Happy New Year and welcome to the premier of our Boomer Babes Rock Book Club! As promised in my year-end post, it’s the first Saturday of the month and I’m here to launch our exciting new club. Wait until you meet our first author!

As you may know, the Book Club craze has been sweeping the nation for some time now, officially starting when Oprah put her golden thumbprint on the concept and began sharing books with her audience. Today, countless book clubs are meeting all over the country in homes, schools, company lunchrooms, and churches, to name a few locations.

A more recent phenomenon are the book clubs who meet in cyberspace—the online chat room clubs where books are shared, ideas exchanged, and opinions vociferously offered. Our own Dotsie Bregel has a great Book Club on her NABBW sister site Boomer Women Speak.

Our Boomer Babe Book Club is going to begin solely online. As we grow, we’ll see about making materials available for groups wishing to meet outside of cyberspace. Until then, we’d like to invite our Boomer Babe Blog readers to join us here the first Saturday of every month when I announce our Book-of-the-Month.

We’ll be reading both fiction and non-fiction and it’s my hope that in the coming year our readers will be introduced to some amazing new authors as well as revisiting beloved authors whose work is already familiar.

We encourage readers to pick up a copy of the featured book at their local bookstore, library, or here online via our Book Club Bookstore. Join us every week as we answer discussion questions, share opinions, and in some instances visit with the author in person!

Are you ready? I am so excited I could dance! In fact, I am dancing! Can you see me?

I began reading books by Angela Elwell Hunt years ago, before I had the opportunity to meet her. Then, I was teaching at a writer’s conference where she was on staff and I coordinated my schedule so I could take her fiction track and learn how to do what she does so well.

It’s gonna take me years and years (if ever) to do what she does, this boomer babe is talented beyond words. In fact, we featured her in June of 2007 as one of our VIP Celebrity Boomer Babes. You can read that VIP Interview here.

The past several months I have read three books by Angie Hunt…all very different. Angie is a writer who does NOT believe in working in one typical genre or in one style. Her books have themes and plots and POV’s that are as varied as the weather. In fact, she’s known by this: “Expect the Unexpected.” Please take some time to visit her web site here.

The book I’ve selected to officially launch our Boomer Babes Book Club is: DOESN’T SHE LOOK NATURAL by Best-selling author Angela Hunt. I read this delightful contemporary women’s fiction in one sitting, so engrossed in Jennifer Graham’s life I just had to find out what she was going to do with the funeral home she unexpectedly inherits!

Angie has graciously agreed to share a few words with us today…

A Note from Angela Hunt

Hello! I’m so honored and pleased to be helping Allison kick off the first Boomer Babes Book Club Blog! (Boy, that’s great alliteration!) I hope you enjoy “Doesn’t She Look Natural?”

I tend to write two kinds of books these days: books I write primarily to a Christian audience, and books I write to the world at large. The first kind of book usually features a believing protagonist, and so it’s more about how to live a Christian life and grow in faith. The latter kind of book is usually more like a parable.

DSLN falls into the first category, and it sprang from my turning forty-five and realizing I was half-way to ninety. I began to think a lot about death and realize that it’s nothing to be afraid of . . . in fact, it’s something to prepare for! And now that I’m halfway to one hundred, it’s a lot closer than it was before!

But I’m fine with that, because I’ve come to realize that it’s only when we have a clear perspective of eternity and the end of life do we truly value the days in between.

Thanks for coming along on this inaugural adventure. I will now turn the mic back over to Allison, our boomer babe hostess!

Angie

Back to Allison:

Thank you, Angie! One of the things I really like about Angie’s books are the Discussion Questions she includes at the back of every book she writes. Let’s begin with the first two in DSLN and open the Comment section to anyone who wishes to join in. I understand that it’s going to take some time for folks to get the book each month and to read it, so check back on any day and feel free to chime in, okay?

I’m excited to hear what others think of DOESN’T SHE LOOK NATURAL.

Discussion Questions:

#1. Doesn’t She Look Natural? Is the first of three novels featuring Jennifer Graham and the Fairlawn Funeral Home. Where do you think the author will take Jennifer and her family in subsequent books?

#2. What are some of the major themes of this novel? Does the author use any symbols to illustrate those themes?

Okey dokey folks – that’s it for now. Come back soon to share your thoughts about Angie Hunt’s newest book, and feel free to share other books she’s written if you’d like. Use the Comment section below to post your thoughts. Until next Saturday, this is Boomer Book Babe Allison signing off. Wishing you pleasant reading and a GR8 2008!

Visit Allison's Website