Books Booty
SLU hosted the Medieval Academy of America conference this week - while not as large as Kalamazoo as far as medieval conferences go, it is FAR more important and pretentious. Hah! I helped set up and work the welcome table, passing out badges and folders and such. But mostly we just did whatever Teresa needed us grad students to do in order to pull off this conference successfully. Many people said it was the best MAA yet, or at least in years so it seems our efforts reflected well on SLU and its reputation in the medieval academic community. The conference was fun. I went to only half the sessions but enjoyed those I did attend. I despise networking for the sake of networking, but over the course of the weekend I did get to meet several famous historians (well "famous" in a relative sense - BIG fish in a small academic community) and made some good contacts for the future, like the Hispano-Arabist prof at Wash U, so all in all it was a good event.
The best part was that for all our help on Saturday we got some rich plunder! We got bags to scavenge the banquet tables (I brought home a bag of muffins, a bag of cookies, a bag of brownies, a bag of fruit and a whole pineapple!), the reception decorations (I have a two beautiful bouquets of huge purple roses on my table, making good use of my many vases), and the unsold books from Cambridge Press (I got 5 beautiful free books, some of which retail in the hundreds!) because the vendors didn't want to pack up and bring home the display copies. I also got two books at the $5 a piece at the awesomely cheap Penguin sale that I'm really thrilled about, including a book of Sufi mystic poetry that's going by my bedside immediately for pleasure reading to soothe my soul. I don't know when I'll have a chance to read the other 6 new texts, perhaps this summer, but it's always good to be building up a library of relevant works, especially when they have beautiful bindings to classy up the bookshelf. :-)
The best part was that for all our help on Saturday we got some rich plunder! We got bags to scavenge the banquet tables (I brought home a bag of muffins, a bag of cookies, a bag of brownies, a bag of fruit and a whole pineapple!), the reception decorations (I have a two beautiful bouquets of huge purple roses on my table, making good use of my many vases), and the unsold books from Cambridge Press (I got 5 beautiful free books, some of which retail in the hundreds!) because the vendors didn't want to pack up and bring home the display copies. I also got two books at the $5 a piece at the awesomely cheap Penguin sale that I'm really thrilled about, including a book of Sufi mystic poetry that's going by my bedside immediately for pleasure reading to soothe my soul. I don't know when I'll have a chance to read the other 6 new texts, perhaps this summer, but it's always good to be building up a library of relevant works, especially when they have beautiful bindings to classy up the bookshelf. :-)