Welcome to the discussion!

[becke_davis]

Alice Sebold's book The Lovely Bones is one of my favorite books, so I was thrilled when BN.com asked if I would moderate this discussion. Sebold's non-fiction book, Lucky, goes a long way to giving us the backstory behind her fiction, too. I am still reading Almost Moon and I'm looking forward to talking about this book with you starting on Monday.

I'll post some reviews of the book (for those of you who like to see reviews -- if not, don't feel like you need to read them) as well as some questions to get us started. In the meantime, please introduce yourselves.

[IBIS]

Hi, I'm IBIS, and I live in the Boston area. I enjoyed reading the LOVELY BONES, and am looking forward to discussing Alice Sebold's new book.

First impressions:

1) That opening sentence is a killer: "When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily." It grabbed me by the collar, and refused to let me go. I sat up half the night reading the first half of the book.

2) About the cover design: the embossed-raised white letters of the title against that bright, luscious red background is very striking. The surreal lone wingchair floating (or flying) at the top of the cover reminded me of an interior decorator's nightmare. Intimations of domesticity gone berserk.

3)Those reviews! They're killers too! In general, I'm very skeptical of reviews, either book reviews or movie reviews. More times than not, I find myself disagreeing with reviewers. So we'll see.....

Am looking forward to the discussion!

Message Edited by IBIS on 10-26-2007 11:02 AM

[becke_davis]

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IBIS wrote:
Hi, I'm IBIS, and I live in the Boston area. I enjoyed reading the LOVELY BONES, and am looking forward to discussing Alice Sebold's new book.

First impressions:

1) That opening sentence is a killer: "When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily." It grabbed me by the collar, and refused to let me go. I sat up half the night reading the first half of the book.

2) About the cover design: the embossed-raised white letters of the title against that bright, luscious red background is very striking. The surreal lone wingchair floating (or flying) at the top of the cover reminded me of an interior decorator's nightmare. Intimations of domesticity gone berserk.

3)Those reviews! They're killers too! In general, I'm very skeptical of reviews, either book reviews or movie reviews. More times than not, I find myself disagreeing with reviewers. So we'll see.....

Am looking forward to the discussion!

Message Edited by IBIS on 10-26-2007 11:02 AM

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Publishers Weekly even had a review that seemed to be critical of the cover. It wasn't real clear -- it was more like, well you can't have this on the cover, you can't have that, so I guess this was the only way they could go. Weird article, so I didn't post the link, but since you commented on the cover. . .