Glimpse inside a book

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

"When my first pen pal, Tomoko, stopped writing me after three letters [my mom:] was the one who laughed: You think someone's going to lose life writing to you? Of course I cried; I was eight and I had already planned that Tomoko and her family would adopt me. My mother of course saw clean into the marrow of those dreams, and laughed. I wouldn't write to you either, she said. She was that kind of mother: who makes you doubt yourself, who would wipe you out if you let her."

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

"Before she was nineteen, Lynn Sommers had rejected a number of suitors and was accustomed to male attentions, which she received with queenly disdain, for none of her admirers fit her image of a romantic prince, and none spoke the words her aunt Rose Sommers wrote in her novels; she judged every one of them to be ordinary, unworthy of her. She believed she had found the sublime destiny she so richly deserved when she met the one man who never looked at her twice, Matías Rodríguez de Santa Cruz."

Portrait in Sepia A Novel by Isabel Allende

[Meranda]

The Shack by William P. Young

When it became clear that the need for their assistance was winding down, the Madisons packed up their own site and then came by for a teary farwell before heading north. As Jesse gave Mack a long hug, he whispered that they would see each other again, and that he would be in prayer for all of them. Sarah, tears rolling down her cheeks, simply kissed Mack on the forehead and then held on to Nan, who again broke into sobs and moans. Sarah sang something, words Mack couldn't quite hear, but it calmed his wife until she was steady enough to let Sarah go. Mack couldn't even bear to watch as the couple finally walked away.

[JG (Introverted Reader)]

"He's dangerously insane," said Jack, "but there are vague patterns to his behavior. He usually violently ingratiates himself into someone's house or flat and stays there for as long as he thinks he can. His 'hosts' generally don't survive the visitation, although he always makes a point of paying for any food he eats, does the laundry and then wallpapers the front room."

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

[Catamorandi]

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

"The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in."

[Manday]

"He could not believe that decent people had the sort of obscene and absurd nightmares which shattered his night and continued to tingle throughout the day. Neither the incidental accounts of bad dreams reported by friends nor the case histories in Freudian dream books, with their hilarious elucidations, presented anything like the complicated vileness of his almost nightly experience."

Transparent Things by Nabokov

[Jensownzoo]

Blood Ties (Thieve's World #9) edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey

But he would know. And the god would know. And the powers who tended the balance which expressed itself in fate and weather would know.

How Jihan's father would react, only Jihan would know.

[[deleted user]]

Field Marshal von Blucher to Frau von S.
1795
Most gracious lady!
I acknowledge the sentiments which you have expressed for me, gratefully and respectfully. My silence is unpardonable, but I am too honorable and it is just this which justifies my conduct. I have never yet deceived anyone; I should like least of all to deceive you. Well, to business!

1. How can I ask you to marry me, when all my affairs are topsy-turvy, and I am in debt to the extent of 5,000 dollars? To be sure my prospects are good;I have a good job which can support me fairly well. But we cannot count on its permanence.
2. I have three children whom I love. .....

Will You Marry Me? Seven Centuries of Love by Helene Scheu-Riesz

[Heather]

"You can't save the whales by eating whales, but paradoxically, you CAN help save rare, domesticated foods by eating them. They're kept alive by gardeners who have a taste for them, and farmers who know they'll be able to sell them. The consumer becomes a link in this conservation chain by seeking out the places where heirloom vegetables are sold, taking them home, whacking them up with knives, and learning to incorporate their exceptional tastes into personal and family expectations."

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

[Gracee]

She dropped down on it gratefully and closed her eyes for a moment. I rubbed at her shoulders and she purred with the ease my kneading hands brought her.
"A sorry business about your lodger, " she said. "He seemed a good man".

"He was that," I said. "He was uncommonly kind to my boys." Lib tilted her head back and gave me an odd look. "And to me of course," I added. "As to eveyone."


Year of Wonders

[Melissa]

Light in August by William Faulkner

Through the open window the sound of singing from the distant church comes. Byron talks in a flat, level voice.

"It was a strange thing. I thought that if there ever was a place where a man would be where the chance to do harm could not have found him, it would have been out there at that mill on Saturday evening."

[Brittany]

"For Helena's sake, if not for my own, I ought perhaps to make some friendly overture if he were there next week. I could make it a Lent resolution to try to like him. I began imagining the process, what I shoulds ay and how he would respond."

Excellent Women

[Jeane]

Heather wrote: ""You can't save the whales by eating whales, but paradoxically, you CAN help save rare, domesticated foods by eating them. They're kept alive by gardeners who have a taste for them, and farmers wh..."

It just went up my mental wish list by reading this part!

[[deleted user]]

"To do this successfully, you have to be able to let go a degree, since there is nothing less natural than seeming hesitant. Remember the spirit you once had; Let it return,without self conciousness. People are more forgiving of those who go all the way, who seem uncontrollably foolish, than the half hearted adult with a childish streak. Remember who you were before you became so polite and self-effacing....

