It’s just over one week till Christmas which means it’s time to wrap your gifts! (If you haven’t already)
I’ve put together a short list of 5 ways you can add a little bit of fun into your gift wrapping and make the gifts stand out under your friend’s or family’s tree.
I personally do these with a lot of my friend’s gifts and it’s very fun to see their reactions!
YALC tips and tricks, and Guides to YALC are some of the best posts you can read to prepare for the UK’s biggest book festival. This is because you’re getting helpful advice from people who have experience from attending the event before. Which I have! I’ve been attending YALC since 2016 and every year has been an absolute joy.
I won’t lie guys, YALC is a lot, it’s busy, it’s exciting, it’s exhausting. But, most of all it’s ridiculously fun. I can guarantee it’ll probably be one of the best weekends of your year.
As I said before, I’ve been attending YALC since 2016, so I definitely have my fair share of experience with the event (check out my Guide to YALC here) and over the years I’ve found some tricks (or hacks, if you will) that will help you get a bit more prepared for the weekend. Some of these tips you may not have come across before and others are small, but as Tesco says, every little helps!
YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention) is the UK’s first young adult book festival. You could say it’s the UK’s equivalent of BookCon and BookExpo which take place in a big city within the US each year. This convention started back in July 2014 with author Malorie Blackman being heavily involved in its creation. Over the years, YALC has managed to bring along best-selling authors such as Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Maggie Stiefvater, VE Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Marcus Sedgwick, Patrick Ness and many more, making it one of the most exciting events of the year for book bloggers around the UK. I’ve been travelling down to London for YALC from Scotland every Summer since 2016, so you could say I’ve got a few years of experience attending the event.
YALC is an absolutely wonderful event and you’re always guaranteed to leave with an abundance of new books and friends. However, there are some things that I’d personally like to see in future events that I feel could definitely improve the experience for attendees, and potentially the vendors too.
We finally got the author line up for YALC 2019 this past week (it’s awesome!) so it definitely felt like the perfect time to post this! You can view the schedule here. We really appreciate all the hard work and effort people go into to make this event happen each year, I’m genuinely counting down the days till YALC 2019.
Let’s begin!
Over the past few years, I have gotten the chance to meet authors such as; Samantha Shannon, VE Schwab, Laini Taylor, Pierce Brown, Maggie Stiefvater, Holly Black, and Cassandra Clare amongst many others. I love to meet authors who’s books I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, or who’s books I’m eager to pick up in the future. However, there are some I’ve never met or, they’ve been to the UK before and I’ve not been able to attend. Usually this is because it’s a “UK tour” meaning, England tour stops only.
I made a list of top five authors (in no particular order) that I’d like to meet in the future. I hope that at least some of them come to/return to the UK at some point, because I’m positive that there are many other readers within the UK who would love to attend their events.
