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Book Beginnings

Posted in Books, tagged , , , on January 13, 2012|

Welcome to another edition of Book Beginnings which is hosted over at A Few More Pages.  Today, I am going to give you the first couple of lines from the latest John Grisham book, “The Litigators”:

 

“The law firm of Finley & Figg referred to itself as a "boutique firm."  This misnomer was inserted as often as possible into routine conversations, and it even appeared in print in some of the various schemes hatched by the partners to solicit business.”

When I read these first two sentences, the thought popped in my mind that these attorneys were small time trying to make themselves appear upscale, and I was right.  I have read most of Mr. Grisham’s books and, while they probably not considered classic literature,  I enjoy them and they are always a fun read.

This one was a little different in that there really wasn’t a “bad guy” attorney like there usually is.  Just some small time lawyers trying to make a buck and the big wigs trying to defend a corporate client.  Pretty much normal fare for the legal world.

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Book Beginnings

Posted in Books, tagged , , , on December 30, 2011| 4 Comments »

Join me and other book-obsessed bloggers today at Book Beginnings hosted by A Few More Pages.  Here is the premise:  grab the book you are reading (or have read or want to read) and write down the first few lines.  Then describe how those lines make you feel…do you immediately want to read more or do they make you stop and think?

I am in the middle of reading the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling for the first time and even though they are "young adult" fiction, I have really enjoyed them so far.  These lines are from the third book "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban":

"Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways.  For one thing, he hated the summer holidays more than any other time of year.  For another, he really wanted to do his homework but was forced to do it in secret, in the dead of night.  And he also happened to be a wizard."

Ms. Rowling knows how to start a book.  Each one of the three that I have read so far grab the reader from the very beginning and it doesn’t let go until the end.  I think these lines make you wonder what kind of boy doesn’t like summer vacation and actually wants to do homework, certainly not a “normal” boy.

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Book Beginnings

Posted in Books, tagged , on December 16, 2011| 1 Comment »

Welcome to this week’s post about one of my favorite topics…books!  Every other Friday, I link up to the blog A Few More Pages which hosts the link party called Book Beginnings.  There I, and many other blog writers, share the first line of a book we are reading and our thoughts about it.

This week, I am writing about the second Harry Potter book called “Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets”.  Here are the first two sentences:

“Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive.  Mr. Vernon Dursley had been woken in the early hours of the morning by a loud, hooting noise from his nephew Harry’s room.”

Poor Harry!  Forced to stay with his non-magical family members who don’t understand him, he has to defend himself and his owl to them time after time.  Don’t worry though, everything starts to work out for him in just a short time.  I know these books are for kids, but I am enjoying them very much. The writing is crisp and descriptive so the pages just seem to turn themselves.

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Book Beginnings

Posted in Books, tagged , on December 2, 2011| 3 Comments »

Welcome to another edition of Book Beginnings hosted at A Few More Pages.  Join me and other bloggers as we discuss books we have read or are planning to read by listing the first few lines of a book and our impressions of these.

Today I am sharing the first line from Janet Evanovich’s “Smokin’ Seventeen”:

My Grandma Mazur called early this morning.  "I had a dream," Grandma said.  "There was this big horse, and it could fly.  It didn’t have wings.  It just could fly."

This sounds like an odd first line, doesn’t it?  For those of you who have read these books, you will know that Grandma Mazur is always coming off with something off the wall.  I have read all of the Stephanie Plum series and they are always entertaining.  This is not upscale literature, mind you, but it is wild and crazy fun!

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Book Beginnings

Posted in Books, tagged , on November 18, 2011| 5 Comments »

Every Friday over at A Few More Pages, several blog writers link up to their post about a book they are reading now or have read before.  The writers submit the first few lines of the book and then give their impression of them and the rest of the book if they are finished reading it.  Reading these posts will give you an unique point of view and also shed a little light on books you might not have heard of before.

My post today is about “Child Of The Mountain” by Marjorie E. Default.  I found this book while browsing my local library and was first intrigued by the title itself.  The author was new to me, but I am glad that I gave it a chance.  It lists as a mystery, and it is, but it also has also a little romance and small town life mixed in as well.  “Child Of The Mountain” is an entertaining and fairly quick read.  Here is the first line:

“If it was possible to be a cynic at the age of six, then Carl Bartnik was a six-year-old cynic.”

