First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros

Every Tuesday, I'll be posting the opening paragraph (sometimes maybe a few) of a book I decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). Feel free to grab the banner and play along.  This week's selection releases today. It's an author I've so enjoyed in the past: 

 Home; Toni Morrison

" They rose up like men. We saw them. Like men they stood.

We shouldn't have been anywhere near that place.  Like most farmland outside Lotus, Georgia, this here one had plenty of scary warning signs.  The threats hung from wire mesh fences with wooden stakes every fifty or so feet.  But when we saw a crawl space that some animal had dug--a coyote maybe, or a coon dog--we couldn't resist.  Just kids we were.  The grass was shoulder high for her and waist high for me so, looking out for snakes, we crawled through it on our bellies.  The reward was worth the harm grass juice and clouds of gnats did to our eyes, because there right in front of us, about fifty yards off, they stood like men.  Their raised hooves crashing and striking, their manes tossing back from wild white eyes.  They bit each other like dogs but when the stood, reared up on their hind legs, their forelegs around the withers of the other, we held our breath in wonder.  One was rust-colored, the other deep black, both sunny with sweat.  The neighs were not as frightening as the silence following a kick of hind legs into the lifted lips of the opponent.  Nearby, colts and mares, indifferent, nibbled grass or looked away.  Then it stopped.  The rust-colored one dropped his head and pawed the ground while the winner loped off in an arc, nudging the mares before him."

 Would you keep reading?

 

Blue Monday; Nicci French

Title: Blue Monday

Author:  Nicci French

Publication Year: 2012

Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books

Edition: eGalley

Source: NetGalley
Setting:  Florida....

Date Completed: 5/1/2012

Rating: 3/5

Recommend: no


Blue Monday, by Nicci French is actually the work of husband and wife team of Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. It is the first novel of seven in a new psychological thriller series featuring a 30-something, protagonist, Dr. Frieda Klein. The story takes place in London, England where Dr. Klein is a psychotherapist. She's a private, somewhat aloof person who sleeps too little and sometimes drinks a bit too much, and definitely has her demons. This first book of the new series is about a child abduction case.

The novel begins 22 years earlier with two young sisters walking home from school. The younger one Joanna Vine is taking he sweet old time walking, while older sister, Rosie, is anxious to get to the candy shop. Rosie calls for her sister to hurry up, but then goes inside the shop, and Joanna very shows up. The little girl is never found, and, she is believed to be dead.

Fast forward 22 years and five-year old Matthew Farraday goes missing. When Dr. Klein's takes on a new patient, Alan Dekker, a man who feels like he is going crazy. When he begins to tell his story to Dr. Klein, she is faced with a quite the dilemma. Her patient is troubled by dreams and constant thoughts of a child who looks like the boy who was just abducted. Unsure what to do with the information, Frieda goes to the police where Chief Inspector Malcolm Karlsson has been assigned to the Matthew Farraday abduction case. With very little information other than some rather vague information provided by Dr. Klein, Inspector Karlsson begins his investigation. Although Dekker has a pretty solid alibi for his whereabouts when Matthew went missing, before long it appears as if the Joanna Vine missing child case from 1987 and the Matthew Farraday case might have some similarities.

I loved the way the novel started out with the abduction which took place 22 years earlier. It's a complex mystery with characters that are complex and flawed. However, after that terrific opening, the story moved at a snail's pace. There were lots and lots of details about the streets of London which I grew tired of, however the clues peppered along the way kept me holding on. Once the story began to pick up again, there were lots of twists and turns, and a few nail-biting moments, but I was really looking forward to more from this first of a series. In the end I was a bit disappointed.

Mailbox Monday - May 7th

Mailbox Monday during the month of May is hosted by Martha from reviews from Martha's Bookshelf . It's an opportunity for bloggers to blog about the new books they have received the previous week.

My stack (most unsolicited) is a bit embarrassing.  Here's what  arrived in my mailbox last week.

• The River of Smoke; Amitav Ghosh (paperbackswap member)
• I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag; Jennifer Gilbert (Harper)
• The Unseen; Katharine Webb (William Morrow)
• Faith Bass Darling's Last Garage Sale; Lynda Rutledge (Amy Einhorn Books)
• You Are Not Like Other Mothers; A. Schrobsdorrf  (Europa - from paperbackswap member)
•  In One Person; John Irving (audiobook - Simon and Schuster)
• The Boy Who Stole the Leopards Spots; Tamar Myers (William Morrow)

• A Rural Affair; Catherine Alliot (sent by author)
• Ninepins; Rosy Thornton (sent by author)
• The Emerald Storm; William Dietrich  (Harper)
• Saving Ruth; Zoe Fishman (William Morrow)
• The Other Side of Normal; Jordan Smoller (William Morrow)
• Every Day Every Hour; Natasa Dragnic - (Viking)

Hoping this was a good week for you as well.

Saturday Snapshot - May 5th - Biggest Moon of the Year

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by:

 http://athomewithbooks.blogspot.com/

Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.

DID YOU HEAR that in the U.S. today, May 5th, the moon will reach peak fullness at 11:35 p.m. EST?

