Painting Through the Dark by Gemma Whelan -- MAILBOX MONDAY

 

MAILBOX MONDAY

I actually got this copy of Painting Through the Dark a few weeks ago. But I also got a new hip a few weeks ago! I am finally feeling a little normal and walking around again, so am back to my computer and a To Do list a mile long. That list includes sharing this new book I am excited about. 

Painting Through the Dark is a new novel by Irish-born author Gemma Whelan. It is the story of a young woman, Ashling O'Leary, determined to leave Ireland and her demons behind and make a life for herself as an artist in San Francisco.  

The book is a page-turner, filled with vividly visual scenes and dialog that make the story speed along. I look forward to reading it right through to find out what happens to Ashling!

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Fleeing from the emotional shackles of her family in Ireland and the convent where she was training to be a nun, the feisty 21-year-old Ashling O'Leary arrives in San Francisco in 1982 with a backpack, a judo outfit, her artist's portfolio, a three-month visa, and a determination to find a way to speak up about the abuse of girls and women in Catholic Ireland. As she becomes embroiled in a whirlwind of love, art, and deception, Ashling learns that her success as an artist and a human being depends on dealing with the ghosts of her past and speaking out on behalf of others.

YOUR MAILBOX MONDAY BOOKS

What books came into your house recently?

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house lately. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts. You can also find the hosts' favorites at posts titled Books that Caught Our Eye.

Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf, and Emma of Words and Peace graciously host Mailbox Monday.

Spring Fever by P. G. Wodehouse -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays, where we share the opening sentences (or so) from the books we are reading this week. You can also share from a book you want to highlight, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Spring had come to New York, the eight-fifteen train from Great Neck had come to the Pennsylvania terminus, and G. Ellery Cobbold, that stout economic royalist, had come to his downtown office, all set to prise another wad of currency out of the common people.

-- from Spring Fever by P. G. Wodehouse. 

Spring Fever is a stand alone novel for Wodehouse, so no Bertie Wooster or his butler Jeeves, no Blandings Castle, not even a Psmith. But since I have spring fever right now, it seemed like a good choice for my Book Beginning this week. 

My copy has this cover, with the sort of illustrated covers by "Ionicus" that I love. Joshua Armitage used the pen name Ionicus to illustrate more than 400 book covers, including 58 Penguin editions of Wodehouse books in the 1970s and ‘80s. I've collected about a dozen, nowhere near all 58, but wouldn’t that be cool?

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.

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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 Spring Fever:

What a great day that was when she came back into my life; on the hoof, as it were, and not merely as a golden, insubstantial memory. It happened quite by chance, and at a moment, oddly enough, when I was not thinking of her but of chump chops, Brussels sprouts and French fried potatoes.

A fluffy farce by Wodehouse always puts me in a good mood. 

He Said He Would be Late by Justine Sullivan -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Yikes! I'm still off my game after my hip replacement surgery. This was my first week back in the office after surgery and it threw me off of my schedule with everything else. I didn't even think about it being Friday until just a minute ago, let alone remember to put up my Book Beginnings post early last evening. Sorry. I'll try to get my head back into the game as things get back to normal.

Thank you for joining me for this late 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 you want to highlight, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Our kitchen, like everything else in our house, is white.

-- From He Said He Would be Late by Justine Sullivan. I like that opening sentence because you get a pretty good idea of what their life is like from just those few words. What do you think? 

He Said He Would be Late is Justine Sullivan's debut novel about a young wife and new mother who goes into a tailspin when she sees a suspicious text with a kissy-face emoji on her husband's phone. I just got a copy from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program and it looks like a fun domestic thriller. 

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.

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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 He Said He Would be Late:

I turn off the engine and feed a handful of dusty quarters into the meter, marveling at how old-fashioned so many aspects of greater Boston are: parking, transportation, the public parks. The fact that there are no happy hours.

The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Welcome to Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please join me to 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, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Now it is the autumn again; the people are all coming back. The recess of summer is over, when holidays are taken, newspapers shrink, history itself seems momentarily to falter and stop.

-- From The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury. I love campus novels and Malcolm Bradbury wrote some of the best of them, including his first novel, Eating People is Wrong. 

The History Man was published in 1972 and is a spot-on period piece describing radical campus life in the late '60s and early '70s. The "history man" of the title is Professor Howard Kirk, a sociologist and dynamo of academic vacuity. He waltzes through history, reflecting every cultural, political, and sexual fad. It is dark satire at its best. 

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.

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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 The History Man:

Well, to understand it, as Howard, always a keen explainer, always explains, you need to know a little Marx, a little Freud, and a little social history; admittedly, with Howard, you need to know all this to explain anything. You need to know the time, the place, the milieu, the substructure and the superstructure, the state of and the determinants of consciousness, and the human capacity of consciousness to expand and explode.

It's not a book for the faint hearted, but it is trenchant and very funny.

Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Well, this post is certainly late! I had hip replacement surgery last week and thought I had prescheduled a post for this week, but apparently I forgot. Now I really feel like an old lady! Senility and an arthritic hip! 

Thank you for waiting for me for this week's Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please join me to 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, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Emma awoke to the sound of planes passing overhead, but she was not fully conscious, and the sound merged with her dream.

-- from Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier. I'm reading this as a buddy read on Instagram. A small group of us have been reading one du Maurier book a month since last November and this is our sixth. 

Rule Britannia is du Maurier's last novel, published in 1972. It's a wild romp through alternate history, but with an eerily prescient edge. It's set in the 1970s, shortly after the UK withdrew from Europe, which caused economic difficulties. What is billed as a stronger alliance with the United States is quickly revealed to be a takeover of Britain by its former colony. What a page turner!

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.

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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 Rule Britannia:

But one can't exactly treat it as phony while the marines occupy the stable-block, there are barricades on the main road and the telephone is cut. The thing you can do is to sit glued to the television and hope something will happen in between the succession of old American and British films.

I'm racing through to the end because this is such a ripping yarn, and I do love a good yarn.