Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings

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.

 

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.