I Meant to Tell You and The Reservoir -- MAILBOX MONDAY

MAILBOX MONDAY

What books came into your house last week? 

Two new books came my way. Both look like fun!

I Meant to Tell You by Fran Hawthorne

Fran Hawthorne's new novel, I Meant to Tell You, starts with the disclosure of a little secret and follows the ripple effects of that disclosure. 

Miranda and Russ are engaged to be married and Russ is ready to start a new job in the U.S. Attorney's office. As part of a routine FBI background check, both must disclose any criminal history. Miranda had never told Russ that years earlier, she had tried to help a friend and her child leave the US for Israel during her friend's nasty divorce. Although Miranda did not know this trip was illegal, is was, and she and her friend were arrested at the airport. Miranda was sentenced for a misdemeanor, which was later expunged. Because the conviction was not on her record, she didn't mention it to Russ or the FBI. Big mistake. 

The story unspools from there. Hawthorne narrates the book through the multiple voices of those affected.

I Meant to Tell You doesn't launch until November, but is available for pre-order. I am excited to get my hands on an early review copy. This is Fran Hawthorne's second novel after her 2018 debut, The Heirs. 

The Reservoir by David Duchovny

Yes, David Duchovny from The X-Files writes books. He's also a singer/songwriter. Maybe everyone knew this already, but it was news to me when I watched The Chair with Sandra Oh. Duchovny steals the show with this scene (the clip has a 10 second trailer at the beginning before it starts for real with her knocking on the door -- stick with it). 

The Reservoir is Duchovney's new novella, which he wrote during the pandemic, about a man stuck in his New York apartment during the pandemic. The man becomes convinced a woman across Central Park is signaling to him in Morse code and that the key to the mystery lies at the bottom of the reservoir in the park. It's part dark rom-com, part mystery, part psychological delusion.

The Reservoir is out now. I scored a review copy from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. It looks like a perfect summer read so I plan to read it this month.

YOUR MAILBOX MONDAY BOOKS

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house last week. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf, and Velvet of vvb32reads graciously host Mailbox Monday.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towels -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

It's hot this week here in Oregon. Like most Oregonians, I complain when it rains all spring and then I complain that it is too hot. It's a summer ritual! But I live in a 110 year old house with no air conditioning, so hot gets hot. My cats sure love it. 

Book Beginnings will take my mind off melting. Please share the opening sentence (or so) from the book you are reading this week, or just a book you feel like sharing. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

June 12, 1954 – The drive from Salina to Morgan was three hours, and for much of it, Emmett hadn’t said a word.

-- The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towels. This is one of the books my Book Club picked for later this fall and I'm getting a jump on it because my library hold came up. 

Have you read it?

I loved A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility. I've heard this one drags in comparison, but I'm willing to read it through. A long slow book doesn't sound too bad for this long slow summer week. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Lincoln Highway:

I love it when life pulls a rabbit out of a hat. Like when the blue-plate special is turkey and stuffing in the middle of May.

That is an image that stuck with me when I read it. Although the idea of a Thanksgiving-style turkey dinner on this sweltering summer day sounds horrible! 

Erica Jong's Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women -- LIST

Erica Jong's Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women

At the turn of the Millennium, there was a flurry of "Top 100" book lists. The Modern Library’s list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century, started the craze (and led to this blog). Erica Jong wrote an article for The Nation criticizing the Modern Library’s list for including relatively few books by women.

She titled her article "I've Got a Little List" and included her own list of the Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women. Jong explained that she had compiled the list from votes cast by those “250 or so distinguished women writers and critics” and “about thirty male novelists, critics and poets” whom she solicited directly, as well as participants in “the rather lively writers’ forum” on Jong’s website. The list is in order of the number of votes received. 

Jong's method for creating the list was not scientific. But the results provide excellent reading. 

Here is Jong's list. I've noted if I've read a book, if it's on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library. 

See any favorites?

