Posted on February 21, 2012 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!
Gustavo Arellano is the author of the nationally syndicated column, ¡Ask a Mexican! of which I am a casual fan. That was enough for me to know I wanted to read this book – that, and I looove Mexican food. This book appears to be slightly more serious and literary. Check out the literary reference in this teaser from page two – the first of many – about astronauts making burritos in space:
…the brownish, glistening mass popped out of the bag, away from the tortilla below it, and would’ve presumably continued on an endless trajectory if the fast-thinking Olivas didn’t snatch the sausage with the tortilla. The salsa acted as a binding agent and secured the incipient Icarus.
What fun! You won’t see my review til closer to the publication date of April 10, but I promise you’ll see it then.
This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: nonfiction | 3 Comments »
Posted on February 14, 2012 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!
When I was sent this book by Shelf Awareness for review, I knew the name Terry Tempest Williams, but couldn’t place it. I had a good feeling, though. I looked up her previous works and found the one I’d read: Pieces of White Shell, which I read at least several times as a kid (middle school, ish?) and enjoyed. Now I have a good feeling, even more. My review won’t post for a while (closer to the publication date of April 10), but for now, enjoy this teaser.
I will never know her story. I will never know what she was trying to tell me by telling me nothing.
But I can imagine. This act of creativity is my joy and protection.
And isn’t this the beautiful truth of love and power?
In a word, this book is a series of musings on voice, inspired by the shelves of copious journals left to to Williams by her mother – all empty.
This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: nonfiction | 3 Comments »
Posted on February 7, 2012 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!
Mountains of Light: Seasons of Reflection in Yosemite is a lovely contemplative book, both reminiscent of and different from my 2011 favorite, Fire Season. My review will come closer to the book’s publication date of March 1, but here’s a teaser for you now.
I lower my expectations for how glorious this dawn will be, wanting to regard whatever happens as a grace. To borrow a Japanese Buddhist image, I must empty my begging bowl in order to receive not what I think I need but what is being offered, and to regard whatever comes as oryoki–just enough.
Isn’t that a lovely image and concept? And it gives a glimpse into the tone of the book.
This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: memoir, nonfiction | 3 Comments »
Posted on January 31, 2012 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!
Still working on Anna Karenina (and I will be for a little while longer!). Today I had to give you this noteworthy teaser…
…she felt such terror at what she had done, that she could not face it; but, like a woman, could only try to comfort herself with lying assurances that everything would remain as it always had been, and that it was possible to forget the fearful question…
From Part 2, chapter 23. Anybody else a little offended?
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: audio, classics | 7 Comments »
Posted on January 24, 2012 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!
From Woolf’s famous essay on women and fiction, how’s this for a turn of phrase:
…it is doubtful whether poetry can come out of an incubator. The Fascist poem, one may fear, will be a horrid little abortion such as one sees in a glass jar in the museum of some county town.
Eye-catching and evocative! Poetry as abortion! Might be fitting imagery for the odd concept of “fascist poetry,” though. Woolf has some interesting points, I will say that for her.
What are you reading today?
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: classics, nonfiction | 6 Comments »
Posted on January 17, 2012 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!
I had a difficult time choosing a teaser from this amazing book for you. My review is yet to come, but in a nutshell – read it.
From “Minerva Writes Poems,” here’s your teaser:
Minerva cries because her luck is unlucky. Every night and every day. And prays. But when the kids are asleep after she’s fed them their pancake dinner, she writes poems on little pieces of paper that she folds over and over and holds in her hands a long time, little pieces of paper that smell like a dime.
Speaking of poems… prose poetry, no?
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: Fil, misc fiction, short stories | 3 Comments »
Posted on January 10, 2012 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!
Here is a book that I had never heard of until I began dwelling in the world of book blogs. Thank you, fellow bloggers!
I Capture the Castle is the whimsical musing of Cassandra Mortmain, seventeen-year-old castle-dwelling aspiring writer. I’ve only just begun it but found a delightful teaser very quickly:
I suppose it was her sheer despair of ever meeting any marriageable men at all, even hideous, poverty-stricken ones, that made her suddenly burst into tears. As she only cries about once a year I really ought to have gone over and comforted her, but I wanted to set it all down here. I begin to see that writers are liable to become callous.
I don’t know about you, but that took me from Jane Austen to Ernest Hemingway in only three sentences, which is an effect I most definitely appreciate. How about you?
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: misc fiction | 6 Comments »
Posted on January 3, 2012 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!
I’ve just begun a new thriller from Mo Hayder, starring a damaged red-headed bad-girl police detective named Zoe, and to a surprisingly equal extent starring her estranged sister Sally, who thinks of herself as demure and easily frightened. I think Sally is a tougher cookie than she realizes, but it’s early yet. Here’s your teaser…
She got out and stood on the lawn, breathing the sulphury smell of the engine and the organic waft of cow manure and grass – scanning the valley where the line of commuters wound its sluggish way towards the motorway. When she was sure nothing had followed them she went back to the car and opened the door.
Nice sensory elements, no? I am always bothered when thriller writers think they can dispense with the writing part of the job; looks like Hayder isn’t one of them.
What are you reading this week?
This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: thriller | 6 Comments »
Posted on December 27, 2011 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!
This is a smashing audiobook so far. The narrator is doing a terrific job with a terrific story; I’m riveted. Stay tuned for my review to come; I think I will be recommending Left Neglected. Here’s your teaser for the day:
Bob and I are in our master bedroom. I’m leaning against the sink, getting ready for bed. Bob is standing behind me, getting ready to drive back to Welmont. He’s also watching over my brushing, just like he did a few minutes ago with Charlie and Lucy.
Stick around, folks, I’ll be ready to review this one in just a few days. And what are you reading this week?
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: domestic fiction, misc fiction, science | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 20, 2011 by pagesofjulia
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!
Dorothy Canfield’s The Home-Maker was a gift from Thomas of My Porch some months ago, and I have just now gotten around to it – but it’s WONDERFUL! I shouldn’t have waited so long! You get just a snippet today – the review is to come – but let me tell you now, you want to run out and find a copy immediately. Here’s your teaser:
How he loathed his life-long slavery to the clock, that pervasive intimate negative opposed to every spontaneous impulse. “It’s the clock that is the nay-sayer to life,” he thought, as he climbed the cellar stairs.
I love that turn of phrase. He (Lester) fancies himself a poet, you know. If this teaser is a bit depressing, stay with me; this book turns rather hopeful (at least so far, I’m not finished yet, it could still end in tragedy I suppose) and oh so droll.
Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: misc fiction | 8 Comments »
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