The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene

[Rose]

Sarah's Key
by Tatiana De Rosnay

They don't care, thought the girl. They don't care what is being done to us, where we are being taken to. One man laughed, pointing at them. He was holding a child bythe hand. The child was laughing too. Why, thought the girl,why?

[Morgan P]

Lightning by Dean Koontz

Near midnight, using a plastic loid, Stefan popped the lock on the back door and let himself into the house. As he inspected the bungalow, he boldly turned on the lights and did not bother to draw the drapes at the window.
The kitchen was immaculate. The blue Formica coutners glistened. The chrome handles on the appliances, the faucet in the sink, and the metal frames of the kitchen chairs all gleamed, unmarred by a single fingerprint.
He opened the refrigerator, not sure what he expected to find there. Perhaps an indication of Willy Sheener's abnormal psychology; a former victim of his molestations, murdered and frozen to preserve the memories of a twisted passion?

I LOVE this book!

[Dionisia]

Watership Down
by Richard Adams

"At last he saw the first of the dawn, like light faintly perceived round a corner at the far end of an unknown burrow; and in the same moment a yellowhammer sang. Hazel's feelings wer like those which might pass through the mind of a defeated general. Where were his followers exactly? He hoped, not faw away. But were they? All of them? Where had he led them? What was he going to do now? What if an enemy appeared at this moment? He had answers to none of these questions and no spirit left to force himself to think about them.

[[deleted user]]

Vanished Smile The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa

The Paris-Journal ran a photograph of Notre-Dame with one tower missing below the headline: COULD THIS HAPPEN TOO? Le Figaro deplored the lax security and denounced a government that "cannot guard the museum. Everything yet known about the theft shows a lamentable carelessness and extraordinary forgetfulness in the most elementary duties."
The best scholar doesn't always make the best administrator, and Director Homolle was far from blameless.

[Cheryl]

"You say you don't think you know him. It's a strange was of putting it. Seems to me, you either know him or you don't. Are you getting changed?" This last to Lynley, an abrupt shift that was as disconcerting as her steady and inquisitive gaze."

[GracieKat]

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

Charlotte Bedford was a petite, fragile-looking woman, barely bigger than Rollie and me as our bodies approached their teens. She was not tall, and there was little meat on her bones.Her skin was ghostly white to us, which I don't believe was a look Charlotte cultivated.(Afew years after the Bedfords had passed through my family's life like a natural disaster, I was in college in Massachusetts. During my sophmore year I became friends with a proud belle from a town on Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, who did in fact strive to look as pale as paste, so I am confident I know the difference.)

[yellowbird]

You cannot hunt an animal with such a weapon unless you know the way of his life. You must know the things he loves, the things he fears, the paths he will follow. You must be sure of the quality of his speed and the measure of his courage. He will know as much about you, and at times make better use of it.
But my Murani friends were patient with me.

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

[Moana]

" I know, but I'm interested."
"Why?"
" Because. Come on, tell me."
I sighed, and told him.

[gina~*]

"White Americans Have a very unusual sense of history. They make it up as they go along, constantly revising to suit their tastes in a manner that would make Stalin blush."


Between the Bridge and The River- Craig Ferguson

[Rose]

From the 2009 Pulitzer winner Olive Kitteridge A Novel in Stories - Elizabeth Strout

"You could even expect to have a kind of midlife crisis-but there was nothing to explain what he felt was happening to him, that he'd been put into a transparent plastic capsule that rose off the ground and was tossed and blown and shaken so fiercely that he could not possibly find his way back to the quotidian pleasures of his past life."

[Sheryl]

Disobedience by Jane Hamilton

The bloom of romance! The bloom of romance! If she could conjure up that encounter in the alley, if she could closer her eyes and see him leaning over her, and catch his voice, then-then there came the relief of feeling, pure feeling, and she'd remember that asided from the struggle, she loved him.

[Mackenzie]

Up Close and Dangerous A Novel by Linda Howard

"I don't know what to do first," she confessed. A fit of convulsive shaking seized her and she stopped talking, her teeth chattering so hard she couldn't have said a word anyway. When the shaking passed, she concentrated fiercely on holding the sterile pads in place.

[Suzanne]

God, I love this Book Club ...

[Bhumi]

This seems fun. Here goes...

[Bhumi]

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

I figure it to be the East Wing, the one destroyed by the fire. It sits, curled and quiet as the gargoyles on the roof, as if waiting. For what, I don't know.

[Bhumi]

Oh, here's the cover of the book:


And you probably can't tell much from that little excerpt what the book is about, unfortunately.

[Claire]

Connections- Sheila O'Flanagan

I want rough and ready and you want sleek and sophisticated, and it just won't work.

[Brandee]

Naked, perfumed, and highly embarrassed, I was at last delivered to the waiting room for collection. A poodle was there, I remember, looking down at me from the confines of her mistress's handbag and smirking in that way they do when they know they're safely out of range.

A Dog's Life
Peter Mayle

[GracieKat]

The room was stark, adorned with only the necessary ingredients: the painted circle; the pentagrams, unlit candles at their cruxes, the triangles and associated hexagrams. The blinds were drawn, coating the room in welcoming darkness.