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell FINISHED

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice ON OVERDRIVE

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

The Waves by Virginia Woolf TBR SHELF

Orlando by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes TBR SHELF

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton FINISHED

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton FINISHED

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton FINISHED

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall ON OVERDRIVE

Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer TBR SHELF

The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood FINISHED

My Ántonia by Willa Cather FINISHED

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (reviewed here) FINISHED

Fanny by Erica Jong 

Obasan by Joy Kogawa FINISHED

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing FINISHED

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing TBR SHELF

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee FINISHED

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy ON OVERDRIVE

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley FINISHED

Her First American by Lore Segal FINISHED

The Color Purple by Alice Walker FINISHED

The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley FINISHED

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark FINISHED

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark FINISHED

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison FINISHED

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here) FINISHED

Anya by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer TBR SHELF

Trust by Cynthia Ozick TBR SHELF

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan FINISHED

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan FINISHED

Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie TBR SHELF

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston FINISHED

A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion TBR SHELF

Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Group by Mary McCarthy FINISHED

The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy FINISHED

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley TBR SHELF

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath FINISHED

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers FINISHED
 
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen FINISHED

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor FINISHED

Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson TBR SHELF

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison FINISHED

Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (reviewed here) FINISHED

Mr. Fortune's Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner TBR SHELF

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter FINISHED

Progress of Stories by Laura Riding

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Booker winner) FINISHED

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald FINISHED

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende FINISHED

Possession by A.S. Byatt FINISHED

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker TBR SHELF

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown ON OVERDRIVE

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner FINISHED

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter TBR SHELF

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (reviewed here) FINISHED

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn DNF

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (reviewed here) FINISHED

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym FINISHED

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko TBR SHELF
 
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler FINISHED

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler FINISHED

Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard (reviewed here) FINISHED

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson FINISHED

Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz TBR SHELF

Civil Wars by Rosellen Brown TBR SHELF

Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr TBR SHELF

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford TBR SHELF

Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx FINISHED

The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein 

The Children of Men by P.D. James FINISHED

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi FINISHED

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon FINISHED

Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield TBR SHELF

Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis TBR SHELF

The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich TBR SHELF

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin DNF 

The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O'Brien TBR SHELF

Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble TBR SHELF

The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble FINISHED

The Locusts Have No King by Dawn Powell

The Women's Room by Marilyn French

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty FINISHED

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields FINISHED

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid TBR SHELF

Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen TBR SHELF

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein FINISHED

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch FINISHED

Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai TBR SHELF

The Drowning Season by Alice Hoffman FINISHED

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend ON OVERDRIVE

The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer TBR SHELF


NOTE

Updated July 3, 2025.

This is a repost of a list I first posted in 2009. So far, I've read 57 of the 100 and gave up on two others, so I have 41 to go. Of those that I read because they were on this list, my favorites are Play It as It Lays, Things Invisible to See, and The Children of Men. 

The Counterlife by Philip Roth -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

After our cold, rainy spring, summer is finally here in Portland. Of course, by next week, we will all complain it is too hot. That’s a ritual of Oregon life.

But it is beautiful this week. And I am so looking forward to Book Club tonight because it is the perfect evening for dinner outside, drinking pink wine, and chatting about books with my IRL book friends.

Are you in a book club? How do you pick the books you read and how often do you meet? We meet every other month and rotate hosting alphabetically by last name. The hostess picks the book for the next meeting. 

Fortunately, I remembered to post my Book Beginnings on Fridays post before I left for Book Club. Please join me to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week -- of just a book that caught your fancy.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Ever since the family doctor, during a routine checkup, discovered an abnormality on his EKG and he went in overnight for the coronary catheterization that revealed the dimensions of the disease, Henry’s condition had been successfully treated with drugs, enabling him to work and to carry on his life at home exactly as before.

-- The Counterlife by Philip Roth, winner of the 1987 National Book Critics Circle Award.

I'm reading this one now and love it. It's the fifth of nine Nathan Zuckerman books. It starts with the idea is that Zuckerman's younger brother needs heart surgery. Then there are alternate versions of where the story goes from  there -- Henry dies during surgery; he survives but leaves his family and moves to a kibbutz in Israel's West Bank; it's really Nathan who needs the surgery and he dies; Nathan marries a fourth wife and moves to England. There might be another version, but that's as far as I've gotten so far. It's very clever.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Please leave the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. If you share on SM, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Counterlife:

Down in the living room, he worked his way through the clan, accepting their sympathies, listening to their memories, answering questions about where he was living and what he was writing, until he had made his way to Cousin Essie, his favorite relative and once upon a time the family powerhouse. She was sitting in a club chair by the fireplace with a cane across her knees.

The Master and Margarita -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Do you read books in translation?

Every time I read a book in translation I vow to read more. I’m a lunkish monoglot, so do not read in foreign languages. But I appreciate literature of other countries so make an effort to read translated books. I end up reading several for the European Reading Challenge each year. 

