book beginnings on Friday: The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

Posted on April 22, 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 on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. (You might also consider visiting the original post where you can link to your own book beginning.)

The Red House Mystery is the only mystery novel (so says the back of my book) by A.A. Milne, who is famous for his Winnie the Pooh series – which of course I love (doesn’t everyone? I like to quote Eeyore), but apparently Milne was forever offended that the world recognized him for his children’s books and not for his adult writings. Well, I’m going to give you a shot, Milne, as Pooh was obviously genius, and I like mystery novels.

Here is the book beginning:

In the drowsy heat of the summer afternoon the Red House was taking its siesta. There was a lazy murmur of bees in the flower-borders, a gentle cooing of pigeons in the tops of the elms. From distant lawns came the whir of a mowing-machine, that most restful of all country sounds; making ease the sweeter in that it is taken while others are working.

How lovely is that? I think I shall enjoy this book. It has the same whimsical, leisurely, pleasant tone as Pooh (oh forgive me Milne, it’s a compliment).

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book beginnings on Friday: The Apothecary’s Demise by Anne Sloan

Posted on April 8, 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 on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. (You might also consider visiting the original post where you can link to your own book beginning.)

I’m at home sick for the second day in a row now; which makes FIVE days in the last two weeks, on top of the two days I took to travel to Arkansas. It’s been a rough month at work! I really don’t like missing this much. But what can you do? So I’m working on my paper, and taking the occasional break to read.

The Apothecary’s Demise followsMurder on the Boulevard that I read a few months back. Anne Sloan is a local Houston historian and author of these two Houston-history-framed murder mysteries. This one begins:

“Have a happy Valentine’s, Flora Logan.” Max Andrews spoke softly as he tossed the bouquet of yellow daisies he had clutched for the past hour onto the railroad tracks.

The first book closed with Flora and Max becoming a couple; but apparently things aren’t going so smoothly. Stick around and I’ll let you know what happens. 🙂

Fingers crossed for my general health, and my final paper, this weekend. Hopefully next week I’ll be back on track!

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book beginnings on Friday: The Pied Piper by Ridley Pearson

Posted on April 1, 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 on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. (You might also consider visiting the original post where you can link to your own book beginning.)

Today, we are on the road! Heading for the Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas. I’m equipped with audiobooks! For starters, let’s sample Ridley Pearson’s The Pied Piper:

The train left the station headed for nowhere, its destination also its point of embarkation, its purpose not to transport its passengers, but to feed them.

By early March, western Washington neared the end of the rinse cycle, a nearly perpetual curtain of ocean rain that blanketed the region for the winter months, unleashing in its wake a promise of summer. Dark, saturated clouds hung low on the eastern horizon. Well to the west, where the sun retreated in a violent display, a glimpse of blue cracked the marbled gray, as welcome to the residents of Seattle as any sight alive.

I like a well-evoked location, especially one I’m familiar with. I’ve spent some time in Seattle – have family there – and we can all recognize the reference to rain, can’t we! I really picked this book out just to expand my familiarity with popular authors in the mystery/thriller genre, but particularly this one, because I can remember someone recommending it at some point. Don’t remember who, or what was said, but it was enough to go on. 🙂 I’ll let you know!

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book beginnings on Friday: options

Posted on March 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 on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. (You might also consider visiting the original post where you can link to your own book beginning.)

I’m breaking the rules again. I’m not sure what I’m going to read next. I will hopefully finish both Main Street and Dethroning the King this weekend (and will likely not post at all over the weekend, which is my usual habit). But I did want to share a few books that have recently been published that I’m interested in reading. Perhaps you can help me choose!

First of all, Heather Gudenkauf’s These Things Hidden begins:

I stand when I see Devin Kineally walking toward me, dressed as usual in her lawyer-gray suit, her high heels clicking against the tiled floor. I take a big breath and pick up my small bag filled with my few possessions.

To me, this indicates that the narrator has seen this Kineally woman before, knows her “usual” suit color, and is not feeling so hot about the action to come. I have read the blurbs (and a review or two) of this book and am excited about what sounds like a thrilling and intriguing, um, thriller.

And then there’s Lisa Gardner’s Love You More. From the Prologue:

Who do you love? It’s a question anyone should be able to answer. A question that defines a life, creates a future, guides most minutes of one’s days. Simple, elegant, encompassing.

This is a bit general and philosophical for my tastes, and not such a grabber, for me at least, but chapter one does me better:

Sergeant Detective D.D. Warren prided herself on her excellent investigative skills. Having served over a dozen years with the Boston PD, she believed working a homicide scene wasn’t simply a matter of walking the walk or talking the talk, but rather of total sensory immersion.

