book beginnings on Friday: Dead Scared by S.J. Bolton

Posted on May 11, 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 week I’m reading an advanced review copy of S.J. Bolton’s latest thriller, Dead Scared, and it is indeed scary. It begins, in the prologue:

Tuesday 22 January (a few minutes before midnight)

When a large object falls from a great height, the speed at which it travels accelerates until the upward force of air resistance becomes equal to the downward propulsion of gravity. At that point, whatever is falling reaches what is known as terminal velocity, a constant speed that will be maintained until it encounters a more powerful force, most commonly the ground.

I’ll leave you to ponder what might be falling.

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

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book beginnings on Friday: The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

Posted on May 4, 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 am listening to this classic on audiobook, read by Bill Weideman. It begins, somewhat philosophically:

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same.

I admit I’m finding it a tad slow, but here we go. Have you read this one? I was attracted by the audio format because of the stories of its original radio broadcast, in which people panicked, thinking it was a real-life news story! What an exciting time that must have been.

What are you reading this weekend?

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book beginnings on Friday: Walking It Off by Doug Peacock

Posted on April 13, 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.

Doug Peacock was a good friend of Edward Abbey’s, and was the inspiration for the Hayduke character in Abbey’s highly regarded The Monkey Wrench Gang – thus, obviously, my interest in this memoir. It begins:

High in the shadow of Dhaulagiri they are bleeding the yaks. Two Tibetans hold the curved horns of the shaggy beast and a third man uses a wooden bowl to catch the bright red blood that pulses and spills out a hole in the yaks’ neck.

So, a little rough in the beginning if you don’t like pulsing blood! I’m okay though. 🙂 What are you reading this weekend?

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book beginnings on Friday: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Posted on April 6, 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’m listening to Kingsolver’s The Lacuna on audio. I loved her The Bean Trees and I think I loved Animal Dreams, but it’s hazy; The Poisonwood Bible really didn’t work for me (which, from my reading of other book blogs, appears to be a common reaction). But The Lacuna comes recommended from my mother, so here we go. It begins:

In the beginning were the howlers. They always commenced their bellowing in the first hour of dawn, just as the hem of the sky began to whiten.

The hem of the sky. Lovely. And what are you reading this weekend?

Be advised: I’m out of town, so you’re viewing pre-scheduled posts until April 9. I love your comments and will respond when I return! But I’ll be out of touch for a bit. Thanks for stopping by!

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book beginnings on Friday: La Roja: How Soccer Conquered Spain and How Spanish Soccer Conquered the World by Jimmy Burns

Posted on March 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.

I found us a funny teaser for today:

He briefly embarked on a new career as a referee but found the profession lacking excitement. He was saved from growing old and bitter by an early death.

Ha! That’s one way to look at it. Sort of a different approach than that old quip about aging: that it beats the alternative.

So far this book is more Spanish history than soccer, per se, but it’s early yet. And there’s nothing wrong with Spanish history, for that matter.

What are you reading this week?

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

Be advised: I’m out of town, so you’re viewing pre-scheduled posts until April 9. I love your comments and will respond when I return! But I’ll be out of touch for a bit. Thanks for stopping by!

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book beginnings on Friday: To the Last Breath by Francis Slakey

Posted on March 23, 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.


My cover (which is an advanced reader’s edition; this book will be published May 1) has a first-person quotation rather than the one on the image at right (click to enlarge). It reads,

In 1997, I decided to scale the highest peak on every continent and surf every ocean. Over the next twelve years, I survived a storm atop Everest, an ambush by guerrillas, and a head-on collision in the high desert. But every escape from death brought me closer to life.

That is, of course, not your book beginning! The book starts:

I am out of balance. I hang dangerously off center but I’m oblivious, until some dim awareness of the world shakes me awake.

It begins full-on, with an adrenaline-charged event. I’m enjoying it so far. 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: Edward Abbey: A Life by James M. Cahalan

Posted on March 16, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages 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 we’re taking a look at a biography of Edward Abbey.


The more Abbey I read, and love, the more I want to know about the man. Do you do this? My interest in an author of nonfiction invariably turns to the author himself (or herself). I’ve been looking for a few Abbey books, in this case. This was the biography I chose. I also have a copy on the way of Doug Peacock’s Walking It Off. Peacock was the inspiration for Abbey’s fictional character Hayduke, of The Monkey Wrench Gang, and his book is a reminiscence of their relationship. But that’s another post.

Cahalan’s biography of Abbey begins, in the introduction:

This is a book in which I seek to separate fact from fiction and reality from myth. At the outset, I have to tell readers that Edward Abbey was not born in Home, Pennsylvania; he resided in several other places before his family moved close to Home. And he never lived in Oracle, Arizona.