In honor of Bastille Day, I have my French teapot out, as you can see in the picture above. But I won’t try any well-wishes in French, which you can understand from this anecdote. My sister has an ear for languages and I’d love to say I shared it, but no. I try to speak the local language when I travel, often with great enthusiasm. You would think I’d give up this habit after a holiday trip to Mexico when I wished many people a Happy Asshole instead of a Happy New Year!

So Happy Bastille Day, however you say it in French!

And now let's share the opening sentences (or so) of the books we are reading this week here on Book Beginnings on Fridays! 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

At the hour of sunset, on a hot spring day, two citizens appeared in the Patriarchs' Ponds Park. 

-- The Master and Margarita by Mikail Bulgakov. That is an underwhelming opening sentence for what is a rollicking satire of Soviet life, featuring Satan and his sidekicks, with lengthy digressions about Pontius Pilot.

I’m racing through this Russian classic. Mirra Ginsburg translated my edition and several other Grove Press editions of Mikhail Bulgakov’s books. It is way funnier than I anticipated, in a crazy slapstick way.

Have you read it? It’s one of the 50 books on my list for The Classics Club.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave a link to your Book Beginnings post and use the hashtag #bookbeginnigns if you post on social media. 

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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 Master and Margarita:

“I wouldn’t like to meet you when you’ve got a revolver,” said Margarita with a coquettish look at Azazello. She had a passion for people who did things well.

What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Food by Paul Kent -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Welcome back to Book Beginnings on Fridays, where participants share the first sentence (or so) of the books we are reading this week. Or you can share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you aren't reading it right this minute. 

How is your week going? I am enjoying my post-covid, post-holiday weekend, back-to-normal week in the office! I was going stir crazy having to quarantine when I didn't feel very sick. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say "When!"

-- a quote from "Jeeves and the Impending Doom" in What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Food by Paul Kent. 

This little book is a bon bon of a companion to Kent's three-volume study of P. G. Wodehouse. Labeled Paper 1 in "A Series of Occasional Papers," it excerpts and describes Wodehouse's writing on food, drink, overindulgence, dieting, vegetarians, food fads, and all things comestible. It is available from Can of Worms Enterprises, as will be the other four in the planned series as they are available.

Paul Kent is a long-serving member of the P. G. Wodehouse Society and lifelong Wodehouse fan. His earlier trilogy is not a Wodehouse biography. It’s the first full-length study of how Wodehouse's writing developed over his long career, and how the ideas in his head made it onto the page. Volume 1 (This is Jolly Old Fame) focuses on the development of Wodehouse’s unique writing style. Volume 2 (Mid-Season Form) explores "Wodehouse World" – the micro-universe he created with his many characters. Volume 3 (The Happiness of the World) examines how his work has survived through time.

Kent's Pelham Grenville Wodehouse trilogy is a must-read for all Wodehouse enthusiasts.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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

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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 What Ho! P. G. Wodehouse on Food:

Food is, quite simply, one of the key ingredients in living the good life. When in "Jeeves and the Old School Chum" Bertie wishes to describe Bingo's great good fortune in every aspect of his earthly existence, the first thing he lists is his friend's talent for dining well.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Happy Independence Day weekend to my Friends in the USA! I hope you have a wonderful 4th of July celebration lined up.

It looks like things are going to be pretty low-key around our place. I went on my first work trip since before the pandemic last weekend and came home with covid. Just like that! I thought I might be one of the few people to escape getting it, but no luck. I've been home from work all week, although more to quarantine myself because my symptoms are mild. Now Hubby has it and he is quite cranky with me!

I hope you take the time from your holiday (or not) weekend to share the first sentence (or so) of the books you are reading with all of us here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy this week even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The twelve men congregated in the smoking room of the Crown Hotel gave the impression of a party accidentally met. 

-- from Part One, "A Sphere within a Sphere," The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.

Catton won the 2013 Booker Prize for this chunkster of a historical novel, set in the 1860s goldrush in New Zealand, packed with opium, fortune tellers, whores, tricksters, and lovers. I just finished it today and really liked it even if I didn't completely love it. The style and tone are pitch perfect and the story is enthralling. But it gets caught in occasional swirling eddies where the story spins around but doesn't move forward. And a lot of very complicated questions get only obliquely answered in the final chapter, and only in the subtitle, which is pretty cheeky.  

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave 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

The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Luminaries:

Thrice already that morning the politician had protested the introduction of a new theme, returning always to his imperious patter about ships. Every time Balfour began to speak of local news, the politician declared himself sick to death of useless brooding about the hermit and the whore — when in fact, Balfour thought with annoyance, they hadn't discussed either event in any real detail, and certainly not from all corners and all sides.

