book beginnings on Friday: The Lady and Her Monsters by Roseanne Montillo

Posted on December 14, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

monsters

The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece is a fascinating title, isn’t it? I was attracted immediately. It begins:

Camillo’s footsteps echoed loudly as he crossed the empty cobblestone streets of Bologna toward his uncle’s house. The afternoon was hot, and the scorching heat, coupled with that lazy midafternoon spell between noon and evening, allowed him to go by virtually unnoticed.

Although this is a work of nonfiction, I think these atmospheric opening lines are appropriate, since its subject is something of a gothic ghost story.

Happy reading to you this weekend!

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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book beginnings on Friday: Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

Posted on December 7, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

strangers

I’ve been waiting for some time to get around to this one, and I love the mood and foreboding atmosphere established in the opening pages.

The train tore along with an angry, irregular rhythm. It was having to stop at smaller and more frequent stations, where it would wait impatiently for a moment, then attack the prairie again. But progress was imperceptible.

The personification of the train is very effective. Angry, impatient, attacking. Good stuff!

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book beginnings on Friday: The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond

Posted on November 30, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Jared Diamond, author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel, has a new book coming out with the new year. It is subtitled “what can we learn from traditional societies?” and seeks to answer that question. It begins:

April 30, 2006, 7:00 A.M. I’m in an airport’s check-in hall, gripping my baggage cart while being jostled by a crowd of other people also checking in for that morning’s first flights. The scene is familiar: hundreds of travelers carrying suitcases, boxes, backpacks, and babies, forming parallel lines approaching a long counter, behind which stand uniformed airline employees at their computers.

Unfortunately the passage is too long to quote in its entirety, so take my word for it that Diamond begins making deeply thought-provoking points within just a few pages. Keep your eyes open for this one, kids.

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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book beginnings on Friday: The Man Called Cash by Steve Turner

Posted on November 16, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Today I’m pulling this “book beginning” from the foreword to this biography, by Kris Kristofferson:

Johnny Cash is a true American hero, who rose from a beginning as humble as Abraham Lincoln’s to become a friend and an inspiration to prisoners and presidents – respected and beloved the world over for his courage, his integrity, and his genuine love for his fellow man. Like Muhammad Ali, he was bigger than the profession that brought him to the world’s attention, and his spirit transcended the boundaries of ordinary artistic stardom. But he was wonderfully, charmingly human.

The beginning of the book itself is good (although sad); but this beginning of the foreword, by a friend of the man himself, was too good to pass up. I find it’s both personal and touching, and a grand sweeping expression of Cash, all at once.

I’m super excited about this biography, mostly because I am excited about its subject; it also comes recommended from a friend.

And what are you reading this weekend?

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book beginnings on Friday: The Shining by Stephen King

Posted on October 19, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Ooh, I’m excited about this one! Remember when I listened to that first chapter of his future release, Doctor Sleep? That’s the sequel to The Shining, due in 2013, and I loved it. So now I’m back to reading the first one. I’ve never seen the movie, either, although I’ve seen some images from it (Jack Nicholson’s face through that busted-up door is rather iconic) and have a vague impression. This audio version, read by Campbell Scott, came recommended (by Natalie), so here we go. It begins:

Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.

Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the prissy speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men.

I think that is fine imagery. I’m loving this book so far, and yes, Scott’s reading does seem to be letting me inside the head of the disturbing (disturbed?) Jack Torrance. Husband is pleased that I’m reading this book, too, although he was disappointed to hear that I will probably not be done with it by Halloween – he wants to watch the movie then, but I think November will have to do just as well.

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book beginnings on Friday: In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke

Posted on October 5, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

I felt like taking a break in between long-ish nonfiction reads (much as I enjoy those!), and James Lee Burke looked to be the perfect choice: high-quality, easy-reading fiction, tried and true entertainment, and thought-provoking to boot. He’s one of my longtime favorites, and yet somewhat strangely, I haven’t read anywhere near all his work. I’m all out of Michael Connelly and Lee Child until they write more; but there’s plenty of Burke out there I haven’t enjoyed yet, and (thank goodness) he’s still writing, too.

