Opening Sentence of the Day: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

"It happened every year, was almost a ritual."

-- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

I would have gone with a semicolon myself, but who am I to flyspeck a mega-bestseller?

My book club is reading this and I am torn about what I think of it. It is not as graphic as I had feared, but still, my book club doesn't usually sit around discussing sadistic serial killers.


Book Beginnings on Friday is a weekly Opening Sentence event now hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages. 

Review of the Day: Olive Kitteridge

Olive Kitteridge is Elizabeth Strout’s collection of short-stories-as-novel that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The stories are set in the small town of Crosby, Maine, and crabby Olive Kitteridge makes an appearance – even if brief – in each of them.

The stories are well executed, creative, and peopled with varied but realistic characters. Individually, many of them are emotionally striking. Strout can really get to the nub of a story.

The problem is that as a collection, the stories are exhausting. Crosby may not be the bloodbath that Cabot Cove is, but there are plenty of suicides, grisly murders, violent and petty crimes, adultery, abuse, sickness, brutal deaths, and dysfunction to dampen any reader’s spirits. None of the characters are happy and there is precious little humor to leaven the depressing tales.

OTHER REVIEWS

Caroline Bookbinder (Carin liked it much more than I did and named it her 2009 Book of the Year)

(If you would like your review listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.)

NOTES

This was my Pulitzer pick for the Battle of the Prizes, American Version challenge.  I read Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann -- another collection of short-stories-as-novel -- for my National Award pick. The challenge runs through the end of January 2011, so there is still time to sign up.

I am working my way through all the Pulitzer winners.  For others doing the same, please visit my main Pulitzer Prize post and leave a comment with a link to your related posts.

Opening Sentence of the Day: One Good Turn

"He was lost."

-- One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson.

Not a riveting opening sentence. But within a few paragraphs, we are right in the thick of things, with a random act of road rage that sets off the second Jackson Brodie mystery.

Kate Atkinson is brilliant.  All the cliches apply to her -- a gimlet eye, tart observations, keen wit, etc., etc.  She could write about a trip to the hardware store and it would be an exemplar of subtle, spot-on observations about human nature, contemporary culture, and family relationships.

My problem with Atkinson is that I don't want to "use up" her books, so I put off reading them. I have to remind myself that they aren't going anywhere. I can always read them again.

Teaser Tuesday: The Sea, the Sea

"The theatre is an attack on mankind carried on by magic: to victimize an audience every night, to make them laugh and cry and suffer and miss their trains.  Of course actors regard audiences as enemies, to be deceived, drugged, incarcerated, stupefied."

-- The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch, a novel about an aging playwright/director/actor who retires to the North Sea coast of England.

This book has swept me away. It is long (502 pages in my edition) and dense, but I am content to flow along with the story.

This won the Booker prize in 1978. I am reading it for my  Battle of the Prizes, British Version challenge. It will also count as one of my Chunkster Challenge reads.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

 

Knitting and Sundries is hosting Mailbox Monday in November. Thanks Julie!

Only one book came into my house last week, but it looks great. I have been in a mystery mood lately, maybe because of Halloween. I got this when I was running made up errands last weekend -- I needed to pick up a gravy strainer at Kitchen Kaboodle and dropped in at Broadway Books on my way.

The Circle by Peter Lovesey.