book beginnings on Friday: The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman

Posted on December 2, 2011 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 love Sharon Kay Penman, but I haven’t made my way through her work very quickly. She’s written quite a few books (what, 12 now?) and they tend to be long. But her books never fail to bring me great pleasure and strong emotions when I do make time. Thank you so much, Nan of Bone Island Book Blog, for prompting this read. Without further ado, here’s your beginning…

Richard did not become frightened until darkness began to settle over the woods. In the fading light, the trees began to take on unfamiliar and menacing shapes. There was movement in the shadows.

If you haven’t read any Sharon Kay Penman, I highly recommend her.

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book beginnings on Friday: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Posted on November 25, 2011 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 am reading Zora Neale Hurston’s classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, as part of the Readalong being hosted by The Heroine’s Bookshelf blog. The Heroine’s Bookshelf book, which I read (and reviewed) earlier this year, had already prompted an interest in a reread of this book; I read it when I was quite young and don’t remember much. I expect to get more out of it this time. Thanks Erin for getting me started! (Check out also her Great Gone With the Wind Readalong from a few months ago, which got me reading that classic for the *first* time.)

Sorry, let’s get started here. We begin:

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

It’s a powerful beginning, isn’t it? I particularly find the first line grasping my interest. Doesn’t really tell us what the story is about, but presumably that’s to come.

What are you reading this weekend?

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book beginnings on Friday: Burned by Thomas Enger

Posted on November 18, 2011 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 was sent a copy of Thomas Enger’s Burned by the publisher for review. They tell me it’s “a new series from Scandinavian writer Thomas Enger about an investigative journalist who is dealing with his own personal wounds after returning to work for the first time since he lost his son in a tragic fire,” and that was enough to intrigue me. I go for the damaged detectives! (Harry Bosch, Dave Robicheaux…)

It begins, Prologue, September 2007:

He thinks it’s dark all around him, but he can’t be sure. He can’t seem to open his eyes. Is the ground cold? Or wet?

I’d say that’s a strong first few lines. I’m curious to know why he can’t open his eyes. Perhaps this is the original burn? I’ll read on. 🙂

What are you reading this weekend?

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book beginnings on Friday: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Posted on November 11, 2011 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.

This is a dystopian story, or perhaps even post-dystopian. I’m enjoying it very much and finding it thought-provoking, which is certainly what I expect from Margaret Atwood. It begins:

In the early morning Toby climbs up to the rooftop to watch the sunrise. She uses a mop handle for balance: the elevator stopped working some time ago and the back stairs are slick with damp, so if she slips and topples there won’t be anyone to pick her up.

There is no one there to pick her up because Toby is virtually the last person left alive in this odd world, as far as we know at this point. It’s a very spooky concept.

What are you reading this weekend?

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book beginnings on Friday: Black Sun by Edward Abbey

Posted on November 4, 2011 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.

Black Sun is a novel by Edward Abbey (renowned author of much nonfiction, whose best-known novel is The Monkey Wrench Gang; he has been called “the Thoreau of the West”) about a fire lookout. If you read my earlier review of Fire Season you will understand my interest in the subject. I like it so far. Check out this beginning:

Each day begins like any other. Gently. Cautiously. The way he likes it. A dawn wind through the forest, the questioning calls of obscure birds. He hears the flutelike song, cool as silver, of a hermit thrush.

I love this picture of a day beginning gently, the way he likes it… very evocative, mood-setting.

What are you reading this weekend?

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book beginnings on Friday: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Posted on October 28, 2011 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 have Winesburg, Ohio on my shelf because Hemingway recommended it. It turned out to be one of the easier ones from his list of recommended reading for me to get: my mother read the list when I originally posted it, and passed on Winesburg along with another I can’t put my finger on at the moment… this paperback copy, “a Viking Compass book,” was the first reset and redesigned edition since the original typesetting of 1919. It was published in 1960 and has my father’s name in the front cover. I wonder when and how it came to him; he would have been young for it in 1960. I wonder if it was for school? Pops, can you help?