So here we are with In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (if that title doesn’t catch your eye I don’t know what will). It begins:

The sky had gone black at sunset, and the storm had churned inland from the Gulf and drenched New Iberia and littered East Main with leaves and tree branches from the long canopy of oaks that covered the street from the old brick post office to the drawbridge over Bayou Teche at the edge of town. The air was cool now, laced with light rain, heavy with the fecund smell of wet humus, night-blooming jasmine, roses, and new bamboo. I was about to stop my truck at Del’s and pick up three crawfish dinners to go when a lavender Cadillac fishtailed out of a side street, caromed off a curb, bounced a hubcap up on a sidewalk, and left long serpentine lines of tire prints through the glazed pools of yellow light from the street lamps.

What a lovely passage, and what an example of what Burke can do. He’s evoked a place, given us smells and colors and the feel of the air; this descriptive first paragraph is just dripping with local flavor. And that final sentence begins the action, too: what on earth is this lavender Cadillac up to? I’ll give you a hint: our narrator is a cop, and therefore likely to get involved.

Still loving James Lee Burke. And what are you reading this weekend?

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book beginnings on Friday: The Black Box by Michael Connelly

Posted on September 28, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

The new Harry Bosch novel by Connelly comes out in November! Aren’t you excited? Here’s the first two teaser sentences for you:

By the third night the death count was rising so high and so quickly that many of the divisional homicide teams were pulled off the front lines of riot control and put into emergency rotations in South-Central. Detective Harry Bosch and his partner Jerry Edgar were pulled from Hollywood Division and assigned to a roving B watch team that also included two shotgunners from patrol for protection.

Naturally we jump right into the action. I do like Connelly; and his latest does not disappoint.

What are you reading this weekend?

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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book beginnings on Friday: Real Man Adventures by T Cooper

Posted on September 21, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

This book begins with an appropriate quotation, and I’m going to share that with you as well as the beginning of Cooper’s writing.

“It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, thought they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory.” –Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

I am a visible man. By all appearances white, middle-class, heterosexual. Male.

I like the parallel drawn, and the contrast noted, to Ellison’s work. I haven’t read Invisible Man, but I’d like to. (It fits into a recent reading pattern of mine. And I’ve finally worked out Ellison’s Invisible Man vs. H.G. Wells’s, whew.) I think the essence of this book is well foreshadowed in those brief words of Cooper’s, too.

What are you reading this week?

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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book beginnings on Friday: Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden

Posted on August 3, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Happy Friday! I have a book to share with you today that is not so happy, though. Journalist Blaine Harden narrates this audiobook himself, which I find to be a fine choice. I’ll let the book beginning introduce you:

Nine years after his mother’s hanging, Shin squirmed through an electric fence and ran off through the snow. It was January 2, 2005. Before then, no one born in a North Korean political prison camp had ever escaped. As far as can be determined, Shin is still the only one to do it.

And this is the story of Shin Dong-hyuk. So far I am discovering my own very poor knowledge of North Korea, and marveling at the atrocities. But it looks to be a great book, and an important one in that we could all stand to be better educated about North Korean human rights abuses. So, happy Friday indeed.

What are you reading this weekend?

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book beginnings on Friday: Almost Somewhere by Suzanne Roberts

Posted on July 27, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Two beginnings for you here. From the Preface:

After college I set off on a hike that I imagined would be a diversion from thinking about my future. The year was 1993, the United States was in a recession, and most college graduates were finding it difficult to secure jobs.

And from the start of the book, Day 1 in diary format:

Going on twenty-three, I fancied myself a self-stylized naturalist, thought I knew about the wilderness, about wildness, because I had been an avid reader of John Muir and Henry David Thoreau.

Suzanne Roberts herself has given you a good idea of what this book is about in those two short selections, but here’s the final element: she did this hike one of three women, which remains unique today but was especially unusual in the early 1990’s, and the relationship between these women is an important part of her story, as well. I’ve only just started but am enjoying this book very much! Happy reading weekend, friends.

These quotations come from an uncorrected advance proof and are subject to change.

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