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I’ve heard a lot of good things about The Book of Lost Things, but haven’t gotten a chance to pick up a copy yet. Sorry to hear that it was not that great. I may have to revise my opinion on reading it.

Well, I hate to discourage anyone from reading anything… but it wasn’t my cup of tea. I liked it at the beginning, I just kept expecting it to go someplace more inventive than it did.

Now that I think about it, I think part of the problem is that I never got much feel for the child narrator. It was written with a fair amount of distance — I’m having trouble articulating this, but it felt like the way adult-book authors write child characters instead of the way children’s book authors do… which is fine, except when the child is your protagonist and you need to identify with him on some level, not just feel concern for him.

Actually, I’d be interested to see the positive commentary you read. I love reading different takes on books I’ve read… and I could be convinced, I think, that there’s something cool lurking in THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS that I missed.

I liked Book of Lost Things, but I didn’t love it. I thought a lot of it was inventive, but yeah, I could have used some more twists – well put!

gorgeous cover.

That’s really pretty, Elizabeth. You must be so proud!

Thanks! I can’t wait to see it for real… I’ve had a galley since early May, but we actually substantially improved it from the galley, so I haven’t seen it in its real form. I think I’ll have it in just two weeks… craziness!

Apropos of Susan’s comment on the other thread, if anyone has ideas they want to suggest for publicity, please let me know! I do want to run a contest (and maybe a blog tour — have ideas for lots of posts), and the guy who developed the manuscript, John Ross, is doing a book event in San Francisco on July 30. I’d like to do some book events too, because when I was editing, I kept imagining what a great presentation you could do with this material, including her photographs (which we put in the book) — I think you do really get a sense of the war through this kind of personal experience that’s different from what you can get any other way.

But as I said, I’m only really thinking about this now, because we were editing down to the wire. (Obviously the press has its own publicity department that has been thinking about this, but I want to contribute to the publicity efforts too.) So, any and all suggestions very welcome!

That is a beautiful cover. Congrats. When does it go on sale?

Thanks, Doret! I believe it goes on sale next month but I’m not sure of the launch date, if you can believe it. (We were focusing everything around July 30, when there’s a bookstore event in San Francisco, so I forgot to even ask when it’ll be on sale elsewhere!) I’ll find out.

Looks wonderful!

love the cover. it is so pretty….

Thanks, hungryreader! (love the name, btw)

I was very, very happy when I saw it. I don’t know the woman who designed it, but I owe her one.

John Ross is reading this book tonight at Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco (the Mission district). I also went to the publisher’s site and found the book on sale there for $18:

http://www.haymarketbooks.org/advanced_search_result.php?search_in_description=1&x=33&y=8&keywords=iraqigirl&osCsid=bba6c060e5a3f561c69175ae576d1a56&x=35&y=13

Oh wow, Elizabeth, congratulations!! That’s fantastic–I can’t wait to read it!

Thanks! *still in shock*

Congrats! I’m looking forward to it.

That’s very cool. Congratulations.

[...] for larger size. Or if you want to know why I’m posting this book’s cover, see here. Posted in IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq, Judging by the Cover. Tags: book cover, [...]

Congratulations!

Very interested in learning more about the book. Off to see when it is available. Holding any contests for the book?

Thanks, Susan!

I have a contest in mind but I haven’t figured out where to host it (since I’ll be writing about it here anyway, I’d like to do it elsewhere, preferably a book blog with high traffic). Actually, I was thinking about a blog tour, too, since I learned so many things while doing this that I think I have a lot to say!

But in all the rush to *finish* the book, this kind of stuff got kind of put aside… now I need to make these plans for real.

I heard John Ross speaking about the book today on KPFA. He’s appearing tonight. I saw the book available on Amazon for $106!!! I am unwilling to pay that much. I imagine that soon it will be in wide distribution and the price will become more realistic.

Anyway, hearing Mr. Ross made this book sound like something I and others I know would like to read.

Heh, I saw that on Amazon too! The book hasn’t actually been released; I don’t know if that bookseller has one of our galleys (review copies) or what, but I can only imagine it’s the bizarre result of some computer algorithm for setting used book prices… I can’t see how any human would have sat down and come up with that! It was cracking me up, though.

Thanks for the kind words on the book, though, and glad that the word about it is spreading!