Posted on November 19, 2013 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.
Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS and Survival is excellent both as a moving personal memoir and as a historical primer on the AIDS epidemic and cultural & political responses to it. I am impressed. As a teaser, let me share this line:
Hattoy was a larger-than-life character, politically astute, and outrageously witty, even for a gay man who had a college job working at Disneyland dressed as Donald Duck while tripping on acid.
…which highlights the humor still available to Strub as he relates some pretty sobering stories. This is, after all, his life, and a sense of fun is always appropriate in life. Review to come, but for now I can safely recommend it.
This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: history, LGBTQ, memoir, nonfiction | Leave a comment »
Posted on November 12, 2013 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.
I wanted to share these few lines with you because they made me pause and wonder. The Murder Code is a thriller, and on the bloody side at that; but a line here and there hints at humanity, even romance.
Occasionally, it drives him to distraction, bu he also knows it is one of the things he would miss most about her if she was gone: that ultimately we love the rough edges of people more than the smooth surfaces.
And on the next page:
In such ways, he realises, do relationships grow over time. We begin by looking for perfection; we end up by loving flaws.
I found it remarkable that this author of hard-boiled gore also handles love so deftly. I’ve seen it done far less eloquently and realistically in this genre. And I had to stop and consider the truth of the statements.
Well done, Mosby. Stay tuned for my full review to come.
This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: mystery, psych drama, thriller | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 22, 2013 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.
I am quite impressed so far with this truly small introduction to literature, from myth and the oral tradition through the now. It’s a feat.
I chose this teaser for you because I found it impactful – something I’d never thought about before, and yet made perfect sense in the instant I read it. Also a little chilling, but that’s just me.
Why did what we (but not they) call the ‘novel,’ the ‘new thing,’ emerge at this particular time and in this particular place (London)? The answer is that the rise of the novel took place at the same time and in the same place as the rise of capitalism. Different as these two things may seem, they are intimately connected.
Stay tuned for more!
This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: authors, classics, history, nonfiction | 3 Comments »
Posted on October 15, 2013 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers!
Today I am thrilled to finally be finding time for book one in the Dark Tower series by King, which I entered with a later installment, The Wind Through the Keyhole. I loved it. I’m just sorry this one isn’t read by Stephen King, too!
I picked out my favorite early lines for you:
He had laid his fuel in a pattern that was not artful but only workable. It spoke of blacks and whites. It spoke of a man who might straighten bad pictures in strange hotel rooms. The fire burned its steady, slow flame, and phantoms danced in its incandescent core. The gunslinger did not see. The two patterns, art and craft, were welded together as he slept.
I love this pictorial expression of the gunslinger’s melding of art and craft, and how it “speaks of blacks and whites.” I am a King fan. I feel confident this one will be good…
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: Dark Tower series, fantasy, Stephen King | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 8, 2013 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers!
I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share this passage with you.
He left Fifth Avenue and walked west towards the movie houses. Here on 42nd Street it was less elegant but no less strange. He loved this street, not for the people or the shops but for the stone lions that guarded the great main building of the Public Library, a building filled with books and unimaginably vast, and which he had never yet dared to enter. He might, he knew, for he was a member of the branch in Harlem and was entitled to take books from any library in the city. But he had never gone in because the building was so big that it must be full of corridors and marble steps, in the maze of which he would be lost and never find the book he wanted. And then everyone, all the white people inside, would know that he was not used to great buildings, or to many books, and they would look at him with pity. He would enter on another day, when he had read all the books uptown, an achievement that would, he felt, lend him the poise to enter any building in the world.
Libraries; books; the intimidation of buildings, books, and the grandeur of the New York Public Library; and the power available to a young man who could read all the books uptown. Lovely, and moving.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: classics, race | 1 Comment »
Posted on September 3, 2013 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers!