Almost simultaneously,  the moon will reach its closest point to Earth in its orbit. Because of the moon's closeness to Earth, Saturday's super-moon will be especially pronounced.

This photo was actually taken by me, last night, on Friday, May 4th at about 8:30 pm.  I'll try to remember to be out there again tonight around 11:30 p.m. to catch the moon at it's biggest and brightest.

Do you plan to check out the moon tonight?

The Lola Quartet; Emily St John Mandel

Title: The Lola Quartet

Author:  Emily St. John Mandel

Publication Year: 2012

Publisher: Unbridled Books

Edition: eGalley

Source: NetGalley
Setting:  Florida....

Date Completed: 5/2/2012

Rating: 4/5

Recommend: yes

In Emily St John' Mandel's latest book: The Lola Quartet,  four former high school friends who were part of a jazz group in high school, (The Lola Quartet), find their lives intersect after many years, having reconnected under unusual circumstances. When the novel's protagonist, Gavin Sasaki, a journalist from NYC, is fired from his job in 2009, he moves to Sebastian, Florida, when his sister, Elio, offers him a job in her real estate business. His job is working with clients whose homes will soon be foreclosed upon.  While in Florida he sees a photo of young girl about 10 years of age who looks exactly like his sister when she was about the same age.  This girl, Chloe Montgomery, bears the same last name as a girl Gavin dated 10 years earlier who mysteriously disappeared almost overnight.  At the time rumor was that Anna Montgomery, had been pregnant.

Gavin becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Anna, and whether this young girl could possibly be his child. In the hopes of learning more about the past, he tracks down former friends from, The Lola Quartet. He is hoping that at least one of the members, Anna's brother will be able to help him find out more about what happened to Anna.

The story is told through a series of flashbacks blending present with the past over a 10-year period.  The author is extremely talented, providing an interesting character study of the former friends. It's a story of dreams not turning out as planned, especially when flawed characters have made bad decisions and choices in life.  I loved the pitch perfect descriptions of the Florida landscape.  The economic situations experienced by many when the housing crisis reached it's peak were dead on accurate.

Although for me, the novel got off to a slow start, the writing and the surprising conclusion are enough reason to recommend this book as one that many readers will enjoy. I definitely plan to try another book by this author.

Audio Book GIVEAWAY - John Irving's, In One Person

Thanks to the good people at Simon and Schuster, I am able host a giveaway for John Irving's new book: In One Person.

• (The is an audio book on cds). 
• Drawing will be on May 13th - Mother's Day.
• Shipping to US only on this one (sorry)
• To enter - Leave (1) comment with a way to contact you if you win.
• For an extra entry Tweet about the Giveaway
• Good Luck to All

Publication Date: May 8, 2012

 

His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.”

 

Advance praise for John Irving’s In One Person:

“This tender exploration of nascent desire, of love and loss, manages to be sweeping, brilliant, political, provocative, tragic, and funny—it is precisely the kind of astonishing alchemy we associate with a John Irving novel. The unfolding of the AIDS epidemic in the United States in the ’80s was the defining moment for me as a physician. With my patients’ deaths, almost always occurring in the prime of life, I would find myself cataloging the other losses—namely, what these people might have offered society had they lived the full measure of their days: their art, their literature, the children they might have raised. In One Person is the novel that for me will define that era. A profound truth is arrived at in these pages. It is Irving at his most daring, at his most ambitious. It is America and American writing, both at their very best.” —Abraham 

Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone and My Own Country
“In One Person is a novel that makes you proud to be human. It is a book that not only accepts but also loves our differences. From the beginning of his career, Irving has always cherished our peculiarities—in a fierce, not a saccharine, way. Now he has extended his sympathies—and ours—still further into areas that even the misfits eschew. Anthropologists say that the interstitial—whatever lies between two familiar opposites—is usually declared either taboo or sacred. John Irving in this magnificent novel—his best and most passionate since The World According to Garp—has sacralized what lies between polarizing genders and orientations. And have I mentioned it is also a gripping page-turner and a beautifully constructed work of art?” —Edmund White, author of City Boy and Genet: A Biography

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros

Every Tuesday, I'll be posting the opening paragraph (sometimes maybe a few) of a book I decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). Feel free to grab the banner and play along.  This week's selection is another book I've been curious about.

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats; Jan-Philipp Sendker

Other Press - January 2012

" THE OLD MAN'S eyes struck me first.  They rested deep in their sockets, and he seemed unable to take them off me.  Granted, everyone in the tea house was staring at me more or less unabashedly, but he was the most brazen.  As if I were some exotic creature he'd never seen before.

Trying too ignore him, I glanced around the tea house, a mere wooden shack with a few tables and chairs standing right on the dry, dusty earth.  Against, the far wall a glass display case exhibited pastries and rice cakes on which dozens of flies had settled.  Next to it, on a gas burner, water for the tea was boiling in a sooty kettle.  In one corner, orange-colored sodas were stacked in wooden crates.  I had never been in such a wretched hovel.  It was scorching hot.  The sweat ran down my temples and my neck.  My jeans clung to my skin.  I was sitting, getting my bearings, when all at once the old man stood up and approached me."

Have you read this one? Would you keep reading?