Here at OBS we are featuring Alice Sebold’s ‘The Lovely Bones’ for this months book club. So whats more appropriate for this months Book Covers Around The World.

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life” via wikipedia

United States and Canada

Both of these covers are really great! The on on the right is the original first edition and the other on the left is the newest edition based of the motion picture. I have them both listed here as the US and Canadian covers, but you can find both of these in many other countries and lots of different languages.

Dutch (Translation: ‘Full Sky’)

I really like this cover. I love how its half color, half sepia tone. And they show ‘Susie’ in the field, but also in the corner they have the sky and clouds.

Click HERE for the rest of the covers!

Which of the covers was your favorites? Least favorite?

Which cover encompassed the story the best?

In honor of our Lovely Bones book club, we give you the Top 5/10 Ghost Edition!

Top 5/10 Ghost Costumes by Dawn

1. The image says it all. It’s very detailed and would scare the shit out of me. I would think I was dreaming.

2. He reminds me of the Grim Reaper.

3. This ghost costume actually reminds me of an angel.

4. Some serious freaky, especially because his face and hands glow. Do ghosts’ faces and hands glow?

5. Fun ghost costume that looks like a woman from the 1800’s. I would wear this out for Halloween, if I wasn’t too old. (lol)

Extra: Way too cute. Live vicariously through your child, I’m betting he/she would gets lots of candy.

Top 5 Haunted Places in the US – Dawn

1. Alcatraz - You can visit the jail and go into one of the cells, though I don’t suggest closing or locking yourself in, unless you wear brown pants to hide the fact that you’ve shit yourself.

2. Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone, Arizona – Dating back to the 1880’s its no surprise that it’s on the list, a lot of gunslingers lived in Tombstone and many infamous men were killed there.

3. Civil War Battlegrounds -Places such as the Gettysburg Battlefield where people often see soldiers walking around. A lot of men died in battle. Cries of pain and battle cries have been heard. I was born near Valley Forge National Park and wandering around there, day or night, you get a sense of how many men died. It’s very eerie and I can easily imagine it being haunted.

4. Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts- Another one that is not surprising, but who really killed the Borden family? It’s a bed and breakfast now – spend the night and see what happens.

5. Union Cemetery in Easton, Connecticut – (said also to be seen in Bridgeport, Connecticut), Dating back to the 1600s, this place is touted as one of the most haunted cemeteries not only in Connecticut, but in the entire country. The most well-known haunt is a spirit known as “The White Lady”. The identity of the spirit is not known, but sightings of her didn’t occur until the late 1940s; meaning she must have died sometime before then. People have photographed and even videotaped her. Not only have people seen her with their own eyes, but some passers-by’s have even “hit” her with their cars as they drove past the cemetery.

Those costumes are seriously creepy! What do you think of them? What did you think of the most haunted places? Have you ever visited any of them?

The Twilight Saga News Wrap-up:
Robert Pattinson wax figure announced by Madame Tussauds in London
Summit replaces editor on ‘The Twilight Saga: Eclipse’
‘Twilight’ Star Kellan Lutz ‘Wouldn’t Want To See’ ‘Breaking Dawn’ In 3-D

CHRIS WEITZ WISHES HE COULD CUT THE FROLICKING VAMPIRE SCENE FROM “NEW MOON”
MUSE WILL NOT BE ON “ECLIPSE” SOUNDTRACK
BREAKING DAWN RUMORS ARE FALSE

LOVE AT FIRST BITE – THE TWILIGHT COOKBOOK
CHRIS WEITZ ON “BREAKING DAWN”
ARE STEPHENIE MEYER’S “TWILIGHT” BOOKS LOSING A BIT OF THEIR HOLD?

Movie News Wrap-up:
NEW ‘TRON LEGACY’ STORY DETAILS , 3D IMAX TRAILER!

JAMES CAMERON: DON’T CALL IT AVATAR 2, HERE’S THE NEW TITLE

DANIEL RADCLIFFE SAD TO LEAVE HARRY POTTER BEHIND

TIM BURTON AND TIMUR BEKMAMBETOV REUNITE TO PRODUCE ‘ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER’’

OTHELLO BECOMES A WEREWOLF

Author & Book News Wrap-up:
The curious case of Alice

A week without books

TV Show News Wrap-up:
LOST’S FINAL EPISODES, WHAT WILL AND WON’T BE REVEALED

SYFY’S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgard: ‘Fame scared me’

OBS Fun News Wrap-up:
CHARACTER PROFILES: PERCY JACKSON IMMORTALS

MOVIE REVIEWS: ALICE

OBS TOP 5/10: ALICE IN WONDERLAND EDITION

OBS RECAP & REVIEWS: LOST S6: EPISODE 6 ‘SUNDOWN’

BOOK REVIEWS: ANDREW O’CONNELL – AWAKENINGS

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE TIME MACHINE (1960)

BOOK REVIEWS: JENNIFER MURGIA – ANGEL STAR

OBS PRESENTS: FAN ART MADNESS – ALICE IN WONDERLAND EDITION

BOOK REVIEWS: TED DEKKER & ERIN HEALY – BURN

OBS RECAPS & REVIEWS: MERLIN – S1 : EPISODE 11

BOOK REVIEWS: LAUREN KATE – FALLEN

OBS DIRECTOR PROFILES: TIM BURTON

CHARACTER PROFILES: EVERNIGHT

We are currently doing book clubs:
Alice in Wonderland

The Lovely Bones

and you can still check out

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Intertwined

Have a great new week from OBS!

