The Next Best Book Club discussion
Fun and Games
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Opening Paragraphs
Heather, that sounds like a promising start. I've only read one Bernard Cornwell novel and I didn't like it too much. Is this one good?
Maybe I'll re-read Mists of Avalon first. I read that when I was probably 12 or 13 and all I really remember is being grossed out by some incest scene! Now that I have a better idea what the whole thing's about, I think I'd enjoy it more.
Glad I'm not the only one! :-)
Okay, all hang on for a couple of weeks till I get The msits of avalon, so maybe one of the first books i put on my tbr list about 5-6 years ago will finally be read!
The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge.The carriage gave another lurch, and Maria Merryweather, Miss Heliotrope, and Wiggins once more fell into each other's arms, sighed, gasped, righted themselves, and fixed their attention upon those objects which were for each of them at this trying moment the source of courage and strength. Maria gazed at her boots. Miss Heliotrope restored her spectacles to their proper position, picked up the worn brown volume of French essays from the floor, popped a peppermint in her mouth, and peered once more in the dim light at the wiggly black print on the yellowed page. Wiggins meanwhile pursued with his tongue the taste of the long-since-digested dinner that still lingered among his whiskers.
Oh that's a lovely mental picture. "Mmm... wonder what this might be? Ooh! Parsnips! Wait...When did I eat parsnips?" Gross.
;)
Wiggins ... is a King Charles spaniel!
Open Paragraph from You Suck, by Christopher Moore The chapter is called : Get over it, a lot of people are dead
"'You bitch, you killed me! You suck!'"
:) It intrigued me.
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton:A man with binoculars. That is how it began: with a man standing by the side of the road, on a crest overlooking a small Arizona town, on a winter night.
I kick now in the darkness and see a coming light, molten, veined through the membrane and fluids of the sac, which contains me. I am squeezed towards the light. Let it be said: I enter this world without volition.Giraffe A Novel by J.M Ledgard
The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink"When I was fifteen, I got hepatitis. It started in the fall and lasted until spring. As the old year darkened and turned colder, I got weaker and weaker. Things didn't start to improve until the new year. January was warm, and my mother moved my bed out onto the balcony. I saw sky, sun, clouds, and heard the voices of children playing in the courtyard. As dusk came one evening in February, there was a sound of a blackbird singing."
It happens that I am going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now. All my life I've heard people speak of finding themselves in acute pain, bankrupt in spirit and body, but I've never understood what they meant. To lose. To have lost. I believed these visitations of darkness lasted only a few minutes or hours and that these saddened people, in between bouts, were occupied, as we all were, with the useful monotony of happiness. But happiness is not what I thought. Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang onto it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.Unless A Novel - Carol Shields
I was down in Surrey, on business for Lord Cromwell's office, when the summons came. The lands of a dissolved monastery had been awarded to a Member of Parliament whose support he needed, and the title deeds to some woodlands had disappeared. Tracing them had not proved difficult and afterwards I had accepted the MP's invitation to stay a few days with his family. I had been enjoying the brief rest, watching the last of the leaves fall, before returning to London and my practice. Sir Stephen had a fine new brick house of pleasing proportions and I had offered to draw it for him; but I had only made a couple of preliminary sketches when the rider arrived.Dissolution by C.J. Sansom
Excellent book, JG! Hope you are enjoying it.
OK... I wasn't so impressed with The Reader, unfortunately. So, it's on to something a bit more entertaining I hope!American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
"Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough, and looked don't-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and though a lot about how much he loved his wife."
Bile? I hope that is something other than stomach juices in this context.
I was thinking it was a typo for "Bible," Becky?
Susanna wrote: "I was thinking it was a typo for "Bible," Becky?"Oh good! LOL
The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition, Stephen King. "Sally."
A mutter.
"Wake up now, Sally."
A louder mutter: leeme lone.
He shook her harder.
"Wake up. You got to wake up!"
Charlie.
Charlie's voice. Calling her. For how long?
Sally swam up out of sleep.
First she glanced at the clock on the nighttable and saw it was a quarter past two in the morning. Charlie shouldn't even be here; he should be on shift. Then she got her first good look at him and something leaped up inside her, some deadly intuition.
