Last Thursday I went to my first ever blogger event, a book swap at the Waterstones in the Metrocentre. An evening filled with cake, bloggers and plenty of books!
So I signed up for this event through a facebook group for North East Bloggers. We were sat at a big table with plenty of biscuits, sweets, cups of tea and hot chocolate, surrounded by all the colourful covers of the children’s books.
I’ve never been to a blogger event but with my new blog layout, domain and just starting my second year of my Media and Journalism degree, I decided it was time to try new things! An evening to indulge my inner book worm and be a bit of a social butterfly!
Plenty of other bloggers turned up to the swap, with about 8o books being brought to be swapped. We were told to bring between 5 and 10 to swap and a book wrapped up in paper with a small description for the ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ swap. The table was piled high with books as we passed them round the circle, putting our own little tabs into them to mark which books we wanted.
Some books ended up being drawn for, and others we got straight away! I decided to try and get as many of the books I’ve heard about but not actually read yet! For instance I loved the film of ‘Angels and Demons’ so was really pleased to get this book in the swap. The ‘Girl Online’ was a 
bit more of a controversial pick amongst the blogging community, but I’ve never read it and decided even if I don’t like it, it’ll make a good present for some younger members of my family. I ADORE Atonement. We studied it back in school, and I loved it but lost my copy. To get it back for free I was really happy. Dear John was a bit of an ‘on-the-spot’ pick, simply because I’ve seen the film and I read a lot of dark, crime and thriller novels so it’s nice to have a few soppy books on the bookshelf to balance it out. The Guest Cat was simply because it’s a book about a cat and had a gorgeous cover! I saw the Jodi Picoult books and as she is my favourite author, I put my tabs in for both of them but only drew this one! I’m saving it for awhile so I have time to go out and get the prequel.
A raffle was held for the charity Lumos. Set up by J.K. Rowling, it supports the 8 million children in institutions worldwide to regain their right to a family life and to end the institutionalisation of children.
I won a collection of ‘ Independently published books’ sold by InpressBooks. One of them is a book of mildy erotic poetry – ooh er! 😉 An interesting read no doubt! I’m really glad I won this prize in the raffle as I am interested in publishing and going into writing myself.
We finished off the evening by playing games of pictionary, 20 questions and tucking into more cakes and biscuits. I also had my first try at ‘black out poetry’ which is where you marker out areas of a piece of text and create your own poem! Quite fun actually!
We also got a lovely little goodie bag which I forget to photograph! I can’t believe the pile of books I got to take away with me! I’m so looking forward to reading them all.
Overall I had a great evening and I’m obsessed with books again, and will be sharing more about them here on the blog as you can never have too many books.
Shannon x
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