Already I’m learning things. I had already observed, as Cahalan continues, that Abbey claims a birth in Home and a late life and death in or near Oracle. These place-names are nicely symbolic, which has to have appealed to him, and his PO Box in Oracle helped to deflect some of the fans who pursued Abbey in his later years and who he (understandably, I think) wished to avoid. But who knew he fudged the truth so hard, and so early on, and in such relatively unimportant details? (There will be another post here soon about the friction between fact and nonfiction writings.)

I’m really excited about this biography, as I’m excited about Abbey in general and also debunking biographies in general. And I love that in the short introduction, Cahalan mentions Hemingway, riding bicycles, and the ill-fated trip through Big Bend with his then-fiance that Abbey writes about in The Journey Home – three things I love. 🙂

What are you reading this week? And are you excited?

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book beginnings on Friday: The Likeness by Tana French

Posted on March 9, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages 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 loved Tana French’s In the Woods and Faithful Place, and as I plan an upcoming trip to Ireland (my first), it seemed natural to pick up another Irish-set mystery. Bonus: this one is an audiobook, so I’m hoping to adjust a little bit to the accents I’ll be encountering soon! (I’m not always so good with accents. At least it’s not Scotland; that’s an accent I really can’t decipher.) We begin:

Some nights, if I’m sleeping on my own, I still dream about Whitethorn House. In the dream it’s always spring, cool fine light with a late-afternoon haze.

That’s lovely, in my opinion. It’s atmospheric. One of the things I love about French is the sense of place she creates in her books, which of course is of special interest now since I’m planning a trip there. And this beginning is almost reminiscent of Rebecca, isn’t it? Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…

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book beginnings on Friday: A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman by Alice Kessler-Harris

Posted on March 2, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages 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.

Alice Kessler-Harris is a well-respected author and historian, and here she tackles the formidable subject of Lillian Hellman. I am not terribly familiar with Hellman, so this book is my introduction, and so far it looks like it will be a fine one. I love biographies of ambiguous, contradictory, not-entirely-loveable characters; they’re so much more interesting than altogether sympathetic or entirely monstrous ones!

For this Happy Friday today I will be sharing several snippets, because I feel like it. First of all, Kessler-Harris opens her introduction with a quotation I loved:

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written; for a great deal is known of men of which proof cannot be brought.
–John Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

I love this idea, and the implication that history involves the unproveable, unavoidably. Beware! This quotation is followed by Kessler-Harris’s first sentences:

In 1976, aged seventy-one, playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman posed in a mink coat for a resonant advertisement. Cigarette in hand, gazing insouciantly at the camera, Hellman claimed the legendary status she craved.

Indeed. Beginning her introduction with a description of that remarkable photograph (below) really evokes her subject right at the beginning. The photo in question:

The first chapter, however, returns to a standard biography’s beginning:

Beautiful Julia Newhouse, daughter of a wealthy southern family, married Max Hellman–who had nothing to recommend him but charm–in 1904. A year later, Julia gave birth to a child they called Lillian Florence Hellman.

These unadorned sentences tell us a little something about Julia & Max, which I appreciate. Hellman’s story is fascinating, and so far I really enjoy the way Kessler-Harris is portraying it, with the context of her time & place fully involved.

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

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book beginnings on Friday: Leave It to Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse

Posted on February 24, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages 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 we’re back with Wodehouse, in my first departure from his Jeeves novels. I was feeling in need of some comfort food, and as Simon recently said, Wodehouse is like ice cream: perhaps not commendable for daily fare but oh so good when a person needs something sweet and rich.

My expectations are being met so far: the first several pages had me in stitches, unable to choose my favorite lines to quote. Of course, today’s exercise mandates the first lines, thereby relieving me of that decision. I have taken the liberty of quoting a longer passage than is customary because these were too good to miss:

At the open window of the great library of Blandings Castle, drooping like a wet sock, as was his habit when he had nothing to prop his spine against, the Earl of Emsworth, that amiable and boneheaded peer, stood gazing out over his domain.

It was a lovely morning and the air was fragrant with gentle summer scents. Yet in his lordship’s pale blue eyes there was a look of melancholy. His brown was furrowed, his mouth peevish. And this was all the more strange in that he was normally as happy as only a fluffy-minded man with excellent health and a large income can be.

You see what I mean? “Amiable and boneheaded” and still more, “fluffy-minded.” Not to be missed! I love the characterization in these opening lines of the Earl of Emsworth: likeable, but (at best) spacey. Wodehouse continues his streak, as far as I’m concerned.

What are you reading this weekend?

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