Opening Sentence of the Day: The Marmot Drive

"One fog-lidded dawn in summertime a city girl, whose name was Hester, stood near the whipping post on the Tunxis village green with half a hundred strangers waiting to round up woodchucks."

The Marmot Drive by John Hersey

That may be my favorite opening sentence of the year. Woodchucks! You don't get to read a novel about woodchucks just every day.

I am on a mid-Century fiction jag, and this one definitely counts. It was published in 1953 and is about the conflicts that arise in a Connecticut village when the townsfolk gather to drive the "marmots" out of Thighbone Hollow.

I used some of my Reading Local contest money to buy this book from Hawthorne Boulevard Books, a little gem of a used book store in southeast Portland (and not to be confused with Hawthorne Books, our local literary publishing company).Thanks Reading Local!


NOTE
Book Beginnings on Fridays is a Friday "opening sentence" event hosted by Becky at Page Turners.  

Teaser Tuesday: Leaving Brooklyn

"Had these women, hair carved by beauticians, bodies encased in God knows what steely underclothes, ever felt what I felt? . . . If they had, how could they be sitting here calmly playing mah jongg"

Leaving Brooklyn by Lynn Sharon Schwartz (nominated for the PEN/Faulkner; new introduction by Ursula Hegi; super cool Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts edition).

I love that carved hair image!


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

Mailbox Monday

While waiting for a jury last Friday (we are still waiting today), I went for a walk to stave off the jitters and, not surprisingly, ended up doing a little book shopping. I found several for my Mailbox Monday list.

Encore Provence by Peter Mayle (which it turns out I already have and have already read, but this Penguin edition is so pretty that it makes me want to read it again)



A Friend From England by Anita Brookner (because I am in a Brookner mood ever since learning the term "Aga saga" from Frances Mayes's A Year in the World)



The Golden Child by Penelope Fitzgerald



Time's Arrow by Martin Amis



All would count for the Typically British challenge.

Review of the Day: Second Wind

Second Wind starts off like a typical Dick Francis novel: A random assortment of characters shows up at a Stately Home of England for a swanky weekend lunch and a prized racehorse ends up poisoned. But before you can button up your tweeds and pet the corgi, it switches to a meteorological adventure when two BBC weathermen decide to spend their vacation flying through a Caribbean hurricane.

In the course of bringing these two storylines together, Francis drags the reader on a rambunctious trip from Newmarket to Florida mansions to the Grand Caymans to a mysterious island of dubious ownership. It is not as tight a plot as Francis usually provides, and there is a lot of ink spent on weather science, but the loose ends get tied up for a satisfactory ending.

NOTES

This is one of the books I read for the Typically British challenge. Dick Francis certainly qualifies.

OTHER REVIEWS

Review of Even Money on Book Dilettante 

(If you would like your review of this book or any other Dick Francis book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.)

Review of the Day: Ex Libris

Ex Libris is Anne Fadiman’s “Confessions of a Common Reader,” a collection of essays on books, reading, and related foibles. She writes about particular books, but most of the essays are more generally book related, on topics such as marginalia, home libraries, inscriptions, compulsive proofreading, plagiarism, and fountain pens.

Fadiman on books is not laugh out loud funny like Nick Hornby in his book column for the Believer. But she is smart and warm-hearted and many a passage will make bibliophiles smile. For instance, her “Marrying Libraries” essay will touch a cord with anyone who has tried to merge their book collections with a live-in love. And most readers will recognize something in themselves when Fadiman describes her collection of books on Arctic exploration as her “Odd Shelf,” explaining:

It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.

These kinds of observations will keep book lovers flipping the pages and wishing Fadiman had included more essays in this short book.

NOTES

This is one of the books I read for the Bibliophilic Books Challenge.

I was bowled over by Fadiman's first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, an anthropological classic about the clash between an Hmong family whose little girl has epilepsy and the Western doctors who tried to treat her. I never reviewed it because it was so overwhelming to me, but I recommend it highly.

OTHER REVIEWS

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