This is a collection of short stories, and the first, entitled The Book of the Grotesque (Anderson’s original title for the collection, in fact) begins…

The writer, an old man with a white mustache, had some difficulty in getting into bed. The windows of the house in which he lived were high and he wanted to look at the trees when he awoke in the morning. A carpenter came to fix the bed so that it would be on a level with the window.

I look forward to my first reading of Sherwood Anderson’s work. His name is less known than many of the writers he influenced, even helped shape, or helped establish their careers – Hemingway being one, along with Faulkner and Henry Miller. Have you read any Sherwood Anderson?

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book beginnings on Friday: Breaking Point by Dana Haynes

Posted on October 21, 2011 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.


Breaking Point is the second thriller by Dana Haynes, involving a team of plane crash investigators known as “crashers” and their action-packed adventures versus the bad guys. We begin:

Dr. Leonard Tomzak was a modern American male. He knew it was considered inappropriate to stare openly at a pretty girl with long legs as she approached. Especially in public.

Interesting beginning, hm? Gives the impression that this guy might be a jerk, but I urge you to give him another two pages and you’ll like him better.

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: The Enemy by Lee Child (audio)

Posted on October 14, 2011 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.


And we’re back to Lee Child and Jack Reacher on audio. Although the 8th in the series, this one’s a prequel, a flashback to the time when Reacher was still an active MP in the army. In fact, it’s the new year of 1990, and the wall has just come down and the fall of Soviet Russia is bringing change to military structures. The Reacher family also suffers a private tragedy, and private revelations.

It begins:

As serious as a heart attack. Maybe those were Ken Kramer’s last words, like a final explosion of panic in his mind as he stopped breathing and dropped into the abyss. He was out of line, in every way there was, and he knew it. He was where he shouldn’t have been, with someone he shouldn’t have been with, carrying something he should have kept in a safer place.

No surprise here: I’m loving it.

What are you reading this weekend?

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book beginnings on Friday: Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Posted on October 7, 2011 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.

Everyone’s been talking about this one for the last several months, and I knew I wanted to read it. The idea of a female Huck Finn (while threatening to prejudice my reading of the book…) was too much to resist. I’m glad I finally got around to it. Here is the beginning:

The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane’s heart. She rowed upstream to see wood ducks, canvasbacks, and ospreys and to search for tiger salamanders in the ferns. She drifted downstream to find painted turtles sunning on fallen trees and to count the herons in the heronry beside the Murrayville cemetery.

That first sentence is something special, isn’t it? It really captures one of the main themes of the book: that for Margo, the river is LIFE.

I’m enjoying this book very much, and moving through it quickly; you can expect a review in the next few days. For now I’ll say this: it’s beautiful and moving, but also stark and disturbing. Bad things happen. I wasn’t quite prepared for this, although I suppose it’s in keeping with the Huck Finn allegory – his story, too, had its disturbing moments, despite the seeming calm of coming-of-age-on-the-river.

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book beginnings on Friday: Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Posted on September 30, 2011 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 really enjoyed this classic with The Reputation. I actually had not intended for it to coincide so neatly with Banned Books Week, but it sure did! The back of my B&N edition claims that while it was “quickly banned in England and the United States as pornographic, [it is] sexually tame by today’s standards.” I have to say that it makes my eyes widen here and there, though! I’m not offended; I find it fascinating stuff. But I wouldn’t call it entirely tame. Just tame relative to the 1920’s, is all.

Enough, already. Here’s your beginning:

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habits, to have new little hopes.

Rather obviously, the tragedy referred to is the first World War, which left England missing the bulk of an entire generation of men, those left behind largely broken and scarred. This fact is centrally important to the action of the book; Lady Chatterley’s husband is lame and impotent as a result of the war, her marital options drastically limited by it. Everyone’s life is irrevocably effected by the missing men.

My review of Lady Chatterley’s Lover posted a few days ago, here.

What are you all reading this weekend?

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