Now that will grab me. I like a good detective and a good crime scene; this is my favorite kind of light reading. I’ve read some about this book, too – I’ve never read Lisa Gardner before, but this one sounds wonderful, and I can’t wait to get into it. Although again I’m noticing a sort of emotional theme of maternity, parenting, mother-child bonding, family, etc. I’ve mentioned this before and it bothers me somewhat. I wonder if this is a recent theme in publishing? Or just the ones I’m stumbling across? Any thoughts?

Anywho, sorry, got distracted. Either of these books appeal to me for a next read – or it could always be something off my TBR bookcase at home. 🙂 Do you have a vote? What shall I tackle next? (Perhaps the next one of these two to be returned to my library, hmm…)

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book beginnings on Friday: Dethroning the King

Posted on March 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 on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. (You might also consider visiting the original post where you can link to your own book beginning.)

I am so very excited about the book I’ve just started! Dethroning the King is my favorite kind of nonfiction: narrative nonfiction, written by an author (in this case, a journalist) who gets personally involved in her story and becomes a real voice in it. I’m only 30-ish pages in, but I’m really enjoying the style in which Macintosh tells the story, as well as the story itself.

You get three beginnings today, oh joy! First, from the Author’s Note:

The summer of 2008 is one many people wish they could forget. In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Bear Stearns in March, the global financial markets briefly looked as though they might stabilize.

And from the Prologue:

Some men golf when they’re looking to unwind. Others take their sports cars out for a drive or toss a few steaks on the grill. August A. Busch III liked to shoot things – ducks in the fall and quail in the winter.

And from Chapter 1:

Wednesday, June 11, 2008, was forecast to be hot and sticky in St. Louis, with afternoon temperatures rising well above 80 degrees. None of the Anheuser-Busch executives who pulled into the parking lot of the soccer park in Fenton that morning expected to see much sunlight for the next 48 hours, however.

Now, if you think three book beginnings is overkill, please bear with me. I think all three beginnings illustrate my point: that Macintosh writes in an accessible, narrative style. Don’t all three sort of grab you and make you wonder what comes next? As opposed to a nonfiction book that starts off, “X was born on Monday, November 3, 1942. His parents were X and X.”

I’m very excited about reading this book because I am especially interested in the beer industry, used to work in it, and have a friend who worked for A-B for years and has (at least a little bit) an insider’s view. I think this story is fascinating. While I don’t actually like the product A-B makes, I have respect for the business and, more so, find the lifespan of it relevant and interesting. Macintosh makes a fair case that the fate of A-B is a metaphor for our country’s economic and political well-being in a changing world, and that both entities fell victim to hubris in a class Greek tragic sense.

What are you reading today? I have my eye on Heather Gudenkauf’s These Things Hidden next, but I also have to admit that the moment Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife shows up, I’m all over it! Happy Friday!

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book beginnings on Friday: An Incomplete Revenge

Posted on March 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 on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. (You might also consider visiting the original post where you can link to your own book beginning.)

Today I’ll introduce you and me both to the next book in Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series: An Incomplete Revenge. I am, in fact, reasonably certain that this is the very next book to follow the one I have just read, so hopefully no more snafus of that sort. I never did get around to reading Pardonable Lies; maybe I’ll get around to it one of these days. I always was a fan of reading out of order. 🙂

Without further ado, your book beginning, from the prologue:

The old woman rested on the steps of her home, a caravan set apart from those of the rest of her family, her tribe. She pulled a clay pipe from her pocket, inspected the dregs of tobacco in the small barrel, shrugged, and struck a match against the rim of a water butt tied to the side of her traveling home.

What’s this? Gypsies? Maisie is stepping out of her standard circles here, although I suppose she was always ready to do that. I would like to see something other than the same moneyed Brits hire her; perhaps we could go back to France or do some other sort of travel. Or, gypsies. Okay. This is a source of variety; I’ll take it.

Will you be enjoying Maisie with me? I think the Read-Along has us writing this one up on Monday the 14th, so I shall start reading this weekend!

Sorry, I know it’s been a bit sparse around here this week. Hopefully I’m about caught up and ready to be a good (daily) blogger again. 🙂 Enjoy your weekend!

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book beginnings on Friday: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Posted on February 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 on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. (You might also consider visiting the original post where you can link to your own book beginning.)

Okay, so it’s not on the loooooooong list of TBR’s I made you suffer through last night. 😛 I just needed something to get me through a few spare moments til I could get home and on the road, where my TBRs await. I chose The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (author of Treasure Island, yum!) because it’s a whopping 78 pages – just what I needed.

So, here’s your book beginning!

Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life.

It takes a moment to get into this sort of semicolon-laden prose but I do enjoy it. Good fun, and I shall finish it before the sun goes down and get on to those TBRs. 🙂 Happy travels to me, and happy weekends and whatnots and whatevers to you, adieu.

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book beginnings on Friday: Birds of a Feather

Posted on February 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 on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. (You might also consider visiting the original post where you can link to your own book beginning.)

