Horse by Geraldine Brooks -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Thank you for joining my on Book Beginnings on Fridays! Please share the opening sentence (or so) from the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy or you otherwise want to highlight.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The deceptively reductive forms of the artist’s work belie the density of meaning forged by a bifurcated existence. These glyphs and ideograms signal to us from the crossroads: freedom and slavery, White and Black, rural and urban.

-- from Horse by Geraldine Brooks.

Those two opening sentences are as pompous and unwieldy as they sound! But they are the character's attempt to write a magazine article about a painting. He rejects them immediately, saying to himself: "No. Nup. That wouldn’t do. It reeked of PhD. This was meant to be read by normal people." 

So have no fear, Horse is completely engaging, with no reek of PhD. I really enjoyed Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book, which my book club read a while back. So when one of my book club friends gave me a copy of Horse for Christmas, it went straight to my nightstand to be read ASAP. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the Linky box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

  

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Horse:

He watched her, a slight white shape in the dark, running up the rise to the house. Instead of taking the shallow stone steps to the grand front entrance, she slipped around the side porch.

Horse is historical fiction with a "braided narrative" going from 1850 to 1954 to 2019. The story is based on a real racehorse in the 1950s named Lexington. 

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Thank you for joining my on Book Beginnings on Fridays! Please share the opening sentence (or so) from the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy or you otherwise want to highlight. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

When Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus were kids, their fathers worked together at the Coleman Candy plant and carried the stench of warm chocolate back home with them.

-- from Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. 

That's a great opening sentence, in my opinion, because it immediately pulls you into the story. You know the two main characters will be Sean and Jimmy; you know they have history together but are now adults; and you get a hint at their lives from the fact that their fathers worked in a factory, so you know they grew up with a blue collar background. I'm not sure "stench" and chocolate ever go together, but that's a quibble.

I am glad I finally read this one! It has been on my TBR shelf a long time. I finally read it as one of my TBR 23 in '23 books. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the Linky box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Mystic River:

“You ever think how the most minor decision can change the entire direction of your life? Like, say you miss your bus one morning, so you buy that second cup of coffee, buy a scratch ticket while you're at it."

Have you read this book? Or seen the movie? What did you think?

 

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh -- WHAT ARE THEY READING?

WHAT ARE THEY READING?

Authors tend to be readers, so they often create characters who like to read or stick real books into their stories. I always like it when a real book gets a shout out in the book I'm reading. 

How do you think an author picks the books the characters read? I usually assume the characters' choice of books reflects the author's tastes or, maybe, what the author was reading at the time. But sometimes a character's reading material is a clue to the character's personality or is even a part of the story.

This is an occasional blog event. If you want to play along, please do! Grab the button, put up a post, and leave leave a comment with a link to your post.

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

I first read Brideshead Revisited in high school, after watching the tv miniseries with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Edwards on Masterpiece Theater. I read it again in 2004 when I was working my way through the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. I got a lot more out of it reading it in my 30s than I had as a teenager!

Recently, I read it again and loved it even more. Part of my enjoyment came from reading it with my ears this time. Jeremy Irons narrated the audiobook and did a terrific job. I think I also enjoyed it more now because I've read many other Evelyn Waugh books and had a better sense for his humor and the cultural references.

Which is probably why I noticed more which books the characters mentioned. There were several, but the two that I remember are Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey and Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley. 

Eminent Victorians was published in 1918 and is one of the few books the protagonist Charles Ryder took with him when he started college at Oxford. It contains biographies of four leading figures of the Victorian Era, Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and General Charles Gordon.  Because it was irreverent, witty, and debunked the pretensions about Victorians, the book was highly popular and made Strachey famous. 

Antic Hay is a comic novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1923, which made it a new-release when Anthony Blanche was reading it in Brideshead Revisited. Blanche described his reading experience to Ryder over drinks:

"Picture me, my dear, alone and studious. I had just bought a rather forbidding book called Antic Hay, which I knew I must read before going to Garsington on Sunday, because everyone was bound to talk about it, and it's so banal saying you have not read the book of the moment, if you haven't."

I haven't read Eminent Victorians, but now I want to. I read and enjoyed Antic Hay, but all I remember now are a lot of beautiful young things running around post-WWI London, day drinking and talking about sex. 

 

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Well, I was on vacation and got back too late last night to post in time. So here is a very late Book Beginnings on Fridays post! 

I took this Emily Henry book because it seems like the perfect travel book. I loved it and ripped through it on the plane ride home from Omaha. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

On vacation, you can be anyone you want.

-- People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. 

I don’t typically read “romance” books. But there’s a fuzzy line between full on romance novels and the chicklit I secretly love — when it’s clever and sassy.

A while back, I found a copy of Emily Henry’s Book Lovers in a Little Free Library in my neighborhood. It was definitely clever and sassy! I wanted to read her other books so took People We Meet on Vacation with me when I visited my mom in Nebraska. It is completely different but just as funny and fun.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please share the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From People We Meet on Vacation:

“There is literally no one on earth better equipped to have a magical vacation than a travel journalist with a big-ass media conglomerate’s checkbook. If you can’t have an inspired trip, then how the hell do you expect the rest of the world to?”

Dr. Wong by Don Engebretson -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Welcome to Book Beginnings on Fridays, where participants share the opening sentence (or so) of the books they are reading this week. Please share yours! You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it this week.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Cole Ember knew he was going to die and hoped it didn't hurt.

-- from Dr. Wong by Don Engebretson. Billed as Volume 1 in what will be a series of Cole Ember spy thrillers, Dr. Wong is an irreverent romp through the world of international espionage. 

Engebretson is a seasoned magazine and short story writer. His debut novel, Welcome to Kamini, followed a man in a failed marriage and professional tailspin to the Canadian woods of northern Ontario. Dr. Wong promises the same strong plotting, memorable characters, and captivating writing, but with non-stop action and laughs on every page. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post below. If you share on social media, please sue the hashtag #bookbeginnings.

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Dr. Wong:

Blair Hammond was the epitome of a secret agent as portrayed in film, while the antithesis of one in real life. Intelligence officers in the CSIS — and America's CIA, Britain's MI6, Israel's Mossad, the list goes on — were most often brainy, introverted, humorless nerds.

Of course, when I tried to find a humorous teaser, it was impossible to find one in two sentences on page 56. But trust me, Dr. Wong is breezy, fast, and funny. 

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Cole Ember is an operative for CASPER, a black ops force so black it’s rumored only in CIA bathroom stalls. Unbeatable in a fistfight, deadly with a gun, and dense as a paving stone. . . . Crossing paths with famed genetic scientist Dr. Wing Duk Wong, Ember slowly—very slowly—discovers that Wong has created a ruthless army of genetically modified humans to aid in his heinous plot to acquire vast wealth via the boldest, and most peculiar, terrorism attack in history.

Also on Wong’s tail is Canadian Intelligence Officer Olivia Laidlaw. She’s skilled, clever, beautiful, and deadly, albeit armed only with a combat knife and bear spray, per restrictions imposed by the Canadian government. Can this hapless pair find and defeat Wong before the world’s financial centers collapse, and thousands of innocent people die? Are you kidding?