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Chapter 3
Written by Katlyn
Edited by Krystal

The odd thing about dying and going to heaven was bumping into living people on the way and for Susie it was Ruth Connors. Susie and Ruth were not close, but as Susie floated away she reached her hand out to the Ruth’s cheek, the last connection to Earth she’d ever have.

On December seventh, Ruth complained to her mother about having a dream where a pale ghost appeared before her. Of course, Mrs. Connors didn’t believe Ruth and so she shut up and wrote her thoughts down in poetry instead. When Susie was discovered missing, Ruth became obsessed with Susie and went through yearbooks, collecting anything to do with Susie. Susie became wary of Ruth and avoided watching her until one day when Ruth ran into Clarissa and Brian Nelson kissing in the hall; later Clarissa’s locker was burgled by Ruth, who took a bunch of photos of Susie, a scrapbook, and a stash of Brian’s marijuana. That evening Ruth got high in her family’s tool shed.

Read the rest of this chapter summary HERE.

Memorable Quotes:

Susie: The odd thing about Earth was what we saw when we looked down. Besides the initial view that you might expect, the old ants-from-the-skyscraper phenomenon, there were souls leaving bodies all over the world. (Page 40)

Susie: When I streaked by her, my hand leapt out to touch her, touch the last face, feel the last connection to Earth in this not-so-standard-issue teenage girl. (Page 41)

Susie: “I can’t help thinking of my mother,” I said.
Franny took my left hand in both of hers and smiled.
I wanted to kiss her lightly on the cheek or have her hold me, but instead I watched her walk off in front of me, saw her blue dress trail away. I knew that she was not my mother; I could not play pretend. (Page 46)

Susie: “Ocean Eyes,” my father called her when he wanted one of her chocolate-covered cherries, which she kept hidden in the liquor cabinet as her private treat. And now I understood the name. I had thought it was because they were blue, but now I saw it was because they were bottomless in a way that I found frightening. (Page 48)

Susie: She had seen the photos right after. My mother looking tired but smiling. My mother and Holiday standing in front of the dogwood tree as the sun shot through her robe and gown. But I had wanted to be the only one in the house that knew my mother was also someone else – someone mysterious and unknown to us.” (Page 50)

Jack Salmon: “You are so special to me, little man,” my father said, clinging to him.
Susie: Buckley drew back and stared at my father’s creased face, the fine bright spots of tears at the corners of his eyes. He nodded seriously and kissed my father’s cheek. Something so divine that no one up in heaven could have made it up; the care a child took with an adult. (Page 53)

Susie: My father draped the sheets around Buckley’s shoulders and remembered how I would fall out of the hall four-poster bed and onto the rug, never waking up. (Page 53)

Susie: I watched my brother and my father. The truth was very different from what we learned in school. The truth was that the line between the living and the dead could be, it seemed, murky and blurred. (Page 54)

Questions for discussion:

What do you think about the way Ruth reacted to Susie touching her? Do you think that was a normal reaction or a testament to how different Ruth is from others?

Now that Susie has accidently communicated with her father, do you think she’s going to try and do it again with him or others?

Do you think that Susie’s little brother Buckley understands anything that is going on?

Read and discuss more HERE.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Chapter 2
Written by Katlyn
Edited by Krystal

When Susie first entered heaven she thought everyone saw the same thing she did. In her heaven the buildings all looked like they were built in the 1960’s and had orange and turquoise blocks, just like Fairfax High. She recalled when her father drive past Fairfax High so she could imagine herself there. She would rule Fairfax a queen, but still be nice. Her dreams on Earth were simple ones.

After a few days in Heaven, Susie began to realize that the other people only appeared in the part of her heaven they shared and she soon met Holly, her roommate. They became friends immediately and created their own heavens together with the help of Franny. They created a duplex and ways to entertain them, but Susie couldn’t have the one thing she wanted, Mr. Harvey dead and her alive. She thought that if she watched Earth and willed it hard enough, she might change the lives of those she cared about.