I finished Lee Child’s Persuader last night (great fun, yay!) and will post about it shortly. So this morning, while waiting for road conditions to improve (yes we get a bit wussy in Houston when the whole world ices over and it stays below freezing for days. we get wussy because this NEVER HAPPENS and so we don’t know what to do when it does), I got to start a new book!

Unfortunately I’m behind in the Maisie Dobbs Read-Along, but I picked up book 3 along with book 2, so maybe I can catch up. Today’s book beginning comes from book 2, Birds of a Feather, by Jacqueline Winspear.

“Maisie Dobbs shuffled the papers on her desk into a neat pile and placed them in a plain manila folder. She took up green marble-patterned W.H. Smith fountain pen and inscribed the cover with the name of her new clients: Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Johnson, who were concerned that their son’s fiancee might have misled them regarding her past.”

Did you find the missing word? I did, and I found it jarring, especially RIGHT at the beginning like this. What a shame! Professionally published books should NOT include typos, but in the first two sentences… it troubles me. If anyone were going to catch a typo you’d think they could catch the one in the second sentence of the book!

Aside from this, it’s a perfectly nice beginning. We have some detail to hint to us about Maisie’s organizational habits, and a fairly strong hint as to her line of work. I am interested in revisiting her. What will she encounter this time? Are the typos just beginning?

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book beginnings on Friday

Posted on January 28, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I shall optimistically post a Book Beginning today, in the hopes that I will soon be able to Begin a new Book.


I’m struggling with which of the four books on my desk to choose for my Next. Let’s see. There’s a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child, Persuader (great title for Reacher, I think!), set in Maine (this is important for the sake of the Where Are You Reading? Challenge). I like Reacher very much; this is tempting. It would be “light” after this clunker nonfiction that I’m currently involved in, hm.

Next there’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, an oft-mentioned classic (thus good for the Classics Challenge, hm) that I’ve never read and know that I Should.

Then comes By-Line: Ernest Hemingway. This is required reading for me because I’m a huge, huge fan of Hemingway, and this is one I have NOT read – I’ve read all his novels and I THINK all his short stories although it’s hard to figure out for sure considering all the various collections; but only a few of his nonfiction. This is a collection of his journalism, and the back of the book claims that “more intimately than all his fiction, Hemingway the reporter reveals Hemingway the man.” I need it.

And finally we have The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. This caught my eye because Eva over at A Striped Armchair was just recently extolling the author and specifically this book. It’s sort of pop-science in a series of case studies by neurologist Sacks. I’m intrigued, all the more so by Eva’s glowing praise. I’ve discovered a handful of pop-science/medical, very readable nonfiction in recent years, like My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. This one might be up next.

This is not a very successful book beginning post just yet. With which should I tease you, and me?

Let’s try this again.


Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme.

How to participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence.

From the first page of Lee Child’s Persuader:

“The cop climbed out of his car exactly four minutes before he got shot. He moved like he knew his fate in advance.”

This is so like Child. Everything is exact. I love it. What’s Reacher gotten himself into this time?

Thanks for bearing with my messy post this evening. 🙂 Have a lovely weekend and I’ll “see” you on Monday!

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book beginnings on Friday: choices

Posted on January 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 on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence.

I’m still working on Lee Child’s 61 Hours but I already gave you a Tuesday Teaser from it, so I’ll refrain from moving backwards to begin it. Instead I’ll give you a few choices on my possible next read.

I still have Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, by Steven Watts, waiting for me to begin. It starts:

“Mention of Hugh Hefner instantly evokes a host of images that dance through the imagination: visions of voluptuous women and uninhibited sex, mansion parties and celebrity entertainers, grotto hot tubs and rounds beds, smoking jackets and sleek sports cars.”

This is a strong start. Nonfiction and/or biography is in danger of beginning in a dull fashion: “Hugh Hefner was born in 1926 in Chicago, Illinois, the elder of two sons born to Grace Caroline and Glenn Lucius Hefner” (thank you wikipedia for the paraphrased perfect example). Beginning instead with imagery and a straightforward reference to Hefner’s notoriety gives me a good feeling about how Watts is going to treat his subject. I like my nonfiction to be nice and readable. I am hoping for a biography that will fairly handle both the notoriety as mentioned, and his cultural rebellion, and his aid to a number of causes of social justice, without taking sides. We shall see.

My other option is Norman Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest, which begins:

“You may call me D.T. That is short for Dieter, a German name, and D.T. will do, now that I am in America, this curious nation.”

A matter-of-fact start with a hint of suspense: Why is Dieter in America now? Why does he feel the need to rename himself? What does he find so curious about this nation? I’m excited about beginning my experience with Mailer, and the ambitious subject matter both intimidates and interests me. This book was well-received, so I’m not concerned that the illustrious Mailer will fall short; that’s not what I mean by intimidated; I mean, it’s heavy stuff.

Which book shall I dive into this weekend? Any thoughts?

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