Book Beginnings on Fridays on Rose City Reader

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Thanks for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays, where participants share the first sentences (or so) of the books they are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your eye, even if you are not reading it this week.

The day got away from me, so I have just enough time to put up this week's post. I will have to come back tomorrow to add my own book beginning. In the meantime, please share yours in the Linky box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbegninnings. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head if Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

Quentins by Maeve Binchy -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Thank you for joining me on Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. Feel free to share from a book that captured your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

When Ella Brady was six she went to Quentins.

-- from Quentins by Maeve Binchy. 

Years back, I went on a Maeve Binchy tear and read a lot of her books, including several involving many of the same characters in Quentins, including Tara Road and The Scarlet Feather. 

Quentins focuses on the fictional Dublin restaurant of that name, tying together the characters with the history of the restaurant. I love being back in Binchy World. All her novels involve many characters facing ordinary problems that all get resolved in a tidy way. They are the emotional equivalent of cleaning out a messy closet and leave me with the same sense of satisfaction.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so we can find each other.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head if Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Quentins:

In their first year at the university, Ella and Deirdre had made a new friend, Nuala, who was from the country and had her own flat. Right in the center of the city.

TBR 24 in '24 and Mt. TBR Challenges -- My Sign Up Post

 

THE TBR 24 IN '24 CHALLENGE

My Sign Up Post

This is my sign up post for the TBR 24 in '24 Challenge. The simple idea is to read 24 books off your TBR shelves between January 1 and December 31, 2024. If you want to join me (and I hope you do), go to the main challenge page here to sign up. You can participate through your blog, social media, or just in the comments on the challenge pages.

You do not have to pick all your TBR 24 in '24 books ahead of time. I like to, so I do. You can pick them now. Or you can pick some now and some as you go. You can pick them all at whim. Or you can pick now and then change your mind. The only real rule is that you read books that you already owned before January 1, 2024. Find all the rules on the challenge page.

MY TBR 23 IN '23 BOOKS

I like to pick my books ahead of time and keep them stacked by my bedside to motivate me through the year. This year, I picked 12 fiction and 12 nonfiction. I plan to alternate fiction/nonfiction as I read through the stack in alphabetical order by author name. In years past, I read my challenge picks as my mood struck. But I always ended up in December with the least appealing books and that was no fun. 

Here's a list of what is in the picture. Do any look good to you?

FICTION

Quentins by Maeve Binchy. I went on a Binchy jag years ago and read most of her books, including several that involve the fictional Dublin restaurant Quentins. But this one slipped past me. 

Rates of Exchange by Malcolm Bradbury. I loved Eating People is Wrong and The History Man so look forward to reading more of Bradbury's books. 

The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary. This one is on Anthony Burgess's list of his 99 favorite novels, one of my favorite lists. 

The King of the Rainy Country by Nicolas Freeling, an Edgar Award winner.

 

A Paris Apartment by Michelle Gable, looks like fun!

J by Howard Jacobson. I like his books but this one is speculative, dystopian fiction, not my favorite genre. We'll see how it goes. 

Out of the Shelter by David Lodge. He is one of my favorite authors. 

The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch. So is she!

The New Men by C. P. Snow. I've been plodding my way through his Strangers and Brothers series and am determine to get through the whole thing. 

A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler. As with Binchy, I went on an Anne Tyler tear several years ago. Then I just stopped. I want to get back and read the ones I missed. 

Come Fill the Cup by Harlan Ware, This is probably the most random novel I have on my TBR shelf so I decided to dust it off. 

Chess Story by Stefan Zweig, which will also count as my Austria book for the 2024 European Reading Challenge. 

NONFICTION

My Almost Cashmere Life by Margy Adams. I already ripped through this memoir. FINISHED 

Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes & Asides from National Review by William F. Buckley, Jr. This is one of my favorite titles ever. I grew up reading his Notes & Asides column and look forward to revisiting the columns in this collection. 

Political Woman: The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick by Peter Collier. My husband gave this to me several years ago and it's time I read it. 

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David. I love food writing but have never read this classic.

