Tuesday Teasers: Birds of a Feather, by Jacqueline Winspear

Posted on February 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


From page 120 of Jacqueline Winspear’s Birds of a Feather:

She was anxious to interview the housekeeper and be on her way back to Chelstone, to plan the next part of her visit to Kent. She was abundantly aware that the initial meeting with Joseph Waite had taken place almost a week ago, and she was not yet certain she had located her client’s daughter.

This is a fine portrayal of Maisie: a bit anxious and all business! Hopefully there’s some fun in her future, too.

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Teaser Tuesdays: Persuader by Lee Child

Posted on February 1, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Duffy wanted me to move into the hotel and offered to have somebody drive me back to my Boston hotel for my luggage. I told her I didn’t have any luggage and she looked at me sideways but didn’t say anything.

From page 38 of Lee Child’s Persuader. Standard Reacher behavior – and I love that there’s a “she” already. Reacher doesn’t consummate his flings the way Connelly’s character Bosch tends to, but there’s always an attractive (and generally also very tough) woman around. I’m looking forward to the ease of reading a fast-paced Reacher thriller for the next few days!

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Teaser Tuesdays

Posted on January 25, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Today I am still working on the neverending biography of Hugh Hefner. No, I’m not complaining. I still find it a fascinating story, particularly as author Watts really makes it the story of the American people, the U.S. economy and culture, and a number of general trends. I’m intrigued and I enjoy the book. But, I do look forward to being able to read some other things, too!

Your teaser today comes from page 297:

“No longer the daring trailblazer on the sexual frontier, the magazine struggled with a growing perception that time had passed it by. Ironically, the success of the sexual revolution in the Swinging Seventies made Playboy appear quaint to acolytes of sexual openness.”

All right, I confess, I didn’t pick this teaser randomly. I thought it was a neat capture of an interesting irony: that the magazine and the institution that was Playboy had sort of done such a good job of making itself relevant, that it was no longer quite so relevant. Hefner made girly magazines so acceptable that he ended up with competition. It’s a good lesson in any kind of competition, too: don’t rest easy! Being the best last month or even yesterday is rarely enough to carry you through this month, or today.

I’m afraid I’m getting a bit busy with the class I’m taking this semester on top of the usual work, extracurricular fun & family and the bike riding I need to do more of before a few things happen, like the spring race series and especially YIKES the Ouachita Challenge. Whew. I really want to still read lots and post more-or-less daily. That’s what I mean when I say I look forward to moving on from Mr. Playboy; I’m enjoying it but I’m accustomed to reading through books a little faster than this. So, I look forward to the next book in my life. 🙂 No, don’t ask me what that will be.

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Teaser Tuesdays: 61 Hours by Lee Child

Posted on January 11, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Well, I had some trouble today choosing a new book to read. I’m a bit worn out from Niffenegger and have piles and piles of TBR but need something easy and juicy. So, I walked over to James Lee Burke and Lee Child on my library shelves (luckily they live close to one another, ha) and took stock. I’m choosing 61 Hours by Lee Child today, because the obscure location in South Dakota sounds like a smart strategic move to make in the Where Are You Reading? challenge (I don’t recall noticing any books about South Dakota recently) and because I like what I see on the dust cover in the way of teaser. But you, instead, get these few lines from page 163:

“Tiny eddying drafts were stirring odors out of the rugs and the drapes. They were not unpleasant.”

Sorry so short! This is how Child writes: short, declarative sentences (or in some cases, fragments!) that are very, very expressive. Perhaps you could use more of them in this case; but I’m sticking with two sentences because I’m following the rules today 🙂 and because I think it’s a fine example of mood. I would say that serial character Reacher is somewhere he doesn’t belong in this moment, since he’s smelling odors that seem unfamiliar. (I guess I’m also assuming it’s Reacher experiencing the odors. I may be wrong.)

I’m excited to be started something new that I expect to be fast-paced, engaging, fun, and not too intellectual, like the other Reacher novels I’ve read before.

I also want to point out to any participants in Sheila’s Where Are You Reading? challenge, a cool link I found this morning. Flavorwire has made a list (oh boy! we all love lists don’t we?) of 10 Great Works of Literature for America’s 10 Most Literate Cities. View it here for inspiration.

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Teaser Tuesdays: Running Blind by Lee Child

Posted on January 4, 2011 by pagesofjulia


It’s time for Teaser Tuesdays with Should Be Reading!

From page 212 of Lee Child’s Running Blind:

“A male hitchhiker standing six feet five and weighing two hundred and thirty pounds is on the cusp of acceptability for easy rides. Generally, women won’t stop for him, because they see a threat.”

Fans of Child’s serial character, Jack Reacher, will recognize our burly hitchhiker. I picked this up on a whim today, short on time and heading out to lunch, and so far it’s another solid Child. I like it!

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Teaser Tuesdays: Frederica

Posted on December 28, 2010 by pagesofjulia


It’s time for Teaser Tuesdays with Should Be Reading!

From page 250 of Frederica by Georgette Heyer:


“The humble note in his voice touched her, but she shook her head; and when he began, in rather stilted language, to enumerate and describe the various excellent qualities in her character which had excited at first his admiration, and then his ardent desire to make her his wife, she checked him even more decidedly, saying kindly, but with a little amusement: ‘I am very much obliged to you, cousin, but pray say no more! Only think how much your mama would dislike such an alliance!'”

And now I shall explain how I ended up in a Heyer, of all places. I’m not a reader of romance novels normally – although I’ve experimented with a few, it’s normally been for readers’ advisory (RA) purposes or general education, rather than enjoyment. When I took my first RA class in grad school, I had my friend Gala to call upon for help with romance, and she gave me a short stack of paperbacks that are mostly still on my TBR shelf (to be read). Frederica was among these. Then, just this morning, I got an email from another friend, Amy, mentioning Georgette Heyer and asking did I know she – Heyer, not Amy; Amy writes sci fi- Heyer wrote mysteries as well as the regency romance she’s famous for? How about that. I did not know, but I’m interested.

Frederica has been sitting alongside my life for months now, but I had only made a halfhearted effort before I got the email from Amy. So it made my lunchtime reading today, and do you know? I’m really enjoying it! There is a witty, playful tone to the dialogue and humor that reminds me, dare I say, of Austen! So keep checking in. If I were to read a romance novel *just* for fun it would be a first, but this one shows promise.

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Tuesday Teaser

Posted on December 21, 2010 by pagesofjulia

Just for fun I’m going to play along with Should Be Reading here and give you a Tuesday Teaser. From page 201 of Faithful Place by Tana French:

“It was late enough that the street was dark and creepily silent, everyone neatly tucked up in their high thread counts. I parked under a decorous tree and sat there for a while, looking up at Holly’s bedroom window and thinking about nights when I had come home late from work to that house, parked in the drive like I belonged and turned my key in the lock without making a sound.”

Beautifully written; I love how much he expresses by writing that the tree is “decorous” and that everyone is tucked up in high thread counts. It says a lot about the neighborhood he’s in.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: , | 5 Comments »

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