Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

September is here! It's a long holiday weekend, back to school vibes are thrumming, hints of fall are sort of in the air (although not in the temperatures). The first week of September always feels like a seasonal pivot, even if it is still summer on the calendar and on the thermometer. 

So, are you reading your last summer book? Will you switch genres or moods as we head into autumn? Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, or just a book that caught your fancy. That's what Book Beginnings on Fridays is all about. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

We were fractious and overpaid.

-- Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. 

What do you think? That's a short opening sentence and give me no idea where the story will go. But I love the word fractious!

According to the cover, Then We Came to the End was a National Bestseller and a National Book Award Finalist when it came out in 2007. I know nothing about it, including how it came to be on my TBR shelf! I mean, I must have known at some time how it got there, but I can no longer remember. I assume I came across it at one of my book haunts, like a Friends of the Library shop or a neighborhood Little Free Library. 

It's a novel about the demise of a Chicago advertising agency. It looks funny and interesting. I just started it today and look forward to reading it over Labor Day weekend. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Leave a link to your Book Beginning post in the box below. If you share on SM, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings.

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another weekly teaser event is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice where you can find details and add a link to your post. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book you are featuring. You can also find a teaser from 56% of the way through your ebook or audiobook.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Then We Came to the End:

His weekends were long dark shadows of mystery. In all likelihood, he spent his days off in the office, cultivating his master plan. 

I'm hooked! I love a funny book, even if it is dark humor, like I suspect this is going to be. 

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

I can't believe that it will be September next week! Kids are going back to school. It is still full-on summer here in Oregon. I haven't had a twinge of autumn yearning yet and it usually hits me by now. Are you still in summer mode or thinking of sweater weather? 

It doesn't matter if you are still reading your beach books or have made a seasonal switch. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. You can also share from a book you feel like spotlighting. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

“To be born again,” sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, “first you have to die.”

-- The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.

This book has been on my TBR shelf forever. I finally decided to read it with my ears and put the audiobook on hold at my library several months ago. But I kept delaying the hold because I didn't have the energy for a 22 hours of magic realism, which is not my favorite genre.  

But after Rushdie was viciously attacked earlier this month, I knew I had to finally read it. My library hold popped up again, so I am listening to the audiobook. Like Midnight's Children, Rushdie's other famous novel, The Satanic Verses is magical, complicated, funny, outrageous, and brilliant. I should have read it earlier. I'm glad I'm reading it now. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the linky box below and use the #bookbeginnigns hashtag if you share on social media. Thanks for playing along!

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Satanic Verses:

Damn you, India, Saladin Chamcha cursed silently, sinking back into his seat. To hell with you, I escaped your clutches long ago, you won’t get your hooks into me again, you cannot drag me back.

Have you read The Satanic Verses? What did you think?

Sleuthing Out Books with My Private Eye -- MAILBOX MONDAY

MAILBOX MONDAY

I was having lunch with my private eye the other day . . .

That really has nothing to do with anything, but saying it always makes me laugh. And I really do have a private eye. She's amazing! She helps me and my law partner with our sex abuse cases because they usually involve child abuse that happened decades ago. Most often, our clients were molested in the 1980s or 1990s, but we have cases involving abuse as far back as the 1960s. Our private eye finds witnesses and documents to help us prove our cases. 

But what does that have to do with this stack of books? That is a mystery! The solution is that we met for lunch in a suburb of Portland that has a Friends of the Library store I had never explored. It was a really good one. I came home with an overflowing tote bag of books.

See anything here you’d like to investigate?

• Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. I read this as an audiobook years ago, loved it, and wanted a book book on my shelves.

• Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather, which I want to read because I love Cather.

• The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro are two plays by Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais, on which the operas by Rossini and Mozart are based. 

• The Spoils of Poynton is a Henry James book I've never heard of.

• The Major Plays of Chekhov is a Signet Classic edition of a book I already have but haven't read. I'm enchanted by Signet Classic covers these days. 

• The Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad is another Signet Classics edition. I got this one because I haven't read The Secret Sharer.

• The Egoist is a tragicomical novel by George Meredith published in 1879. I've never heard of it, but might read it for Victober.

