#PaperTownsMovie

Since Paper Towns--The Movie--comes to theaters tomorrow, I thought today was a great day to share the fun we had at #PaperTownsOH last week.  Lots of John Green fans in Ohio!

The crowd was a big one and according to twitter, fans began arriving at 5 a.m. to get a spot in line!  The line looked to be a fun place. John Green even had 50 pizzas delivered to the crowd which was hugely appreciated since many had been standing in line for hours. 

My daughter has always been a huge John Green/Paper Towns fan. She has the original book and heard John Green at Cover to Cover when it was released a while back. It was extra fun for her to have her book signed a 2nd time by John Green!

Thanks to Cover to Cover and Penguin Random House, we got tickets without having to stand in line.  We had great seats and had a chance to go backstage to meet everyone afterwards.  It was quite the treat.  Here we are with John (Penguin Random House), Laura (Beth's sister), Beth (Cover to Cover).

We got a sneak peek at 19 minutes of the movie (which looks to be spectacular!) and we got to hear from John Green and the actors/actresses in the movie. It was great fun with lots of screaming fans, of course!

John Green!!

The stars of the movie!

A signed Paper Towns poster!

Looking forward to seeing the movie!

Why I'm Like This

Praise for Why I'm Like This by Cynthia Kaplan:
"Striking a note somewhere between David Sedaris and Anna Quindlen, Kaplan spins traumas personal and professional for maximum laughs..." --People

A blend of David Sedaris and Anna Quindlen? Two of my favorites...SOLD! (You want to know what a blend of Sedaris and Quindlen sounds like, and by proxy what Kaplan sounds like? Mother Reader. Check out her Tinkerbell post and her tooth fairy post and then read Kaplan and tell me if I'm not right.)

Kaplan's new book, Leave the Building Quickly was the one that originally caught my eye in the new nonfiction display at the Tattered Cover in Denver, but you might know how I am about reading books in order. I had to buy and read Why I'm Like This first. I will be buying Leave The Building Quickly as soon as I'm in a bookstore again.

I'm only about halfway through Why I'm Like This, but it gave me the first cosmic reading event of the summer. I was reading it on the plane on the way home from a "Care For An Elderly Parent" trip. Only recently have I begun to be able to consistently act like an adult when I'm back home with my mom. I've finally figured out how not to revert automatically back to a surly 13 year-old. In the nick of time, I might add. So I've just had a stressful, but successful week, and I read this:

"One of the hardest things about growing up is how one day it suddenly dawns on you that your parents are human. It hadn't occurred to you before. Why should it have? But then something happens, some thing happens, and the veil drops...These are just moments, really, blips on the parental screen, during which they reveal their humanity, and that they are in the world, flailing about as helplessly as everyone else, everyone who is not your parents. Blowing it. Surviving. Hanging on by their nails. That they are at once more spectacularly resourceful and more deeply flawed than you might have ever imagined inspires both scorn and admiration, two emotions you'd always reserved for nonrelatives. But, happily, between the blips, they are just the same as they have always been...and you breathe a sigh of relief. It is too painful for them to be human."

(I know, that's not a particularly Sedaris/Quindlen/MR-sounding quote, but it was my cosmic reading event. Go get the book, either one, and read some whole essays. See if you can read them without snorting, smirking, guffawing, or having one of your own cosmic reading events.)