Friday Focus: The Friday 56 and 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 a book club selection, Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian. The excerpts shared are from a hardcover edition borrowed from the library.

Beginning: Prologue

It was always possible that the Devil was present.

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Page 56:  Yes, that was dabbling in something dangerous, too, but was it evil?

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My thoughts:  I have enjoyed many novels written by this author, and admire his diverse subject and time range. 

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From GoodReads: A young Puritan woman--faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul--plots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive historical thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant.

Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary's hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life. But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary--a woman who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the brazen hypocrisy of so many men in the colony--soon finds herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary's garden, when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, and when their servant girl runs screaming in fright from her home, Mary must fight to not only escape her marriage, but also the gallows. A twisting, tightly plotted thriller from one of our greatest storytellers, Hour of the Witch is a timely and terrifying novel of socially sanctioned brutality and the original American witch hunt. 

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This Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings post was originally composed and/or compiled and published by Catherine for the blog, bookclublibrarian.com.  It cannot be republished without attribution. 

© 2021 Book Club Librarian All Rights Reserved. If you're reading this on a site other than Book Club Librarian without attribution, know that this post has been stolen and was used without permission.

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 The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian.  The excerpts shared are from the hardcover version I borrowed from the library.

  

Beginning:   Part One
BRACE FOR IMPACT

She was aware first of the scent of the hotel shampoo, a Middle Eastern aroma reminiscent of anise, and then—when she opened her eyes—the way the light from the window was different from the light in the rooms in the hotel where the crew usually stayed. 

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Page 56:  "At some point, that was the loose end that Cassie feared was going to trip her."

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My thoughts:  The opening sentence suggests that flight attendant Cassie Bowden wakes to find herself in the wrong hotel, far from home.  That is the least of her worries, as she soon makes an even more startling discovery.

This is my current read, and I was drawn in immediately by the situation and the possibly unreliable narrator.

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From Goodreads:  Cassandra Bowden is no stranger to hungover mornings. She's a binge drinker, her job with the airline making it easy to find adventure, and the occasional blackouts seem to be inevitable. She lives with them, and the accompanying self-loathing. When she awakes in a Dubai hotel room, she tries to piece the previous night back together, already counting the minutes until she has to catch her crew shuttle to the airport. She quietly slides out of bed, careful not to aggravate her already pounding head, and looks at the man she spent the night with. She sees his dark hair. His utter stillness. And blood, a slick, still wet pool on the crisp white sheets. Afraid to call the police—she's a single woman alone in a hotel room far from home—Cassie begins to lie. She lies as she joins the other flight attendants and pilots in the van. She lies on the way to Paris as she works the first class cabin. She lies to the FBI agents in New York who meet her at the gate. Soon it's too late to come clean—or face the truth about what really happened back in Dubai. Could she have killed him? If not, who did?

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This Friday Focus post was originally written and/or compiled and published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  It cannot be republished without attribution. 
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Waiting on Wednesday: New Chris Bohjalian Novel

 

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature of the Breaking the Spine blog.  It's a great way to share information about forthcoming books with other readers.
 

 This week's anticipated book:

 

Publisher:  Doubleday

Publication Date:  July 8, 2014

 

From Goodreads:  Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless girl living in an igloo made of garbage bags in Burlington. Nearly a year ago, a power plant in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont had a meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault—was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to leave their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain that as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger. So instead of following the social workers and her classmates after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's house, inventing a new identity for herself, and befriending a young homeless kid named Cameron. But Emily can't outrun her past, can't escape her grief, can't hide forever-and so she comes up with the only plan that she can.

 

Which book are you waiting for?

 

Enjoy life with books . . .

 

Catherine

 

Waiting on Wednesday: New Chris Bohjalian Novel was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be published without attribution.

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #32

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea. It's an opportunity to share the first paragraph(s) of a book I am currently reading or planning to read sometime soon.

This week I'm featuring the opening paragraph from The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian, a book I purchased this week, and that I will be reading for one of my book clubs. Club members were so impressed with The Sandcastle Girls, which we read last month, that we decided to select another book written by Bohjalian. 

   

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 

Publication date: July 9, 2013

Part One

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 "A woman is sitting before an art nouveau vanity, brushing her hair in the mirror.  It is, at least according to the police report, somewhere between midnight and three in the morning, on the first Tuesday of June 1955.  For dinner she ate a small portion of an impossibly rich pasta--a fettuccini with pecorino cheese and great ladles of truffle oil--at a restaurant popular with wealthy American and British expatriates five blocks west of the Uffizi and a block north of the Arno.  She was one of the few Italians there who weren't part of the kitchen or wait staff.  She has since bathed, soaping off both her own perfume and the cologne that was worn by her dinner companion--the fellow who had come back here to the apartment, made love with her on the thin bed no more than three feet from the vanity, and then left.  He was a suspect in the murder investigation, but only briefly.  If he had had even the slightest inclination to spend the evening, there is every chance that I would have executed him that night, too."

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?  I am intrigued by the narrator's voice and the setting, not to mention that she appears to be a murderer.  Bohjalian's historical novels are well researched and I am looking forward to reading--and discussing--the author's latest work!

Catherine  

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First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #32 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #12

 

It's Friday . . . time to share excerpts from one of my current reads 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.

This week's selection:

 

 

Beginning: When my twin brother and I were small children, we would take turns sitting on our grandfather's lap.  There he would grab the rope-like rolls of baby fat that would pool at our waists and bounce us on his knees, cooing, "Big belly, big belly, big belly."

 

Reading these opening sentences, I can clearly picture in my mind this delightful moment that demonstrates the special bond between grandparent and grandchildren.  I am interested in knowing this family's story.

 

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Page 56:  "And then he sees her, and seconds pass before he speaks because he doesn't want to frighten her, and because the sun through the open doorway catches the red in her hair and the pale beauty of the skin on her cheek and he is simply unable to open his mouth."

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Overview from barnesandnoble.com:  When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. It’s 1915, and Elizabeth has volunteered to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian Genocide during the First World War. There she meets Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. After leaving Aleppo and traveling into Egypt to join the British Army, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, realizing that he has fallen in love with the wealthy young American.

Years later, their American granddaughter, Laura, embarks on a journey back through her family’s history, uncovering a story of love, loss—and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

 

Enjoy life with books...

Catherine

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Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #12 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.