But by far one of the biggest pieces of our friendship is our love (obsession?) of the show Gilmore Girls. Between us we’ve watched the entire series over and over again an alarming number of times. We quote lines from the show at every opportunity. Luke is our dream man, and we are firmly pro-Jess.

So when we were planning a summer road trip from NYC to Boston (we were headed there for the James Taylor & Carol King concert, which was incredible), we knew a visit to the town (Washington Depot, Connecticut) that inspired Amy Sherman-Palladino’s creation of Stars Hallow was an absolute must. For those who do not know: Stars Hallow is the fictional town setting of the show Gilmore Girls. It was like planning a visit to our Motherland.

We started off the weekend by staying Friday night in Litchfield, Connecticut, a town about 20 minutes away from Washington Depot. We stayed at an adorable inn called Tollgate Hill. Our room reminded us of Lorelai and Rory’s room at the Cheshire Cat (see photo below). However the floral motif is where the similarities ended, the Tollgate Hill inn was very lovely.

The next morning after breakfast we packed up and drove to Washington Depot, or what we now mainly refer to as “Stars Hallow.” We started our visit at The Hickory Stick Bookshop. It is a completely adorable independent Bookstore, and in our minds it is, of course, Stars Hallow Books, run by Andrew.

After a decent amount of book shopping, we began to walk through town and were immediately charmed by the group of signs advertising upcoming town festivals and events. At that moment Emma and I looked at each other and we knew: we were in Stars Hallow.

We then walked toward the center of town and saw the adorable Town Hall.

Here’s Emma by the Washington sign near Town Hall:

Next up was the discovery of Washington Food Market, which of course is Doose’s Market. We went inside and bought several necessities including Whoopie Pies and Havarti Cheese.

Inside Doose’s Market:

Next door to Doose’s Market is the Post Office:

We then noticed Gypsy’s Garage:

A little ways up the road is the Gunn Memorial Library:

We explored the library thoroughly, because we’re pretty nerdy and love visiting libraries in other towns, even if we can’t check out any books. The main floor is full of windows that look out into the leaves of the trees in the back, and on that sunny Saturday morning provided the loveliest shady light to browse books in. It has a wonderful children’s section in the basement. But the most spectacular part of the library was the top floor. It was a reading room & events space, and it was one of the most beautiful & peaceful rooms I’ve ever been in. Here are some photos:

We didn’t find an exact match for Luke’s Diner, although there was a cafe with a similar yellow sign. It had a completely different feel inside though. We plan on looking more for Luke’s next time we visit. :)

We reluctantly left town Saturday afternoon, we had a lot more ground to cover that weekend including a reunion with the third member of the Red Shoe Cult and a date with James Taylor & Carole King that evening. It was a fabulous visit though, and we can’t wait to go back someday.

Congrats Mia! Your book will be on its way to you soon.

Thanks so much to all who entered!

I’ve used a random number generator to find the two winners from the fans on Facebook and the comments below. I’m pleased to announce that they are: Annina and Kelly!

Congratulations! I will contact you both to confirm which book you’d like and to get your mailing address. :)

I’ve moved here from emilyw.vox.com, and have copied over all my posts from there by hand. I still have a little work to do on the design and the sidebar, especially adding all the blogs I read to the blog roll!

You can grab my updated RSS feed here. I’ve also created a Facebook fan page where I’ll post links to new posts.

In honor of “the move,” I’m hosting a book giveaway! Two winners, chosen with the Random Number Generator from all entries, will receive their choice of one of my favorite books:

-Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
-The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
-The Trouble With Poetry by Billy Collins
-The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
-The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
-A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel

To enter: Become a Fan of Books the Universe & Everything on Facebook. (You can use the Facebook widget to the right, or click here to visit the Facebook page and click the “Become a Fan” button from there.)

For an extra entry: Tweet or blog a link to this giveaway post, and leave a comment here with a link to your tweet or post.

Other notes about the giveaway:
-If you don’t have a Facebook account, or if you don’t want to become a Fan on Facebook for any reason, you can do the Twitter or Blog post option for an entry. Be sure to leave a comment here with the link.
-If you are already a fan on Facebook, you’ll automatically be entered.
-This giveaway is open worldwide; I will ship internationally.

This giveaway will be open until midnight eastern time on November 18, 2009.

Thanks and welcome to Books, the Universe, and Everything’s new home! :)

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)

I’ll be tweeting, but probably not posting anything here until I return.

Here’s my list of things to do while I’m in the mitten.

See the following people:
-My Family (that’s a given, but no less notable)
-Emma Wad (our Wad is an Awesome Wad)
-Jenth Sminy
-My Grandma (hoping she will be able to come down)

Eat the following things:
-Jimmy John’s (as many times as possible)
-Crazy Bread
-Cancun Mexican Grill
-Plainwell Ice Cream
-Butterburger from Culver’s
-Whatever delicious things my Dad cooks for us

Read the following things:
-If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
-Second Chances
-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
-Dead Until Dark

Places to go:
-KPL Friends of the Library Book Store
-East Lansing
-Schuler’s Books
-Walk around campus
-Bruegger’s Bagels
-South Haven/Lake Michigan

Movies to see:
-Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
-Ice Age 3
-500 Days of Summer

Things to do:
-Play video games with Benny
-Read in the hammock
-Drive around
-Grocery shop at Meijer
-Bake treats

Hammock View

When I return I will post:
-Reviews of:
-Lolita
-Asterios Polyp
-Whatever new books I read in Michigan
-Photos from the trip
-July Polysyllabic Spree

I hope everyone has a lovely rest of July! I’ll return next week.

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)

I will definitely do more giveaways in the future, and will explore other ways for people to enter, since I hate that Vox makes you register to leave a comment.

Without further ado, here are the winners of the Summer Book Giveaway!

Bookgiveawaywinners

(click here to see this image full size)

1. Maria – Water for Elephants
2. carapiccoladiva – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
3. Ubi Caritas – Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
4. Morgan – Peony in Love
5. Dominique – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Congrats to the winners! I’m excited to send you your books. I’ll send a direct message to all of you to get your mailing address. Except Morgan, since I’ll see her soon! :)

Thanks again to everyone who entered! Stay tuned for the next giveaway – I’m thinking it might be an ARC giveaway.

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)

My new job involves working with social media, and I’m now using Facebook and Twitter for both personal and work networking.

I am really enjoying it – it’s very fun.

However, I feel like my current Twitter account is unfocused. I was mainly using it to write about books and reading (much like this blog) as well as other personal stuff like movies, music, etc. But now that I use that one for work, I felt like I should have another account where I only tweet about books and reading. The main reason is that I felt like I couldn’t update as much as I’d like (extremely often) about books to the main account, since more and more people are following me there for other reasons. So I made a second account:

NEW – http://twitter.com/emilylovesbooks – tweets about books I’m currently reading, book quotes, updates on book sales or shopping, author events, etc. Any and all things related to books and reading.

ORIGINAL – http://twitter.com/chowmeyow – tweets about what I’m doing, traveling, movies, music, links to fun stuff on the internet, and links to articles about social media

If you already follow me at chowmeyow, I hope you’ll continue, and I’d love to connect with you all on emilylovesbooks as well. :)

I hope this isn’t too annoying, the goal is to tweet more in general, now that I can focus what I’m posting on each account.

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)

I got back from Michigan late Sunday night, and have been pretty swamped since then.

I still need to respond to many comments, and catch up on my neighbor’s posts. More posts will come soon, and I have lots of pictures from the trip. Planning on catching up on everything over the weekend.

I hope everyone is having a lovely week!

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)