When I read the description on the book cover and then read the first line, they really didn’t match up at all, but I thought the first line was interesting enough to keep going.  Carl ends up being an important person in the book even though he isn’t a main character at all. 

If you are looking for a new author to read, try Ms. Default’s book.  I hope you enjoy it!

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Book Beginnings

Posted in Books, tagged , on November 4, 2011| 5 Comments »

Join me and other bloggers today at A Few More Pages for the Friday Book Beginnings link party. Here’s the deal…pick up the book you are reading right now and leave the first few lines here, then describe how that makes you feel about the book.  Do the words make you want to jump right in and read it all in one sitting or do they give you pause?   I have really enjoyed doing this and reading the other blogger’s "first lines".  It has opened up some new books and authors to me that I might not have heard of otherwise.

The Harry Potter series, as you all know, is an extremely popular book and movie series for young adults.  I really liked the movies and had wanted to read the books, but had never taken the time to start them.  Now I have, and I have been pleasantly surprised.  Most Young Adult fiction, in my opinion, is truly written for teens and tweens so it usually does not appeal to me much.  I tried to read "Twilight" and was bored stiff by it.  The writing just seemed simple and flat to me, but that is just my humble opinion.  I don’t want to put down anyone who liked it; it just wasn’t for me.

Here is the first line in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone":

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.  They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense."

This first line says to me that the Durnsley are very proud of their "normalcy", but it probably is not going to last much longer. I am about halfway through this book and it is enjoyable.  Hopefully, the rest of the series is just as good.

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Book Beginnings

Posted in Books, tagged , on October 21, 2011| 3 Comments »

The other day, I went to my local library to check out the first Harry Potter book.  I must be one of the few readers on the planet that hasn’t read these books, so I decided to give them a try.  The movies were good, so hopefully the books would be even better.  Before I got the book, I was browsing the shelves when a lady I know suggested another series of books.  Before I knew it, I was leaving the library with all five books of this other series.  I like to read, but I can’t read that many before my check-out time runs out.  I didn’t want to hurt the lady’s feelings, so I just decided to go with it and take the books back later to get the Harry Potter book that I really wanted.

I am reading the first book in the series though and it is pretty good.  The author lives in my home state of Kentucky and I will probably read the others, just not immediately.  This book is simply called “Folly” and it is set in Folly Beach, South Carolina.  The author is Bill Noel who is a college administrator and professional photograph.  Here is the first paragraph:

“I met Jim Lionetti on a chilly, early April morning and learned to hate him.  It wasn’t his fault-he was dead.  I was standing on a desolate, rough stretch of sand on the east end of Folly Beach, South Carolina, looking down at him.”

As you can tell, this is a light-hearted murder mystery, if that’s possible.  I am about 59 pages in and the book is pretty good.  There are plenty of interesting characters to give you the local flavor of Folly Beach and the descriptions of the locales are detailed as well.  I am hooked enough to finish to find out what really happened to Mr. Lionetti, so that says a lot in of itself.

This post will be linked to the blog A Few More Pages and her link party Book Beginnings.

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Book Beginnings

Posted in Books, tagged , on October 7, 2011| 7 Comments »

This is my second time participating in the Books Beginnings link party over at A Few More Pages.  I hope to be able to do this every couple of weeks, but I guess it will depend on how much time I have to read and how big a book I am reading at the time.  Reading time can be scarce with a full-time job, a full-time house, and a full-time husband.  Ha ha!!

A few days ago I started a book called “Girl With A Pearl Earring” by Tracy Chevalier and I think I am really going to like it. I first heard about this book when the movie came out a couple of years ago, but I haven’t seen it yet.  The book is almost always better any way.   Here is the first paragraph:

“My mother did not tell me they were coming.  Afterwards she said she did not want me to appear nervous.  I was surprised, for I thought she knew me well.  Strangers would think I was calm.  I did not cry as a baby.  Only my mother would note the tightness along my jaw, the widening of my already wide eyes.”

I have only read a few pages so far and so far, so good.  The story is set in 1660s Holland and is told through the eyes of 16 year old Griest.  I am excited to delve deeper into the story just from the first paragraph.  Who is coming and why does her mother think Griest will be nervous?  Are they good people or bad?  I guess I will just have to wait and see.

