Good morning and welcome!

I hope that Veronika Decides to Die was not a difficult book for anyone to get into. I thought it wasn't difficult to read. The length helped a lot, too.

Well, okay, let's get started. First let's talk about first impressions.

"The 'insane' always believe in first impressions."
What did you guys think?
The plot? The characters?
What were your first impressions? Did these change?

The first impresssion that I got was that it was going to be an interesting read because of the location of the story. Ljubljana, Slovenia is not a common or everyday setting for the books that I read. I thought this would be a nicely different perspective.

One of the things that I did dislike at first impression was the section where the author, Paulo Coelho, is mentioned along with his friend Veronika.
It didn't make sense why that section would be in there. It was a total dislike.
But after reading it a second time around, I realized how it's important, mostly to the author, I guess. There he mentiones how he got around to talking about the subject (the period his spent in the asylum) without breaking his two promises. Okay, so there you go, kudos for creativity.

Okay guys, I know this is short and weak, but I've really got a long day ahead of me at the Univ. I'll leave some questions for discussion and check on later tonight.

How about the characters? Veronika, Zedka, Mari, Eduard, and Doctor Igor.

How did you feel about the sections and lines in italics?

Villete had a terrible reputation, but was it really that terrible?

How do you think that the verse at the very beginning fits in?
"Behold I give you power to read on serpents...and nothing shall by any means hurt you."

See you all later.

I received the following e-mail a while back:

While I was amused that your gender genie got my sex wrong 100% of the time, I feel it is unnecessary for the 'was I right' box to comment 'that is one butch chick.'

I am a happily married mother of two, with no 'butch' features other than a tendancy to use the word 'the' more often than your algorithim thinks I should. I suggest you should consider whether it is your gender definitions which are wrong, and not me.

Handing out personal insults to people who are helping your research is neither funny nor clever. Plus, the phrase 'one butch chick' suggests that you have unresolved gender issues of your own, and therefore your theories may be tainted at source.

Since it is not BookBlog's intent to offend anyone, we would like to publicly apologize to you, sir, for any distress The Gender Genie may have caused. The Gender Genie is designed to entertain and amuse. To imply that such a masculine individual could possibly a "chick" is degrading, demoralizing, and disgusting. We declare, proudly and enthusiastically, that your testicles are truly the size of cantaloupes. In addition, we share your disappointment in our conscious decision to choose the moment you inputted your text to personally insult you rather than serve up one of the many random canned insults we use to offend everyone else.

We sincerely regret upsetting men everywhere and should be flogged in a public square with a razor-tipped whip soaked in lemon juice as passersby throw rotting cabbages. However, we do take some comfort in knowing we were able to amuse you by being 100% wrong. You may rest assured, my man. We will probably be wrong many, many more times in the future, so prepare yourself for the raucous hilarity and please accept our humblest apologies.

[Yeah, yeah. Not only did our silly game upset this humorless happily married mother of two, but I posted her e-mail and ridiculed it. I am evil. Bite me.]

Pardon my French, but what the fuck is this? And does anyone know what the fate of Super Saver Shipping will be?

I just vowed to do more online shopping, and now Amazon pulls this crap. 79 bucks a year? Puh-lease.

Hello.

Hope you guys are tuning in to Veronika Decides to Die for this short month. See you all in a few weeks!