Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #57

It's Friday . . . time to share excerpts from a current or upcoming read 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 next read, which one of my book clubs will discuss at our meeting next Friday night:

 

  

Beginning:  Moments of great import are often tinged with darkness because perversely we yearn to be let down.  And so it was that I found myself in late September 2002 at my first solo show in Paris feeling neither proud nor encouraged by the crowds of people who had come out to support my paintings, but saddened.  Disappointed.

 

******************** 
Page 56:  "I found Julien in the gallery's storage closet, standing on his head.  The watercooler next to him belched out a bubbly glug."

*********************   

 

My thoughts -- It was only a matter of time before I would get to this book.  It first piqued my interest at a publisher preview earlier this year.  It remained on my radar screen, and I featured it in an April Waiting on Wednesday post.  The book was on my list for September, but time got away from me.  So, when I suggested it to one of my book clubs at our August meeting, they were agreeable.  In addition to its appeal as an end-of-summer read, all but one of us were planning a mid-September trip to London and Paris together.  The trip has come and gone, and I'm looking forward to an interesting (and likely nostalgic) discussion, as the story is set in those cities.

Which book are you reading now or about to start?
 

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #57 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.    

 

 

Waiting on Wednesday: New Debut Fiction

 

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: Touchstone, A Division of Simon & Schuster 

Publication date: June 10, 2014

 

From barnesandnoble.com:  Where’d You Go, Bernadette meets Beautiful Ruins in this reverse love story set in Paris and London about a failed monogamist’s attempts to answer the question: Is it really possible to fall back in love?

Despite the success of his first solo show in Paris and the support of his brilliant French wife and young daughter, thirty-four-year-old British artist Richard Haddon is too busy mourning the loss of his American mistress to a famous cutlery designer to appreciate his fortune.

But after Richard discovers that a painting he originally made for his wife, Anne—when they were first married and deeply in love—has sold, it shocks him back to reality and he resolves to reinvest wholeheartedly in his family life . . . just in time for his wife to learn the extent of his affair. Rudderless and  remorseful, Richard embarks on a series of misguided attempts to win Anne back while focusing his creative energy on a provocative art piece to prove that he’s still the man she once loved.

Skillfully balancing biting wit with a deep emotional undercurrent, debut novelist Courtney Maum has created the perfect portrait of an imperfect family—and a heartfelt exploration of marriage, love, and fidelity.

Which book are you waiting for?

 

Enjoy life with books . . .

 

Catherine

 

Waiting on Wednesday: New Debut Fiction was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.