Dorothy L. Sayers' Dante -- MAILBOX MONDAY

MAILBOX MONDAY

Well, isn’t this divine?

Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the Queens of the Golden Age of mysteries, along with Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, and Josephine Tey. Her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and (in some of them) Harriet Vane, is one of my very favorites.

But Sayers was also a classical scholar. In her 50s, she undertook to translate Dante’s Divine Comedy from the 14th Century Italian. She worked on the project until her death in 1957, completing the first and second volumes and most of the third before handing the project to Italian scholar Barbara Reynolds to complete.

Unlike other English translations, including the one I read in college, Sayers maintained the aba bcb cdc rhyming scheme of the original. Not an easy task! But it makes hers a more lively translation. She also included an explanation and notes after each canto. Her essays make the epic poems accessible to ordinary readers.

Sayers’ translation of Hell (Inferno) was published in 1949 as one of the first Penguin Classics. Purgatory (Purgatorio) followed in 1955. Paradise (Paradiso) was published after Reynolds completed it in 1962. Penguin Classics has continued to offer Sayers’ translation of The Divine Comedy ever since.

I was excited to find this set of blue and white Penguin Classic editions of the Sayers’ Dante at the Rose City Book & Paper Fair a couple of weeks back, at the Arches Book House booth. My goal is to do a deep dive and reread them, with all her notes and essays. But we will see when I get around to that. I may “read in” them rather than “read” them.

How about you? Have you read The Divine Comedy or plan to? What translation?

YOUR MAILBOX MONDAY BOOKS

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house last week. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf, and Velvet of vvb32reads graciously host Mailbox Monday.

Notes from the Larder: A Kitchen Diary with Recipes by Nigel Slater -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Man! I have been off my blogging game for a while now! Do you go through blogger slumps? I just realized that my only blog posts for over a month have been Book Beginning posts. I love Book Beginnings! But There's more to Rose City Reader than this one post every week. Or, there should be! 

Oh well. Summer. Work. Life. Things happen. I'll get my blogging mojo back one of these days. What do you do to get back in the blogging groove when you fall out of it?

In the meantime, it is time again for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Let's share the first sentences (or so) of the books we are reading this week. Or just books we feel like highlighting. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The mistletoe — magical, pagan, sacred to Norsemen and the Druids — is still hanging over the low doorway to the kitchen.

-- from the first chapter, January 1, "A humble loaf and a soup of roots," in Notes from the Larder: A Kitchen Diary with Recipes by Nigel Slater. 

I've seen Nigel Slater's name pop up as a favorite food writer on British blogs and Instagram accounts. But I hadn't seen any of his books (other than his memoir Toast) at local shops until last week when I was poking around Vivienne, a darling cookbook store near my office. They had a copy of Notes from the Larder, described as the companion to his three volume Kitchen Diaries series. It's my now-favorite kind of cookbook, a combination of essays or memoir and recipes. It looks absolutely wonderful! I am excited to add it to my cookbook library. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave a link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. Please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings if you share on social media and I will try to find you. Make it easier for me by tagging me on twitter @giliondumas, Instagram @gilioncdumas (new account), or Facebook at Rose City Reader and I can share your posts. 

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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 Notes from the Larder:

I have always loved the color gray. Peaceful, elegant, understated; The color of stone, steel, and soft, nurturing rain.

Muse: Uncovering the Hidden Figures Behind Art History's Masterpieces by Ruth Millington -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

I just got back from a trip to see all five grandkids and found a copy of this Muse book waiting for me. How exciting! I need a little quiet time with a book after the rug rats, adorable as they may be. 

I won this copy of Muse in a giveaway from Pegasus Books -- the first book giveaway I've ever won. Have you ever won a book giveaway? Do you enter them? I enter anytime I see a book I like, like this one. But my lucky number has never come up before. 

So I am excited to share it right away on Book Beginnings. Please share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are excited about this week. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) is one of the most famous paintings in the world, and also one of the most mysterious. 

-- from the Introduction to Muse: Uncovering the Hidden Figures Behind Art History's Masterpieces by Ruth Millington (2022 Pegasus Books). 

Ruth Millington is an art historian and author. In Muse, she explores the stories of the people depicted in 30 famous portraits and the relationships they had with the artists who painted them.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add a link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky 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 Muse:

In seventeenth-century Europe, female artists were deprived of formal education, denied access to art academies and even their movement was restricted. Gentileschi fought against such adversity, learning to read and write in her twenties, before becoming the first woman to be granted membership of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence in 1616.

