Book Beginnings: Swan Peak

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

Clete Purcel had heard of people who sleep without dreaming, but either because of the era and neighborhood in which he had grown up, or the later experiences that had come to define his life, he could not think of sleep as anything other than an uncontrolled descent into the basement where the gargoyles turned somersaults like circus midgets.

-- Swan Peak by James Lee Burke.

Oh, my.  That packs quite a bit into an opening sentence.  And by the end of the first page, we've gone through child abuse and Vietnam flashbacks.  JLB is the best there is, but he can lay it on with a trowel sometimes. 

Teaser Tuesday: Brother and Sister

"What are you going to do now?"
"I'm going looking for your mother's birth certificate."

-- Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope.

This is an excellent story about a grown up brother and sister, both adopted, who decide to try to find their birth mothers.  Trollope considers how the search affects everyone in their lives -- the two of them, their spouses, their children, their adopted parents, and their birth mothers.  It is really good.


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.



Public Trust by J. M. Mitchell.  This is mystery with a National Park story-line -- looks fascinating! Thanks go to book publicist Mary Bisbee-Beek for my copy.



On Writing Well by Howard Zinsser.  I just listened to his recent memoir, Writing Places, and it made me want to read his famous book about writing non-fiction, On Writing Well. I got the 30th Anniversary edition from Amazon, but was excited to find a very nice copy of the original edition at Booktique, the Friends of the Library store in Lake Oswego.



Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott. This looks really interesting to me. And maybe very helpful.

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)