Dead Souls
Michael Laimo

[Kate]

The Eygyptologist - Arthur Phillips

A discussion of the financing of modern egyptological Expeditions: As for implore, per Kendall Mitchell's witty lyrics, I feel it is not inappropriate, nor uninteresting to general readers, to describe something of how archaeological expeditions are financed. Imploring, I hope it goes without saying, has nothing to do with it. And while I am as eager as you, dear reader, to proceed to our exploration itself, I am also hesitant to bring you along with me until you are qualified to understand the context of the events that will befall us out there in the desert.

[Beth Ann]

Me & Emma by Elizabeth Flock.

I wonder if spiders can really spell like that in their webs. And since these webs are on the high side of the ceiling that's not where the bed is, I let them stay...until I see a spider dropping down. Emma loves it up here. She knows now that you can't jup up and down on the bed and it only took her three bruises to figure it out.

[Carol]

I had to go to page 57.
She spent a great deal of time cooped up in her velvet-and-gold carriage:sometimes the day's journey would last over nine hours. Essentially she was a royal package,sealed with the double-headed eagle of the Habsburg and the fluer-de-lys of the Bourbons.

MARIE ANTOINETTE THE JOURNEY-ANTONIA FRASER

[Andrew]

One Night Stand by Roland S. Jefferson.

"Only one-fifth the hieght of it's 9/11 namesake, the city fathers make no apologyfor the lack of aesthics in it's design."

[Beth]

The Empty Chair by Jeffery Deaver

Trying to turn that person into smoke and emerge as a troubled, scary sixteen year old boy, someone who needed, or wanted, to take women by force. Who needed or wanted to kill.

[St[♥]r Pr!nc:$$ N[♥]wsheen pictures, pictures, pictures]

((Why page 56? ))

This is from Percy Jackson: The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

A golden laurel wreath was tilted sideways on his curly black hair, which must've meant he'd won the last hand of cards.

'What do you mean?' Thalia asked. 'Who else is lost?'

Just then, Grover trotted into the room, grinning like crazy.

[Fenixbird]

While he waited for Hoerni's check to clear, Mortsensen converted everything else he owned into enough cash to buy a plane ticket and pay his expenses for however long he'd have to be in Pakistan. He told Marina that he was going to follow this path he'd been on since he met her all the way to the end--until he fulfilled the promise he had made to the children of Korphe.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen

[[deleted user]]

It's not page 56 but it is really good.
Vikshipta,
Your conduct toward me during meditation today was unforgivable. It is one thing to "let the garbage out of your system" and another to spew it all over another person. Our relationship was always somewhat primitive and tinged with your acculturated hysteria and sadism but your remarks spoken before the entire appalled group were beyond all bounds......"
Sincerely,
Kundalini.

From John Updike's S.

[Judy]

As a manaer, you need to be assured that your employees are working and not goofing off; that employees are not distributing organizational secrets; and that your organization is protected against employees who might create a hostile environment for women or members of minority groups by sending inappropriate messages or the organization's intranet or Internet links.

[KarenLee]

Pope Joan: A Novel

"Joan got up from the floor. She was dizzy, and there was a painful ringing in one ear. Slowly she walked over to her father.

"This is not the language of Holy Mother Church." He pointed to the open page before him. "What is the meaning of these marks? Answer me truly, child, as you value your immortal soul!"

"It is poetry, Father." Despite her fear, Joan felt a swell of pride in the knowledge."

[Liesl]

Colony by Anne Rivers Siddons

"I would ride with him to hell on that, I thought. Bed and laughter, those two things, with Peter, would last forever, withstand anything. And despite what he said, we could do those things anywhere, including Retreat. Who would dare to stop us?"

[Petra]

The Years of Rice and Salt

But he was not going to abandon Kyu, not really, so he just hissed. On they ran through the Outer City, Kyu pulling Bold by the hand time to time and urging him in Arabic to hurry.

[KarenLee]

Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue by Paul Woodruff

"And so Zeus, fearing that our whole species would be wied out, sent Hermes to bring Reverence and Justice to human beings, in order that these two would adorn society and bind people together in friendship." --Protagoras in Plato's Protagoras 322c

[Vonney]

KarenLee,
Pope Joan has been on my TBR list for the longest. My sister is reading it now. I get an enewsletter from the author, Donna Woolfolk Cross, updating all those interested in the movie coming out someday. It keeps getting delayed.

[KarenLee]

Vonney,

I am really enjoying this story. About 1/2 way through.

[Vonney]

KarenLee wrote: "Vonney,

I am really enjoying this story. About 1/2 way through. "

Thanks. I'll get to it someday.

[Foxy Grandma]

Queene of Light by Jennifer Armintrout

Sanctuary could wait, but the report could not. Or her conversation with Garrett. She'd decided on her course of action regarding her failure in the Darkworld, without the guidance of prayer. She would tell him the truth, or at least the brand she found it easiest to sell him.