Menagerie Manor by Gerald Durrell. I've read Lawrence Durrell books but never Gerald's. I love the TV show, The Durrells of Corfu, so want to try his books.  

Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz. I bought this on a whim when it came out and don't want it to languish on my shelves. 

Songbook by Nick Hornby. Another favorite author, but I missed this one. 

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis. I'm chipping away at reading all his books. 

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo. I found this at a library book sale and it looks terrific!

The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas by Paul Theroux. This classic book of travel writing has waited too long for me to read it. 

Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris by Sarah Turnbull. I missed this when it came out and love ex-pat memoirs. 

I'll Take the Back Road by Marguerite Hurrey Wolf, a 1975 memoir about living on a farm in Vermont. 

THE MT. TBR CHALLENGE

This TBR 24 in '24 Challenge dovetails nicely with the Mt TBR Challenge that Bev at My Reader's Block hosts every year. Like I've done for the past couple of years, I am signing up for the "Mt. Kilimanjaro" Level in 2024 to read a total of 60 books off my TBR shelves. That means 37 books in addition to those listed above.

MY MT. TBR BOOKS

I will try to remember to list my Mt. TBR books here as I read them, although I completely forgot this last year.

Need Blind Ambition by Kevin Myers FINISHED

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Welcome to the first Book Beginnings of the new year! Please share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, or just a book that caught your fancy.

Hopefully my late post this week does not set the course for the rest of the year! My New Year's resolution is to get Book Beginnings up and running by Thursday at 5:00 pm Pacific Time. Let's see if I can keep it.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

All day the heat had been barely supportable but at evening a breeze arose in the west, blowing from the heart of the setting sun and from the ocean, which lay unseen, unheard behind the scrubby foothills. 

-- from The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh.

Evelyn Waugh went to Hollywood in the 1940s to consult with movie studios about a movie version of his famous novel, Brideshead Revisited. The movie deal fell through, but the trip inspired his novel, The Loved One (1948), a satire about Hollywood and the funeral business in America. 

The Loved One is very funny, in a dark and often harsh way. Waugh is one of my favorite authors because he is so snarky and irreverent. I just finished this book and thought it was hilarious, but it is not for the faint of heart. I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I had not recently read After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939) by Aldous Huxley, which also pillories the funeral industry and is even more outrageous.  

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so we can find each other.

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head if Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Loved One:

A young lady rose from a group of her fellows to welcome him, one of that new race of exquisite, amiable, efficient young ladies whom he had met everywhere in the United States. She wore a white smock and over her sharply supported left breast was embroidered the words, Mortuary Hostess.

Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Welcome to the last Book Beginnings of the year! Please share the first sentence (or so) of the book  you are reading, or just a book that caught your fancy. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Whether or no, she, whom you are to forgive, if you can, did or did not belong to the Upper Ten Thousand of this our English world, I am not prepared to say with any strength of affirmation. By blood she was connected with big people,—distantly connected with some very big people indeed, people who belonged to the Upper Ten Hundred if there be any such division; but of these very big relations she had known and seen little, and they had cared as little for her.

-- from Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope. 

Can You Forgive Her? is the first book in Anthony Trollope's Palliser Series of six novels, also known as the Parliamentary Novels. It was first published in serial form in 1864 - 1865. The book follows three women through courtship and marriage: Alice Vavasor, her cousin Glencora Palliser, and her aunt Arabella Greenow. Early on, Alice asks, "What should a woman do with her life?" This theme repeats itself in the dilemmas faced by the other women in the novel.

This series has some character crossover with Trollope's Barchester Chronicles series, which I read a few years back. This series has been on my mind since I found a boxed set of paperbacks at a library friends store last spring. There is a year-long group read on Instagram that is just the inspiration I needed to dive in. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so we can find each other. 

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
If this widget does not appear, click here to display it.

THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head if Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Can You Forgive Her?:

They were sitting at Basle one evening in the balcony of the big hotel which overlooks the Rhine. The balcony runs the length of the house, and is open to all the company; but it is spacious, and little parties can be formed there with perfect privacy.