I second Fiona here. The Stand is one of my all-time favorites and now I want to reread it! Must. Not. Reread. Books.
Must. Read. UNREAD. Books. On. Shelf.
Luckily, the temptation is gone... I've loaned my copy out... *shudder* :(
It was a fortresslike compound. A training ground. Of sorts. State-of-the-art. First-class accommodations. In the spook world of covert operations and espionage, it was beyond anything the CIA or the FBI could think of. The only facility that came remotely close was NORAD on Cheyenna Mountain in Colorado and was maintained by the government of the United States.Fast Track by Fern Michaels
You can't! You can't do this to me! Come back! You can't leave me here --Abi* loves me best!" The dark and damp stone curving above me threw my screams back into my face. Light from the small round opening directly above blurred as tears left we streaks down my cheeks. "Abi loves me best," I repeated, choking on my sobs.from Joseph - a story by Terri L. Fivash
*Abi is "father"
"This will be a good weekend for reading. I picked up a dozen of Vernie Crabtree's killer chocolate chip cookies at the French Club bake sale yesterday. (I don't know what she puts in them, but they're chewy and crispy at the same time.) Those, a pot of coffee, and a good book are all I will need for the rainy weekend rolling in. It's early September in our mountains, so it's warm during the day, but tonight will bring a cool mist to remind us that fall is right around the corner."Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani
"The time came for her to die, and she would not die; so perhaps she might waste away, they thought, and she did waste, but not away; and the time came for her to receive final absolution, so they set candles upon her clavicle, but this she would not allow. She blasphemed with gusto and she knocked the scented oils across the shroud they'd readied on a trestle nearby."A Lion Among Men Volume Three in the Wicked Years by Gregory Maguire
It was really good. I bet you'd like it!
Her name Erin Powell, and she was almost perfect. She was beautiful, intelligent, kind, generous, and had a megawatt smile. almost perfect because there was no such thing s "perfect." Or so saif her mother. She was also considered the best of the best. She knew it, and so did the man standing in front of her. The others...They knew it too, but would never admit it out loud. She'd told herself so many times over the years that no man would ever admit a woman could best him in anything.Collateral Damage by Fern Michaels
JG wrote: ""This will be a good weekend for reading. I picked up a dozen of Vernie Crabtree's killer chocolate chip cookies at the French Club bake sale yesterday. (I don't know what she puts in them, but t..."I read Lucia, Lucia by her and loved it!
I bet you'd love Big Stone Gap also, Jeane.
I used to live in about 45 minutes from Big Stone Gap, in the southwest corner of Virginia... It was really nice to go for a long Sunday drive in the springtime when all the ice was melting and cracking and running down the hills... It was really beautiful out there, but I am not sorry to live closer to "civilization" now!
I love this idea!World War Z by Max Brooks
It goes by many names: "The Crisis", "The Dark Years", "The Walking Plague," as well as newer and more "hip" titles such as "World War Z" or "Z War One". I personally dislike this last moniker as it implies an inevitable "Z War Two". For me, it will always be "The Zombie War," and while many may protest the scientific accuracy of the world "zombie", they will be hard-pressed to discover a more globally accepted term for the creatures that almost caused our extinction. "Zombie" remains a devastating word, unrivaled in its power to conjure up so many memories or emotions, and it is these memories, and emotions, that are the subject of this book.
I can't wait to read that book, Jenn! Did you read Brooks' "Zombie Survival Guide"? I thought it was hilarious!
I did! And I loved it :D It was hilarious. This one is definitely more serious. Gosh, it's so good so far, and I'm only halfway there :DBecky wrote: "I can't wait to read that book, Jenn! Did you read Brooks' "Zombie Survival Guide"? I thought it was hilarious!
"
I heard that it was less humorous, but that's OK. Zombies can't be funny all the time. ;) 
Jenn wrote: "World War Z by Max BrooksIt goes by many names: "The Crisis", "The Dark Years", "The Walking Plague," as well as newer and more "hip" titles such as "World War Z" or "Z War..."
World War Z is a great book - totally not what I would have expected.
