The fabulous Veronica Roth signs books in Tribeca

While this blog is almost focused on music, I do reserve the right to discuss other forms of entertainment. Well today, I'm going to exercise that right, because I'm also a huge book nerd and last week, I went to a Veronica Roth book signing!

For those of you lame enough to not know, Veronica is the New York Times best-selling author of Divergent, a young adult Dystopian novel. Divergent won lots of praise and awards last year, and it was one of those rare books that I could not put down (I confess, I was seriously considered reading a few chapters at work when no one was looking. Not that I would ever actually do such a terrible thing...) So I was psyched that the sequel, Insurgent, was finally coming out on May 1st, and I was even more psyched to hear that Veronica would be celebrating the release day at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca.

Real talk.

So anyway, last Tuesday night, I was in the audience while Veronica read a small, spoiler-free excerpt from Insurgent (she almost gave something away, but caught herself just in time). She then followed up by answering a few questions. Here's some of the information she gave us:

• There will be a third book in the series, although she herself still has no idea how it will end. 
• Once the series is over, she plans to continue writing young adult literature, but she doubts she will have any ideas leftover for another dystopian story. 
• She also mentioned having an anxiety disorder, and described how even ordered meat at the deli counter makes her nervous. I can only imagine how much stress talking to crowds of strangers must cause, but she seemed so comfortable and casual in front of us that I never would have suspected.
• She chose the name Beatrice for her main character because it was one of the only names she could think of that sounded sort-of old-fashioned but could be shortened into a tough nickname ("Tris"). Likewise, she loved the name Tobias, but has since had tons of fans tell her that's the name of "that blue guy" in Arrested Development.
• One fan asked which faction Veronica would be in, and while she did say that Abnegation was her favorite faction, she ultimately said, "I would just fail at this world."

Truly a terrible photo, but this was the best I could get. 

Have I mentioned how young Veronica is? We both graduated college in 2010 but she's several months younger than I am. So now I feel like the slacker.

Anyway, then I got my book signed! Ta-da:

Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with myself.

She's right though, I will need to be awfully strong while I wait until 2013(!!) for the next book to be out. I tried to make Insurgent last, and in a way, I was semi-successful as I think I made this one last three days instead of two like Divergent. Anyway, the book is full of action and intensity and there's never a dull moment. If you liked the first, you will like this one. But there's not much recapping (thank goodness, I get sick of pages wasted on explaining what happened in the previous book!) so either reread Divergent or check out the recap Veronica recently posted on her blog before you pick it up. Also, so I can pretend this post is about music, see the playlist Veronica listened to while writing.

Finally, if my post wasn't enough for you, check out the archived livestream of the event:

epicreads on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free