Her father was the one who accepted the call on December ninth from Len Fenerman learning of Susie’s elbow. Of course, nothing was certain. At least that’s what he told Abigail. For three nights her parents didn’t go near each other as they broke down together. Then one night Abigail burst into tears and Susie’s father held her close as they fell asleep. Susie turned her eyes to the cornfield.

Read the rest of this chapter summary HERE.

Memorable Quotes:

Susie: Following the seventh, eighth and ninth grades of middle school, high school would have been a fresh start. (Page 17)

Susie: I had to forget that I too had made lists in the margins of my notebook when Phoebe walked by: Winniebagos, Hoo-has, Johnny Yellows. (Page 18)

Susie: We had been givem in our heavens, our simplest dreams. There were no teachers in the school. We never had to go inside except for art class for me and jazz band for Holly. The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue. (Page 19)

Franny: “Walk the paths,” Franny said, “and you’ll find what you need.”
Susie: So that’s when Holly and I set out. Our heaven had an ice cream shop where, when you asked for peppermint stick ice cream, no one ever said, “It’s seasonal”; it had a newspaper where our pictures appeared a lot and made us look important; it had real men in it and beautiful women too, because Holly and I were devoted to fashion magazines. (Page 21)

Jack Salmon: “So you can’t be certain that she’s dead?” he asked.
Len Fenerman: “Nothing is ever certain,” Len Fenerman said.
Jack Salmon: That was the line my father said to my mother: “Nothing is ever certain.” (Page 22)

Lindsey: “Dad, I want you to tell me what it was. Which body part, and then I’m going to need to throw up.” (Page 24)

Lindsey: Inside, my sister’s heart closed like a fist. “I’d say it would be pretty hard to play soccer on the soccer field when it’s approximately twenty feet from where my sister was supposedly murdered.”
Susie: Score! (Page 36)

Questions for discussion:

How do you think Susie’s family is going to cope with the loss of their daughter and how do you think she can help them?

How do you feel about the way Lindsey is dealing with her grief? Do you think she is going to break down or stay solid as a rock?

Is there anything else in this chapter you’d like to discuss with the book club?

Read and discuss more HERE.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Chapter 1
Written by Katlyn
Edited by Krystal

Susie Salmon was only fourteen when she died on December 6, 1973. Her murderer was a man by the name of Mr. Harvey, a neighbor who’s flowers Susie’s mother loved and father had talked to about fertilizer. Susie had taken a shortcut through the cornfields from her junior high when Mr. Harvey startled her. He’d built something nearby that he wanted to show her and calls her by her name. Looking back on it Susie assumed that her father must have told Mr. Harvey one of those embarrassing stories about how she had tried to pee on her younger sister after she’d been born. As it turned out, her father had not told him her name, for some days later he would give his condolences to Susie’s mother and ask what her name was.

Mr. Harvey said it would only take a minute, so Susie followed him through the field into his ‘hiding place’ nearby. Her curiosity got the better of her and he watched as she explored the place. Susie made note of her surroundings and how strange it was he had a mirror and shaving supplies down there, but her father simply said men like that were “a character.” Of course, by the time a dog brought home her elbow attached to a cornhusk it was clear that Mr. Harvey was no character.

Read the rest of this chapter summary HERE.

Memorable Quotes:

Susie: My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. (Page 5)

Susie: I chose it both because it expressed my contempt for my structured surroundings a la the classroom and because, not being some dopy quote from a rock group, I thought it marked me as a literary. (Page 5)

Susie: “I’m sort of cold, Mr. Harvey,” I said, “and my mom likes me home before dark.”
Mr. Harvey: “It’s after dark, Susie,” he said.
Susie: I wish now that I had known this was weird. I had never told him my name. (Page 7)

Mr. Salmon: “Spunk!” my father would say. “Let me tell you about spunk,” and he would launch immediately into his Susie-peed-on-Lindsey story. (Page

Franny: “Like taking candy from a baby,” Franny said. (Page 10)

Susie: But I guess I figured that a man who had a perfectly good split-level and then built an underground room only half a mile away had to be kind of loo-loo. My father had a nice way of describing people like him: “The man’s a character, that’s all.” (Page 11)

Susie: Clarissa called his large eyes, with their half-closed lids, “freak-a-delic,” but he was nice and smart and helped me cheat on my algebra exam while pretending he hadn’t. He kissed me by my locker the day before we turned in out photos for the yearbook. When the yearbook came out at the end of the summer, I saw that under his picture he had answered the standard “My heart belongs to” with “Susie Salmon.” I guess he had had plans. (Page 14)

Mr. Harvey: “Tell me you love me,” he said.
Susie: Gently, I did.
The end came anyway.

Questions for discussion:

How strange is it to not only start a book with the protagonist’s murder, but also know who the killer is?

Why do you think Susie chooses to think about her family during her rape?

What type of setting or mood do you feel the author is evoking in this chapter?

Is there anything else you’d like to discuss with the book club?

Read and discuss more HERE.