I have discovered an awesome new book on audio that I want you to know about. Set in 1920’s New York City, The Other Typist‘s first-person narrator is Rose Baker, an orphan employed as (yes) a typist at a precinct police department. She is entranced by a new hire named Odalie, who exerts a magnetic pull on everyone, it seems, but most especially Rose herself. Here’s your teaser:
She was never once rebuffed, and the man – I say man here generically, because there were several – invariably introduced himself and reached into his pocket to fish out a lighter and a replacement cigarette, while Odalie puffed on her pilfered prize and regarded the gentleman with a sly, delighted expression, as if to suggest nothing he could pull out of his pocket could sufficiently replace the unique and spectacular treasure she had just stolen.
I just love this line, read masterfully by Gretchen Mol, with its subtly suggestive reference to what a generic man might pull out of his pocket to impress Odalie. She, the other typist, is a classic, manipulative femme fatale; but then again, there are some unanswered questions to ask about our narrator Rose, too. And that’s the kind of set-up I like. Stay tuned…
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: gender, historical fiction, misc fiction | Leave a comment »
Posted on August 13, 2013 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers!
I am very much excited about this relatively new memoir by a female trailbuilder with experience working for the Parks and Forest Services in Montana and Alaska. It looks to have a good combination of nature writing, memoir, and women’s issues. I have already found several noteworthy passages; but I had to choose…
[If you want a clue about a person’s work]… look at her hands. I trust dirty fingernails. I am drawn to people with that half moon, the sliver of filth that indicates kinetic expertise. Perhaps they do fieldwork – ratty truck, weathered tools. Are they teachers, the ones who kneel next to kids examining earthworms in mud? Potters, naturalists, firefighters, farmers: dirt is a secret code, dusty knuckles the special knock of a fraternal order. I trust this small sign because it implies a tangible relationship. To get dirt under your fingernails, you have to touch the world.
So, yes, lovely writing to boot. Stay tuned for my glowing review.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: gender, memoir, nature, nonfiction | Leave a comment »
Posted on August 6, 2013 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers!
I am enjoying this small, impactful writing guide, recommended to me (indirectly) from within the pages of… one of Haven Kimmel’s books, I’m not sure at this point which one. I keep making false starts or having intentions of Writing; one of the gems I’m getting from Writing Down the Bones is to just start. Also –
First, consider the pen you write with. It should be a fast-writing pen because your thoughts are always much faster than your hand. You don’t want to slow up your hand even more with a slow pen.
This gives me pause. Goldberg clearly recommends writing by hand, and that is hard for me. I have been using computers from such a young age, and exclusively for my writing-heavy academic career (high school, college, grad school), that my handwriting is slow, painful, and not great; this is a generational problem, obviously, and this book was originally published in 1986, almost before my time. She has some hesitations about typing rather than handwriting, though, and that’s something to consider.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: nonfiction, writing craft | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 30, 2013 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers!
Check out this new thriller with a strong psychological background, about a survivor of kidnapping and captivity.
Tilly gently grasps Reeve’s wrists and turns her arms one way, then the other, examining the thin scars that bracelet each wrist. Then, with deliberate fingers, the girl touches a sequence of small, circular scars that run up Reeve’s arms like the paw prints of a cruel animal.
There is a definite flair for visceral detail – and quite appropriate, considering the subject matter. I think this one’s going to be good.
Stay tuned: it will be published in September.
This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: thriller | Leave a comment »
Posted on July 23, 2013 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers!
This is Benjamin Black’s 6th novel in the series (beginning with Christine Falls) starring Dublin pathologist Quirke, a crusty, curmudgeonly Irishman if ever there were such a one. Take, for example, his reaction to the young new bartender at his usual. (This goes on for a long paragraph.)
He found particularly irritating the way the young man had of throwing up his chin and yanking his fake bow tie to the end of its elastic and letting it snap back with a sharp smack. No, as far as Quirke was concerned, Frankie was exactly what McGonagle’s did not need.
I am amused; although, to be clear, this is more of a dark, weary mystery than a lark. Stay tuned for the review to come closer to the publication date (late August).
This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: mystery, thriller | Leave a comment »
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