The Next Best Book Club discussion
Fun and Games
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Opening Paragraphs
Jill...I just finished Flight on the train ride into work - can't talk too much because I'm at the office but I just wante to say what a great and powerful book that was!
To be honest I got scared part way through it - wondering where the heck was this going - but was throughly satisfied with the end.
Rhinoceros - Colin Forbes
The first strange event was when Bob Newman, foreign correspondent, arrived at Heathrow to meet the American guest. He showed his SIS folder to pass through the formalities. Standing by the carousel, he checked the photo sent from Washington. On the back was a written description.
I loved loved LOVED Stiff!
I really liked Stiff, as well. I've not read Spook, but am currently reading her other book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. I am not far into it, but it's interesting too.
When The Bough Breaks ~ Jonathan Kellerman
It was shaping up as a beautiful morning. The last thing I wanted to hear about was a murder.
Holidays on ice by David Sedaris"I was in a coffee shop looking through the want ads when I read 'Macy's Herald Square, the largest store in the world, has big opportunities for outgoing, fun-loving people of all shapes and sizes who want more than just a holiday job! Working as an elf in Macy's SantaLand means being at the center of the excitement...'"
THE SECRET LIFE OF HOUDINI:THE MAKING OF AMERICAS FIRST SUPERHERO- William Kalush and Larry Sloman(this is not counting the forward or introduction)
The first shovel-load missed his torso and struck his neck, sending soil flying up his nostrils and into his mouth. He started choking and coughing.
A Moorland Hanging: A Knights Templar Mystery, by Michael Jecks.Clambering up the long, shallow gradient to the mass of rock at the summit, the last thing on Thomas Smyth's mind was the man who was shortly to die. Smyth was concentrating solely on the dull pain of his strained muscles, and wondering how much farther he must go.
"The City of Thieves" by David Benioff. I'm cheating and starting with Chapter 1 instead of the Prologue.You have never been so hungry; you have never been so cold. When we slept, if we slept, we dreamed of the feasts we had carelessly eaten seven months earlier -- all that buttered bread, the potato dumplings, the sausages -- eaten with disregard, swallowing without tasting, leaving great crumbs on our plates, scraps of fat. In June of 1941, before the Germans came, we thought we were poor. But June seemed like a paradise by winter.
Susanna, A Moorland Hanging: A Knights Templar Mystery sounds really good. I love moors, Knights Templars, and mystery, so I'm sure I need to put it on my to-read list. Dorie, City of Thieves also sounds interesting, another addition to my list.
The Greek Key ~ Colin Forbes
Cairo, February 1944. Staff-Sergeant Higgins - 'Higgy' to his friends - had no warning this would be the last time he would ascend in the creaking lift climbing slowly to the fourth floor of the Antikhana Building.
Kathy - I enjoyed A Moorland Hanging - I finished it last night. Lots of tin mining in this one - not your standard medieval setting.
"She's beautiful. Surely, there is nothing more intresting to look at in all the world, nothing, than the human face. Her gaze catches mme, pins me down, pulls me in."~ The Music Lesson by Katharine Weber
Great idea, who ever thought of this, Fiona? I believe.
I love this thread! Here's mine from one of the books I'm currently reading. "The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seem limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, itsn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."
-- Short Story: The Body
From the book Different Seasons by Stephen King
Pam, I am not a Stephen King fan at all, but that paragraph has me completely interested in the rest of the story! Are you enjoying it?
I'm seem to have trouble dying. By all rights, I huld not have lived this long. But I still can smell trouble riding on any wind, just as surley as I could tell you whether it is a stew of chicken necks or pigs' feet bubbling in the iron pot on fire. And any ears will work just as good as hound dog's. people assume that just because you don't stand as straight as a sapling, you're deaf. Or that your mind is like pumpkin mush. The other day, when I was being led into a meeting with a bishop, one of the society ladies told another, "We must get this woman into Parliament soon. Who knows how much longer she'll be with us?" Half bent though I was, I dug my fingers into her ribs. She let our a shrick and spun around to face me. "Careful," I told her, "I may outlast you!"The Book of Negroes.....Lawrence Hill
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." - David Copperfield "The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn." The Picture of Dorian Grey
2 faves
"The glaciers are receding," she said. Nora peered through the window as if she could see the progress of said glaciers some ten thousand miles nirth. "I read it in the paper. This morning."A Wedding in December
Here are the first two paragraphs (because the first one is only one sentence long) of The Curse of the Pharohs by Elizabeth Peters:The events I am about to relate began on a December afternoon, when I had invited Lady Harold Carrington and certain of her friends to tea.
