried explaining that to Olivia, who didn't seem to understand what I was saying at all. What's worse is that for Missionary Month, the week it actually does come out I can't read it, (I can only read church books that week) so if I waited till the day it does come out and then read it, I wouldn't be able to anyway. So I finally just stopped reading it, and I suppose I'll have to wait a whole week after it actually does come out to read it...am I weird to feel like I was cheating? Now I still have to wait, even though it's sitting on my bookshelf RIGHT NOW! This is so confusing.

Twenty-two days left!

I'm so very pathetically eager for March Twenty-third to come! Mostly just because it's the only thing to look forward to until summer, and because I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE HECK HAPPENS!!!!!!!!

I bought the second in the Percy Jackson series on Thursday. Everyone says that the books get much better as they go along, so I'm going to read that one as soon as I finish Jane Eyre.