Thursday, October 27, 2016

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings


16
It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:
  • Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
  • The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.
Today I'm featuring And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman.  The excerpts shared are from the hardcover version I received from the publisher, Simon and Schuster.


And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer 

BeginningThere's a hospital room at the end of a life where someone, right in the middle of the floor, has pitched a green tent.  A person wakes up inside it, breathless and afraid, not knowing where he is.  A young man sitting next to him whispers:

"Don't be scared."

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Page 56 (actually, page 55 because there is no text on page 56):  "She laughs.  Old eyes, new sunlight, and he still remembers how it felt to fall in love."
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My thoughts:  Today I'm sharing my next read.  My first introduction to the author was through A Man Called Ove, which I read with two of my book clubs.  In fact, one club like Ove so much that we are now reading another of Backman's books, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry.  Backman has quickly become one of my favorite authors for his wit, insight, strong interpersonal relationships, and unusual characters who find their way into your heart and mind.  His books are a good fit for book clubs and individual readers alike.
 
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 From GoodreadsFrom the New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here comes an exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man’s struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family’s efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.

“Isn’t that the best of all life’s ages, an old man thinks as he looks at his grandchild, when a boy is just big enough to know how the world works but still young enough to refuse to accept it.”

Grandpa and Noah are sitting on a bench in a square that keeps getting smaller every day. The square is strange but also familiar, full of the odds and ends that have made up their lives: Grandpa’s work desk, the stuffed dragon that Grandpa once gave to Noah, the sweet-smelling hyacinths that Grandma loved to grow in her garden.

As they wait together on the bench, they tell jokes and discuss their shared love of mathematics. Grandpa recalls what it was like to fall in love with his wife, what it was like to lose her. She’s as real to him now as the first day he met her, but he dreads the day when he won’t remember her.

Sometimes Grandpa sits on the bench next to Ted, Noah’s father—Ted who never liked math, prefers writing and playing guitar, and has waited his entire life for his father to have time for him, to accept him. But in their love of Noah, they have found a common bond.

Grandpa, Grandma, Ted, and Noah all meet here, in this peculiar space that is growing dimmer and more confusing all the time. And here is where they will learn to say goodbye, the scent of hyacinths in the air, nothing to fear. This little book with a big message is certain to be treasured for generations to come.



Which book are you reading now or about to start? 


Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.  Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are appreciated.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings

16
It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:
  • Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
  • The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.
Today I'm featuring Hot Milk by Deborah Levy.  The excerpts shared are from the hardcover version I borrowed from the library.
 
 
Hot Milk 

Beginning:   2015. Almeria. Southern Spain. August.
Today I dropped my laptop on the concrete floor of a bar built on the beach.  It was tucked under my arm and slid out of its black rubber sheath (designed like an envelope), landing screen side down.
 
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Page 56:  "I had been forbidden to speak so I was silent."
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My thoughts: When I saw this book on another blog, I was intrigued by the title.  I haven't started it yet, but the book flap promises a story with a fraught mother-daughter relationship and the quest for a cure to the mother's mysterious illness.  

The opening scene is any blogger's nightmare . . .
 
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 From GoodreadsI have been sleuthing my mother's symptoms for as long as I can remember. If I see myself as an unwilling detective with a desire for justice, is her illness an unsolved crime? If so, who is the villain and who is the victim?

Sofia, a young anthropologist, has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother's unexplainable illness. She is frustrated with Rose and her constant complaints, but utterly relieved to be called to abandon her own disappointing fledgling adult life. She and her mother travel to the searing, arid coast of southern Spain to see a famous consultant—their very last chance—in the hope that he might cure her unpredictable limb paralysis.

But Dr. Gomez has strange methods that seem to have little to do with physical medicine, and as the treatment progresses, Sofia's mother's illness becomes increasingly baffling. Sofia's role as detective—tracking her mother's symptoms in an attempt to find the secret motivation for her pain—deepens as she discovers her own desires in this transient desert community.
  
 
Hot Milk is a profound exploration of the sting of sexuality, of unspoken female rage, of myth and modernity, the lure of hypochondria and big pharma, and, above all, the value of experimenting with life; of being curious, bewildered, and vitally alive to the world.


Which book are you reading now or about to start? 


Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.  Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are appreciated.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph

It's Tuesday . . . time for . . .
                                                      

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea, is where bloggers post the first paragraph(s) of a book they are currently reading or planning to read sometime soon.

Today I'm featuring The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.  It's my current read, which I'll be discussing at a book club meeting this coming Friday night.  My version is an advance reading copy that I received from the publisher, Doubleday.  

  

Ajarry

The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no. 

This was her grandmother talking. Cora’s grandmother had never seen the ocean before that bright afternoon in the port of Ouidah and the water dazzled after her time in the fort’s dungeon. The dungeon stored them until the ships arrived. Dahomeyan raiders kidnapped the men first, then returned to her village the next moon for the women and children, marching them in chains to the sea two by two. As she stared into the black doorway, Ajarry thought she’d be reunited with her father, down there in the dark. The survivors from her village told her that when her father couldn’t keep the pace of the long march, the slavers stove in his head and left his body by the trail. Her mother had died years before. 


What do you think?  Would you continue reading?


 
 
This post was originally written and published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  It cannot be republished without attribution.  Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are appreciated.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings

16
It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:
  • Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
  • The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.
Today I'm featuring My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman.  The excerpts shared are from a trade paperback version I recently purchased.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry 

Beginning Tobacco
 
Every seven-year-old deserves a superhero.  That's just how it is.  Anyone who doesn't agree needs their head examined.
 
That's what Elsa's granny says, at least.
 
 
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Page 56:  "She has three scratch marks on her cheek.  As if from claws.  She knows they'll want to know how it all began."
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My thoughts:  The cover and title alone were enough to sell me on the book.  However, I recently read and loved another Backman novel--A Man Called Ove.  Now, I want to read all of his books.  The characters he creates are endearing and unusual, and the description of this story seems to promise more of the same.  
 
From Goodreads From the author of the internationally bestselling A Man Called Ove, a novel about a young girl whose grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters, sending her on a journey that brings to life the world of her grandmother's fairy tales.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother's stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa's greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother's letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.
 

Which book are you reading now or about to start? 


Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.  Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are appreciated.