Opening Sentence of the Day: Started Early, Took My Dog

"Leeds: 'Motorway City of the Seventies.'"

-- Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. The first chapter is a flashback to 1975.

This is the fourth and latest in Atkinson's Jackson Brodie mystery series.  These are amazing books.  They are literary novels with a mystery woven in -- not the other way around. 

I can't wait to spend this rainy weekend with this book.

Here is a list of all of Kate Atkinson's books. The last four on the list are the Jackson Brodie series. 

Teaser Tuesday

Mid-March, the swales and foothills

neither brown nor green, is time

to walk an abandoned railroad bed

above the Klickitat.

Spring comes up early here, yellow bells,

desert parsley, grass widow, saxifrage.

-- from "Above the Klickitat," in Because You Might Not Remember by Don Colburn.
 

I have really been enjoying this little "chapbook" of poems by Don Colburn. This one caught my fancy today because it is mid-March and I am planning a daytrip to Lyle, Washington wineries this weekend.  The Klickitat River joins the Columbia at Lyle.  You can even see on the winery map the railroad bed mentioned in the poem.

Don Colburn and another Portland poet, Oz Hopkins Koglin, will be reading this evening (7:00 p.m.) at Broadway Books (1714 N.E. Broadway).  What a treat!

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

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at The Printed Page, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

I'm Booking It is hosting in March.

The one book I got last week was one I really wanted, so I am quite excited. It is from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. I must be making some progress on that list.



One Was a Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming.  This is the latest in her series featuring Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyn. It is one of my very favorite mystery series and I have read all the others, so I am looking forward to this one right away. 

Also last week I got -- but not for myself -- a Kindle.  It is for my stepdaughter's birthday present.  She's in veterinary school and will be spending the summer in Africa, teaching chicken farming or goat husbandry or something along those lines. She asked for the Kindle because she won't be able to haul enough book books there with her.



Any thoughts on this new 3G Kindle compared to the old one?Does she need to get a case for it, like with an iPod?

And any suggestions for the best free eBooks? I'd like to put a couple of books on there for her, but I blew the birthday budget with the gadget itself.

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest

"An estimated 600 women served during the American Civil War."

-- The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson.

This is the third volume of Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy," after the blockbuster Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (reviewed here) and the better Girl Who Played With Fire.

This one is entertaining enough, but has more filler than the first two.  There is a lot of pedantic explaining of Swedish bureaucracy and, in one passage that verged on parody, the paperwork involved in installing a home security alarm.  I'm 70% of the way through it and it hasn't yet gripped me like the first two.

I am late to post an opening sentence, because I just now switched from the audiobook to the book book when I found that I had messed up loading one of the cds from the library to my iPod. I don't usually post an opening sentence for audiobooks, but now that I have the book in my hands, I can copy the words.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Wise Blood

"Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car."

-- Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor.

I swung by the library the other day and found several new audiobooks, including this classic that I have never read. It shows up on several of my lists: Anthony Burgess's Best 99 Novels, Erica Jong's Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women, and The Observer's 100 Greatest Novels of All Times.