Millington challenges the idea that muses are young women depicted in paintings by old male artists. The muses in her book are women and men, young and old, and all play a more active role in inspiring and influencing the art they are a part of.

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

What are your book plans for this weekend? My weekend is filled with grandkids, so I don't think I'll get much reading in. But I hope to snatch a few pages here and there. 

Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading -- or just a book that caught your fancy -- here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Gerald Middleton was a man of mildly but persistently depressive temperament. Such men are not at their best at breakfast, nor is the week before Christmas their happiest time.

-- Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson, a darkly comic satire of academia and society.  

This mid-century British novel has been on my TBR shelf for a long time. It is one of the books I picked for my TBR 22 in '22 Challenge list. Maybe I should save it for December, but I grabbed it and am going to read it now, in the middle of summer. Since Angus Wilson was one of England's first openly gay novelists, this can count as my book for Pride Month.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please link to your Book Beginnings post in the Linky box below and use the hashtag #bookbeginnings if you share on social media. Have fun!

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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 Anglo-Saxon Attitudes:

There was no want of artificial flowers in the Corner House entrance hall. An enormous cardboard turkey and an enormous cardboard goose, owing their inspiration to somewhat vulgarized memories of Walt Disney, held between them the message MERRY XMAS made entirely of white and pink satin roses.

Love is Blind by William Boyd -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

I really am here on Friday with Book Beginnings. Sorry I didn't get the post up early! I was out of the office most of the day yesterday and forgot to post before I left!

What are you reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) with us here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Brodie Moncur stood in the main window of Channon & Co. and looked out at the hurrying pedestrians, the cabs, carriages and laboring drays of George Street.

-- from Part I, Edinburgh 1894, Chapter 1, in Love is Blind by William Boyd. This is historical fiction set at the turn of the 20th Century. It is a plot-driven novel about a Scottish piano tuner sent to manage the Paris branch of a piano company. He becomes professionally involved with an Irish concert pianist and romantically involved with that man’s Russian girlfriend. Things get even more complicated when their entire retinue relocates to St. Petersburg.

This is one of my book club's picks for this summer and I love it. I am just about finished with it and have enjoyed every page. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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

Speaking of social media, if you are on Instagram, you can find me at my new account, gilioncdumas. My old account got hacked and my many attempts to retrieve it were unsuccessful, so I started over. Find me at my new account! The new account is my name with my middle initial C. You should probably unfollow my old "giliondumas" account (no middle initial). The nasty hackers are quiet now but you never know when they might try to spam you or sell you cryptocurrency!

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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 Love is Blind:

“Paris, Brodie, Paris! The city of light. La ville lumineuse. How I envy you!”

Enjoy your weekend!

To Live and Die in the Floating World by Stephen Holgate -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Oh, I am looking forward to this long holiday weekend! How about you? What do you plan to read?

I'm in one of those weird situations where I've started several books at the same time for different reasons. I always have a book by my bedside and an audiobook on my phone. Then I have auxiliaries: like a coffee table book in the living room for in the evenings, an eBook on my Kindle app for emergencies, a poetry book by my bed to read one poem every morning, and a collection of WB Yeats poems at my office I've been struggling through for years. 

But right now I have extras on top of my usuals. I started an airplane paperback and I signed up for a Wind in the Willows read along on Instagram before my Instagram account got hacked (I'm still working on getting it back). It's those two extras that are discombobulating me. My bookish balance is off. I need to do some serious reading this weekend to pare my stack back to its normal size. 

How many books do you read at one time? Does the number remain consistent?

Please share the opening sentence (or so) of one of your books here on Book Beginnings on Fridays! Or you can share a book you feel like highlighting, even if you aren't reading it at the moment. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

It was nearly midnight, and I was drunk and thinking of heading back to my dump at the Ecu d'Or when the Irishman Rory Gallagher came through the door of the smoky, flyblown bar on the pimply backside of Montmartre.

-- To Live and Die in the Floating World by Stephen Holgate. That opening sentence certainly paints a scene!

This adventure story finds an American ex pat working on a canal boat in Burgundy, France. When he risks a romance with a mobster's girlfriend, he puts both their lives in jeopardy. The question is, which will catch him first, the gangsters or his own past?

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please link to your Book Beginnings post and use the hashtag #bookbeginnings if you post on social media.

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

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 To Life and Die in the Floating World:

Before he got her out the door she stopped, looked over her shoulder at me and called out in English, “Stout fellow!”

