What was the last book you borrowed or purchased based on a curated display by a human being (not AI or algorithms)? Or your favorite curation from an indie bookstore or library?

My local library currently has displays for books related to autism, books by Black women, travel books for non-European or North American cities, and books on modern history. What Iranians Want by Arash Azizi caught my eye and I brought home a book I had not heard about online for the first time in ages.

There is such a unique joy in learning about new topics and books out in the wild (library), especially those that aren't getting marketing pushes on Booktok. The library display had such a wide range. The autism display, for example, had essays, picture books, middle grade fantasy, memoirs, self-help, and history books!

I love Pagebound precisely for the community curation that happens on Lists and Recommendations, but it doesn't capture the magic of a nice physical display with staff notes, you know?

i am pure buzzing. i have just met amal el-mohtar and terri windling. amal is my favourite author, and she was always nice to me on instagram.

she gave me the contact of the event organiser to book bsl interpreters as i am deaf when i asked about access. long story that i don't want to go too deep but the multi million pound bookshop (don't want to name them, they rectified the situation at the end) cancelled my tickets after miscommunication and not providing me access, i took it to instagram. people helped me and tagged the company. amal saw and emailed the organisers. the company got back to me and apologised and got me free ticket on top of booking access. it's not often that people whose event i want to go to see wants access for me. she didn't have to but she did. it fixed something in me a bit.

so i was able to go. the actual event itself was just so lovely, so funny, the conversations between them two was delightful, warm, insightful. i was smiling from one side to the other the whole time! one of my interpreters is a bookworm so she was also very excited to interpret and the other interpreter was my partner so i got to share that with them. she knew my name, and signed my book. 😍

i came back home just really happy. happy i got another lovely memory. happy i got to meet amal, and that she was so lovely.

amal (and max) also inspired me to write the beginning of my first short story after reading "this is how you lose the time war", and i applied to my first anthology and i got it! i can't wait to write this (i usually write plays and scripts)

so it made me also wonder - what was your favourite encounters with authors? let's share the good feels around!

i'm wondering how people are (if they are) are tracking stats for digital ARCs, since they don't come with traditional page numbers. are you just leaving it be and updating by percentage read or using the arbitrary location (kindle)/"pages" (kobo)?