• The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. This is another one I read years ago but wanted to add a Modern Library edition to my collection.

• Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson is a book I know nothing about, But I've never found a Persephone edition at library store so nabbed it. 

• Jane Austen's "juvenilia," because I haven't read any of these and liked the Penguin Classics edition. 

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Again, I read it a long time ago and have a fancy edition. But I wanted a paperback if I want to reread it. 

• The Long Day Waned is Anthony Burgess's "Malayan Trilogy" and all three novels sound really good. 

• Tales of Old Inns by Richard Keverne is a vintage travel guide to England's historic inns and hotels. Pure charm!

• Faith Fox by Jane Gardam I got because I read her Old Filth trilogy last year and now want to read everything she wrote. 

The last books are five Soho Crime books. I realized about a month ago that I had a nice little collection started of Soho Crime mystery books published by Soho Press. Since then, I've looked for more at library stores and found another dozen or so. I like the collection because the color block spines look so cool together. But I like the books because Soho Crime's theme is publishing mystery series set all around the world. For example, Qiu Xiaolong's series is set in China and Eliot Pattison's is set in Tibet.

YOUR MAILBOX MONDAY BOOKS

What books came into your house recently?

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house lately. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf, and Velvet of vvb32reads graciously host Mailbox Monday.

The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

After finally finishing The Mirror and the Light, I'm ready for a fast summer read! The Mirror and the Light was interesting, even engaging, but so long. I felt like I was living through Tudor England in real time. 

What are you reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) with us here on Books Beginnings on Fridays. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now. 

MY BOOK BEGINING

I was standing at the bar in the Green Parrot, waiting for a guy named Carlos from Miami who’d called my cell a few days ago and said he might have a job for me.

-- The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille. 

That's the kind of opening sentence I like because it creates a visual picture and sets up the story for all sorts of interesting possibilities. We know the narrator drinks, hangs out in fun bars (snooty bars are not named the Green Parrot and customers don't stand at the bar), and works some sort of free lance job where he takes work from strangers who call him out of the blue. He could be anything from a caterer to a mercenary. As it turns out, he has his own charter boat.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. Please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag if you share on social media.

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Cuban Affair:

“We’re not smuggling people out of Cuba.”

“Then what are you doing in Cuba while I’m fishing?”

DeMille knows how to keep a story moving fast. This one is no exception. I just started it and it is racing along. 

The Reservoir by David Duchovny -- BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

The Reservoir by David Duchovny (2022, Akashic Books)

David Duchovny's new books, The Reservoir, is a novella about Ridley, a man living through the lockdown phase of the pandemic in an Upper West Side apartment overlooking the Central Park Reservoir in Manhattan. He retired early from a job on Wall Street, so the lockdown leaves him with time on his hands to contemplate art, solitude, New York, his relationship with his daughter, what it means to be a grandfather, and life itself.

Ridley's reverie is disturbed by a light flashing in the window of an apartment across the park. He believes a woman is communicating to him, trying to make a connection. It may be enough to get him outside of his apartment for the first time in months. His adventure starts there.

I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did. What a story! The humor might not appeal to everyone – it reminded me of Philip Roth, masculine, self-deprecating, and subtly sarcastic. But that’s the kind of humor I like. 

The Reservoir is funny, audacious, imaginative, and clever, full of literary allusions and quirky humor. In the end, though, it is a classic tragedy for contemporary times. It’s a story that will stick with me.

NOTES

Yes, we're talking about that David Duchovny, from The X-Files. He writes books. He also has a band. 

Maybe everyone knows these things except me, because I know less than nothing about celebrity news. But I learned about his writing career (and his singing/songwriting) when I watched The Chair, a low-key hilarious tv show in which Sandra Oh plays the chair of the English Department at a Northeast liberal arts college. Duchovny gets foisted on her as the big ticket speaker for the annual literary lecture and she’s peeved. This clip is my favorite scene. Bear with the little ten-second teaser at the beginning. Duchovny plays himself and steals the show. 

When I saw on the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program that he had a new book, I was willing to give it a try. 

Have you read any Duchovny books? Would you read this one?