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Book Beginnings

Posted in Books, tagged , , , on September 23, 2011| 8 Comments »

I recently started reading a blog about books.  Shocker, I know.  There was a link to another blog called A Few More Pages and this lady hosts a different kind of link party on Fridays. 

As you can see, I participate in several cooking link parties throughout the week, but this was the first bookish party I had seen.  (There are probably lots and lots…this is just the first one that I found to participate in.)  Here is the premise: 

Just share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and also include the name of the book and the author.  Then, give the blog readers your first impression of the book based on that line.  Easy, peasy!!

Right now, I am reading “The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson and here is the first paragraph:

“An estimated 600 women served during the American Civil War.  They had signed up disguised as men.  Hollywood has missed a significant chapter of cultural history here-or is this history ideologically too difficult to deal with?  Historians have often struggled to deal with women who do not respect gender distinctions, and nowhere is that distinction more sharply drawn than in the question of armed combat.  (Even today, it can cause controversy having a woman on a typical Swedish moose hunt.)”

Interesting, huh?  It is especially interesting because this book has nothing to do with war, but with “combat” to protect oneself.  Even the “combat” is not just physical combat, but fighting with the tools and talents you have.  This is the 3rd book of a trilogy so I knew the characters and the general story line in the beginning, but it is an awesome book full of twists and turns.  I have about a hundred pages to go and I can’t wait to see how it ends!

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Thoughtful Thursday-Bookworm Edition

Posted in Books, My Thoughts, tagged , , on September 15, 2011|

Did you all, my readers, think I have stopped reading since I haven’t had a bookworm post in so, so long?  Never fear, I have had a book in my hand all spring and summer long and have read some really good books and some not so good ones, too.  Let’s take a look, shall we??

I guess I had better say something first…I read for pure pleasure.  Unless it is the Bible (the perfect instruction manual for life) or a cookbook/gardening/how-to book, I read to get lost in another world or another life.  Books are an escape for me and I love them!  Sometimes I think I should have been a librarian in some big old library full of rare and precious books, but maybe that is because of the book I am reading right now.

I am in the middle of “The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova, and it is so good.  If you recall, I wrote a short post about another book by the same author called “The Swan Thieves”, and I think I like “The Historian” better than that one. 

I have also read the first two books by Stieg Larrson: “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played With Fire”.  My co-worker, K, has the third book, “The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest”, and I can’t wait to get a hold of that one, too.  I highly recommend these, but with one caveat.  The first book starts out a little slow, but don’t give up on it.  If you can make it through the first 50 pages or so of story background information, you will be rewarded.  The plot takes off from there and doesn’t stop until the very end.  The second book, not weighed down by history, takes off at a run and keeps going.  It is great!  These will be the only three books by the author because he passed away shortly after the third books was completed.  So sad!

Two other books that I have read this summer and enjoyed were food-related.  Yay!  One of my favorite topics!  The first was “The Hundred Foot Journey” by Richard Morais and “A Year in Provence” by Peter Mayle.  My local library was having a summer reading program for adults and these two books were on the reading list.  I didn’t get signed up in time to complete enough books before the deadline, but it was fun to read some different authors that I have never heard of before.

My favorite of the two was “A Year in Provence”.  I think I finished it in three days and wished it was much, much longer.  It is about the author and his wife’s first year of living in the Provence region of France, and it is a true story, which makes it even more entertaining.  “The Hundred Food Journey” is fiction, but good as well.  An Indian family decide to move from India to England and then France after the death of a special family member.  The interactions between the Indian family and the locals of France is especially entertaining.

I also read “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert since I had heard a lot about it, but had not yet seen the movie.  I don’t think I will bother with the movie.  I finished the book, but it was a struggle.  This is also a true store of one woman’s journey to put her life back together after a difficult marriage and divorce.  She travels to Italy (to eat), India (to pray), and Indonesia (she finds love) to recover from her sadness.  I guess the best way to say it is that I was very uncomfortable with her religious decisions.  It seemed like she wanted to take the “best” parts of every religion and put them together to make some sort of hybrid.  That just doesn’t fly in my book.  If you want the easy, happy, and loving parts of God, you must also take his rules along with them. 

I hope you enjoyed my little book review list.  I hope to start on the Harry Potter series soon.  I like the movies and want to try the books, too.  Happy reading!!

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