Do not, gentle reader, be misled by this introductory statement. It is accurate (as my statements always are); but if you expect the tale that follows to be one of pastoral domesticity, enlivened only by gossip about the county gentry, you will be sadly mistaken. Bucolic peace is not my ambience, and the giving of tea parties is by no means my favorite amusement. In fact, I would prefer to be pursued across the desert by a band of savage Dervishes brandishing spears and howling for my blood. I would rather be chased up a tree by a mad dog, or face a mummy risen from its grave. I would rather be threatened by knives, pistols, poisonous snakes, and the curse of a long-dead king.
Glen Fredericks slapped the back of his last departing Thanksgiving dinner guest. "Good to see ya. Thanks for coming.""Hey man, great time," said the mooch. "Thanks for having me."
"No problem. We'll do it all again at Christmas," Glen promised.
Behind him, Glen's wife, Laura, suddenly envisioned herself going after her husband with the electric carving knife he'd used earlier on the turkey. "In your dreams," she growled. She stepped around Glen and shoved the front door shut. Having made contact with a hefty male hind end, it didn't shut easily, especially for a woman who was five feet two and a hundred and nineteen pounds, but she managed."
On Strike for Christmas
One Corpse Too Many: The Second Chronicle of Brother Cadfael, by Ellis Peters.Brother Cadfael was working in the small kitchen garden by the abbot's fishponds when the boy was first brought to him. It was hot August noon, and if he had had his proper quota of helpers they would all have been snoring in the shade at this hour, instead of sweating in the sun; but one of his regular assistants, not yet out of his novitiate, had thought better of the monastic vocation and taken himself off to join his elder brother on King Stephen's side, in the civil war for the crown of England, and the other had taken fright at the approach of the royal army because his family were of the Empress Maud's faction, and their manor in Cheshire seemed a far safer place to be than Shrewsbury under siege. Cadfael was left to do everything alone, but he had in his time labored under far hotter suns than this, and was doggedly determined not to let his domain run wild, whether the outside world fell into chaos or no.
"'When the Potato Girl was murdered, the killer cut out her heart. He buried it, but the next day, she rose again-from that exact same spot.' Ryan poked the campfire with a stick for emphasis, sending a shower of sparks up into the night."Promise Not to Tell: A Novel
Interview With the Vampire - Anne Rice"I see..." said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window. For a long time he stood there against the dim light from Divisadero Street and the passing beams of traffic. The boy could see the furnishings of the room more clearly now, the round oak table, the chairs. A wash basin hung on one wall with a mirror. He set his briefcase on the table and waited.
I'd have to say the second paragraph is much more interesting.
My first post as I am new to Goodreads"We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dream where time is no more."
Divine Beauty John O'Donohue
In Their Footsteps ~ Tess Gerritsen
He was late. It was not like Madeline, not like her at all.
This Is from the Prologue, but the prolouge is very important for this book:"Compared to the Whiting Mansion in town, the house Charles Beaumont Whiting built a decade after his return to Maine was modest. By every other standard of Empire Falls, where most single-family homes cost well unders seventy-five thousand dollars, his was palatial, with five bedrooms, five full baths, and a detached artist's studio. C.B. Whiting had spend several formative years in old Mexico, and the house he built, appearances bamned, was a misson-styled hacienda. He even had the bricks specially textured and painted tan to resemble adobe. A damn-fool house to build in central Maine, people said, though they didn't say it to him."
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Thats the parapgraph from prolouge. I think it starts as a slow read, but we shall see.
"Hapscomb's Texaco sat on US 93 just North of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston. Tonight the regulars were there, sitting by the cash register, drinking beer, talking idly, watching the bugs fly into the big lighted sign."The Stand by Stephen King
Stardust ~ Neil Gaiman
There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart's Desire.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick RothfussIt was a felling night, and the usual crowd had gathered at the Waystone Inn. Five wasn't much of a crowd, but five was as many as the Waystone ever saw these days, times being what they were.
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of the Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
Faerie Wars by Herbie BrennanHenry got up early on the day that changed his life. He was making a cardboard sculpture and he'd left it the night before for the glue to dry out. All he had to do now was add a toothpick shaft and some decorations and the flying pig was finished. Three weeks' work, but today he'd turn the handle and the pig would take off, flapping cardboard wings. Pigs might fly. That's what it said on the base.
