Book Beginnings: Brother and Sister

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the has tag #BookBeginnings. My Twitter handle is @GilionDumas.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

From where he sat, Steve could see right down the length of the studio.

-- Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope.

This is really a very good beginning because it focuses the attention on Steve, the owner of a design studio. It is only after a while that the story develops and you realize that it is going to center on Steve's wife Nathalie and her brother -- both who were adopted.

Trollope is such a favorite of mine, even though she is a relatively new favorite. I am going to have to make an author page for her so I can keep track of my progress through her bibliography.

Score!

Every once in a while a diligent used book hound can hit it lucky. I did today when I happened to stop by Secondhand Prose, the Friends of the Library store in Oregon City.

I found a stash of Dick Francis books that someone had recently dropped off and they landed on the 25¢ shelf.  I grabbed all 24 of them for the whopping price of $6!

Eleven of them are duplicates for me -- I'll pass them on to my sister -- but thirteen are those I've been looking for, including two of his three Edgar winners, Whip Hand and Forfeit.  The list of those new to me are:

Dead Cert (1962)

Flying Finish (1966)

Forfeit (1968) (Edgar winner)

Slayride (1970)

Rat Race (1970)

Bonecrack (1971)

Risk (1977)

Trial Run (1978)

Whip Hand (1979) (Edgar winner featuring Sid Halley)

Reflex (1980)

Twice Shy (1981)

The Danger (1983)

Straight (1989)

Teaser Tuesday: Winter Journal

The years of phallic obsession began. Like every other male who has wondered this earth, you were in thrall to the miraculous change that had occurred in your body.

-- Winter Journal by Paul Auster. I have had his New York Trilogy on my TBR shelf for several years.

I'm struggling.  For one thing, I had a heck of a time finding a teaser because I kept turning to passages with single sentences running over two pages long, mostly about sex.  

For another, the second-person narration is off putting to me.  So much "you did this" and "you did that" and I have to struggle against my initial reaction, which is always, no, I didn't. I didn't smoke or have a problem with premature ejaculation or live in Paris or hire prostitutes.  Maybe because his life is so very, very different from mind, I have a hard time getting inside his head as I would have to do to get over the second-person narrative. 

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, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

The team at 5 Minutes for Books is hosting in August.  Please stop by this eclectic group blog to find dozens of reviews and several giveaways.

I only got one book last week, but it's a real doozy!


Tough by Nature: Portraits of Cowgirls and Ranch Women of the American West by Lynda Lanker, published by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum and distributed by OSU Press.

Tough by Nature is a gorgeous coffee table book filled with portraits of 49 real women ranchers of the western United States.  Each portrait is accompanied by a  short biography of the woman portrayed. 

The book represents close to 20 years of effort by artist Lynda Lanker.  She worked with oil pastels, pencil and charcoal, egg tempura, plate and stone lithography, engraving, and drypoint to capture the personalities of her subjects -- the matriarchs of the West. 

The book features a foreword by Larry McMurtry, an introduction by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and an afterword by Maya Angelou.

Tough by Nature screams CHRISTMAS GIFT.  Even if I narrowed my list to spirited, independent women friends with a connection to the American West and a penchant for art, I could come up with over a dozen possible recipients. 

Anyone in Eugene, Oregon before September 9, 2012 can see the Tough by Nature exhibit at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum.

Review: The Gate House

The Gate House is the sequel to Nelson DeMille's wildly popular mafia thriller/farce, The Gold Coast, picking up ten years after John Sutter's blue blood wife shot her mafia don lover.  Now John is back in the aristocratic Gold Coast section of Long Island, having spent three years sailing around the world and seven years as a London tax lawyer.  Susan Stanhope Sutter, his ex-wife, is also back from her exile in Hilton Head.  Unfortunately for both of them, the dead don's son has also moved back to the neighborhood, determined to avenge his father's death and take over his empire.

Those many thousands of readers who loved The Gold Coast will either enjoy this revisit to favorite territory or find it a desperate re-tread.  I fall into the first camp.  I was pleased to catch up with John and Susan, and DeMille had me laughing all the way through.  It is an excellent send-up of snooty East Coast high life, with clever dialog and plenty of one-liners.

The book poses a conundrum, however, fr those who didn't read the first one.  For one thing, the first one really is better.  There is no point reading the sequel instead of the inaugural.  But anyone who reads The Gold Coast for the first time can't immediately move on to The Gate House because DeMille exhaustively rehashes the original plot -- it would be torture.  The only way to enjoy the sequel would be to read the first one and then wait a couple of years. 

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book or The Gold Coast listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

This counts as one of my books for the TBR Challenges I am doing, as well as the Chunkster and Tea & Books Challenges.