She said it in the way you might say “good boy” to a dog, but I felt as pleased as if she had pinned a medal to me.

 Have a good Memorial Day weekend!

A Roundup of Reviews -- Six Book Reviews to Spring Clean My Blog

A ROUNDUP OF REVIEWS

I’ve gotten behind on my book reviews here on Rose City Reader. So in a bout of spring cleaning, here is a roundup of a half a dozen reviews to make a dent my backlog and my To Do list:



📘Coco at the Ritz: A Novel by Gioia Diliberto (2021, Pegasus Books)

Coco Chanel is remembered today as a fashion icon and strong businesswoman, who redefined feminine chic and built a world-famous design brand. But Chanel was a complex character with a darker side.

Gioia Diliberto’s new novel is based on the true story of Chanel's war-time romance with a German spy and how that affair led to her arrest for treason following the Liberation of Paris. The story is fascinating in how it neither glorifies nor demonizes Chanel, but portrays her honestly, as a 60-year-old woman desperate to preserve a semblance of her pre-war life even if it meant deceiving herself and lying to her friends – and her interrogators.

Coco at the Ritz is historical fiction at its page-turning best. It went straight onto my list of French Connections books.



📘Under The Orange Blossoms: An Inspirational Story of Bravery and Strength by Cindy Benezra (2021, Cindytalks)

Cindy Benezra was abused as a child by her father. She struggled with the ongoing trauma of her abuse, especially the shame and self-blame she carried with her. After much work brought her own healing and peace, Benezra wanted to write her memoir to share her story. In her book, she also grapples with her mother’s death, her own divorce, and her son’s ongoing health problems.

Benezra’s strength and bravery are an inspiration particularly for abuse survivors. But the story she tells in Under the Orange Blossoms can be a comfort to anyone who has faced trauma and helpful for anyone supporting trauma survivors.



📘One Night, New York by Lara Thompson (2021, Pegasus Books)

One Night, New York is Lara Thompson’s terrific debut novel. The story takes place on one December night in 1932, when two young women plot to get revenge on a man who has wronged them by pushing him off the top of the Empire State Building.

Frances ran away from her life in Depression-wracked Kansas for the fast life of the big city. There, she fell in love with Agnes, a photographer’s apprentice, and they both fell in with a bad crowd. It is a story of romance, corruption, art, Greenwich Village bohemians, nightclubs, and skyscrapers. This fast-paced historical fiction glimmers with the edgy glamor of old New York, right up to the nail-biting culmination.



📘The Florentines: From Dante to Galileo: The Transformation of Western Civilization by Paul Strathern (2021, Pegasus Books)

Paul Strathern offers a masterful history of 400 years of Florentine culture. He argues that the ideas that flourished between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642 -- ideas expressed in the art and architecture of Florence -- led to the emergence of humanism as the driving philosophy of the Western world.

By providing a cross-section of Renaissance society, Strathern shows how science, art, architecture, literature, finance, business, and economics all connected in Florence. Readers see how the Florentine leaders’ interactions – public and private – fomented the ideas that lead Florence, and eventually Europe, out of the Dark Ages and into the modern Renaissance.



📘Princes of the Renaissance: The Hidden Power Behind an Artistic Revolution by Mary Hollingsworth (2021, Pegasus Books)

Mary Hollingsworth's latest book tells the history of the patrons of the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance, during the tumultuous period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is an excellent introduction for readers looking to learn about the famous Renaissance families of Italy whose names ring bells but details are sketchy, like Medici, Borgia, d’Este, Farnese, Visconti, Sforza, and Gritti.

Princes of the Renaissance is the kind of well-written “popular” history backed by substantive research that is a delight to read. It is also a beautiful book, filled with photographs and color prints of the of the places and art described. 

(Princes of the Renaissance and The Florentines make a perfect companion set. Good idea for Father's Day if your dad is a history buff!)



📘A Few Words about Words: A Common-Sense Look at Writing and Grammar by Joseph J. Diorio (2021, Beaufort Books)

I love any and all grammar books and A Few Words About Words is a first-rate addition to my collection. Joe Diorio is the author of a popular newsletter of the same name that has been around for 30 years. He built this book around those columns, organized by subject and theme, trimmed or expanded as needed, and connected by personal anecdotes for continuity. The end result is a lighthearted and engaging guide to English grammar and a wholehearted apologia for using it correctly.

NOTES

Have you read any of these? What do you think? Do any of them look good to you?

My thanks to the publishers, authors, and publicists who gave me review copies! With apologies for my tardy reviews.