'Will tugged at his mother's hand and said, "Come on, come on..."But his mother hung back. She was still afraid. Will looked up and down the narrow street in the evening light, along the little terrace of houses, each behind its tiny garden and its box hedge, with the sun glaring off the windows of one side and leaving the other in shadow. There wasn't much time. People would be having their meal about now, and soon there would be other children around, to stare and comment and notice. It was dangerous to wait, but all he could do was persuade her, as usual.'
The Subtle Knife - Phillip Pullman
The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan StroudThe temperature of the room dropped fast. Ice formed on the curtains and crusted thickly around the lights in the ceiling. The glowing filaments in each bulb shrank and dimmed, while the candles that sprang from every available surface like a colony of toadstools had their wicks snuffed out. The darkened room filled with a yellow, choking cloud of brimstone, in which indistinct black shadows writhered and roiled. From far away came the sound of many voices screaming. Pressure was suddenly applied to the door that led to the landing. It bulged inward, the timbers groaning. Footsteps from invisible feet came pattering across the floorboards and invisible mouths whispered wicked things from behind the bed and under the desk.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna ClarkeSome years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon th ethird Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the ihistory of English magic.
Wife of GR author: Michael J. Sullivan | The Crown Conspiracy (10/08) | Avempartha (04/09)
You know what I like abut Nicholas Evans his books? I can imagine getting out, feeling the cold and hear their boots....watching the mountains and getting in the car while trying to feel warmer.....and knowing that he never starts telling something randomly...there is a reason.
Text Game ~ Kate Cann
My friend Lisa's glaring at me. I've just told her I'm going to a party next Friday with Ben, my boyfriend. And she's reminded me it's our old mate Ryan's birthday that day. And I'm thinking, Sod it!
The Man in the Picture: A Ghost Story ~ Susan Hill
The story was told to me by my old tutor, Theo Parmitter, as we sat beside the fire in his college rooms one bitterly cold January night. There were still real fires in those days, the coals brought up by the servants in huge brass scuttles. I had travelled down from London to see my old friend, who was by then well into his eighties, hale and hearty and with a mind as sharp as ever, but crippled by severe arthritis so that he had difficulty leaving his rooms. The college looked after him well. He was one of the dying breed, the old Cambridge bachelor for whom the college was his family. He had lived in this handsome set for over fifty years and he would be content to dier here. Meanwhile a number of us, his old pupils from several generations back, made a point of visiting him from time to time, to bring news and a breath of the outside world. For he loved that world. He no longer went out into it much but he loved the gossip - to hear who had got what job, who was suceeding, who was tipped for this or that high office, who was involved in some scandal.
Arctic Hero ~ Catherine Johnson
This is a true story.
It's a story about trekking across the wide frozen Arctic, fighting snow blindness and frost-bite. Its about facing the risk of starving to death or drowning. It's about getting to the North Pole before anyone else.
I remember the story didn't start very addicting but it did get better for me. Hope you will enjoy the story, but I am glad you like the writing already. He writes in a wonderful way I think.
Star Sullivan ~ Maeve Binchy
Molly Sullivan said that teh new baby was a little star. She was no trouble at all and she was always smiling.
One September morning in 1433, a thin man with a hooked nose and sallow skin could have been seen walking towards the steps of the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence.His name was Cosimo de' Medici; and he was said to be one of the richest men in the world. The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici
Christopher Hibbert
There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife. The knife had a handle of polished black bone, and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately.The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman
Ken, I need to read that book!!!!! I mean perfect keywords: 1433 (I like historical fiction), Palazzo della signoria, Florence, Medici........aaaaaaaargghhhhhh perfect!
There was once a kindly old wizard who used his magic generously and wisely for the benefit of his neighbors. Rather than reveal the true source of his power, he pretended that his potions, charms, and antidotes sprang ready-made from the little cauldron he called his lucky cooking pot. From miles around, people came to him with their troubles, and the wizard was pleased to give his pot a stir, and put things right.The Tales of Beedle the Bard
J.K. Rowling
I skipped the introduction. This is the opening paragraph of the first story.
Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened. First, picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees. The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason. Every space is filled with life: delicate, poisonous frogs war-painted like skeletons, clutched in copulation, secreting their precious eggs onto dripping leaves. Vines strangling their own kin in the everlasting wrestle for sunlight. The breathing of monkeys. A glide of snake belly on branch. A single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. And, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. This forest eats itself and lives forever.The Poisonwood Bible ~ Barbara Kingsolver
The Next Best Book Club
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Andrew, I absolutely agree. (And that definitely was not one of my better sentences. ;))