I was going to post the first paragraph from Good Omen's but it wasn't very good - but the book is great. So here is one from another book I'm reading:"As the man stepped out of the shadows, Wyatt Deminthal knew this would be the worst, and possibly the last, day of his life. Dressed in raw wool and rough leather, the man was vaguely familiar, a face seen briefly by candlelight over two years ago, a face Wyatt hoped he would never see again. The man carried three swords, each one battered and dull, the grips sweat-stained and frayed. Taller than Wyatt by nearly a foot, with broader shoulders and powerful hands, he stood with his weight distributed across the balls of his feet. His eyes locked on Wyatt the way cats stare at mice. "
Avempartha
Hubby's book that I'm finishing proofing
Fiona wrote: "I want to re-read The Stand now, but I mustn't. Maybe just read another King soon...Thanks Megan for the craving!"
You're welcome. This book is extremely interesting.
"Pusan, South Korea, 1952After dark the rain began to fall again, but he had already made up his mind to go and anyway it had been raining for weeks. He waved off the rickshaw coolies clustered near the dock and walked all the way from the navel base, following the scant directions he'd been given, through the crowds in the Kweng Li market square, past the vendors selling roosters in crude rattan crates and pigs' heads and poisonous-looking fish lying blue and gutted and gaping on racks, past gray octopi in glass jars, past old women hawking kimchee and bulgoki, until he crossed the Tong Gang on the Bridge of Woes, the last landmark he knew."
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle A Novel by David Wroblewski
I think I'm liking it so far. I'm only on page 102, and it's taking a lot of set-up to get to the main conflict in the story.
2001 A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. ClarkeThe drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended. Here on the Equator, in the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight. In this barren and desiccated land, only the small or the swift or the fierce could flourish, or even hope to survive.
All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths. Briefly visible above the vapor, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out of ice, gathering the last of the light, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at its summit.The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
I am loving this book
The Star of Kazan by Eva IbbotsonEllie had gone into the church because of her feet.
This is not the best reason for entering a church, but Ellie was plump and middle-aged and her feet were hurting her. They were hurting her badly.
Fiona wrote: "The Loop by Nicholas EvansThe scent of slaughter, some believe, can linger in a place for years. Th..."
it really did something to me when I read the book because everytime one of you write something like a phrase or so I feel completely weak and staring like I don't knwo what to do....jsut like when I finished the book....
The PreyThis is the first paragraph from the prologue:
He studied her from afar. Objectively, as a scientist might contemplate an interesting germ. Even at this distance, she was a beautiful woman.
Darwinia A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century by Robert Charles Wilson1912: MARCH
Guilford Law turned fourteen the night the world changed.
It was the watershed of historical time, the night that divided all that followed from everything that went before, but before it was any of that, it was his birthday.
I'm slowly working my way through this thread from the beginning. For those that didn't do it, lol, it would be helpful (in the future) if you put a link to the book here in goodreads when you post your opening paragraph. A few books have caught my attention and I then went to go find them to read the book description and in some cases, put them on my wish list for the local library after checking their online catalog to see if they had it.
Fiona may have posted this somewhere already, but I can't find it if she did. Sorry if this is a repeat!"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy. I can't say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left. And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring--I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn't a very good poem. I have decided my poetry is so bad that I mustn't write any more of it."
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Anatomy of Deception - Lawerence Goldstone
March 14. 1889
For days, clouds had hung over the frigid city, promising snow, an ephemeral late winter veneer of white, but the temperature had suddenly risen and a cold. stinging drizzle had arrived instead. Jostled along in the derelict hansom, clad in her maid's blue worsted dress and plain wool cloak, her fingers and feet felt bloodless. The gloom that hung over the river penetrated the thin walls of the coach until it seemed as though she were breathing it.
The Next Best Book Club
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Sharon Creech (other topics)Lisa Scottoline (other topics)
Ray Bradbury (other topics)
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Elizabeth, you'll be told lies about me, or perhaps even nothing at all. I don't know which is worse. You, too, my only baby: your own lifestory is being rewritten. You're no longer the king's legitimate daughter and heir. Yesterday, with a few pen-strokes, you were bastardized. Tomorrow, for good measure, aa sword-stroke will leave you motherless.