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 Strange Flowers by Irish writer Donal Ryan. The excerpts shared are from a hardcover version of the book I recently purchased from Book Depository.

Beginning:  All the light left Paddy Gladney's eyes when his daughter disappeared; all the gladness went from his heart.

********************  

Page 56:  I never felt right inside, Mam. From when I was about ten or eleven. There was something wrong with me. Something I couldn't put a name on.

********************  

My thoughts:  The plot, writing style, and excerpts draw me in immediately. I get a compelling sense of wanting to know more about the story and its characters.

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From GoodReads:  In 1973 Moll Gladney goes missing from the Tipperary hillside where she was born. Slowly her parents, Paddy and Kit, begin to accept that she’s gone forever. But she returns, changed, and with a few surprises for her family and neighbours.

Nothing is ever the same again for the Gladneys, who learn that fate cares little for duty, that life rarely conforms to expectation, that God can’t be relied upon to heed any prayer.

A story of exile and return, of loss and discovery, of retreat from grief and the saving power of love.

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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.

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph

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

                                                      

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

Today I'm featuring an upcoming read, Grace, borrowed from the library.  This is the third novel by Irish author Paul Lynch, who I very recently became aware of.  His previous novels, Red Sky in Morning and The Black Snow, have been widely acclaimed.

 

I

The Samhain

This flood October.  And in the early light her mother goes for her, rips her from sleep, takes her from a dream of the world.  She finds herself arm-hauled across the room, panic shot loose to the blood.  She thinks, do not shout and stir the others, do not let them see Mam like this.  She cannot sound-out anyhow, her mouth is thick and tonguing shock, so it is her shoulder that speaks.  It cracks aloud in protest, sounds as if her arm were rotten, a branch from a tree snapped clean.  From a place that is speechless comes the recognition that something in the making up of her world has been unfixed.

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

I find the opening scene very intriguing, and it makes me want to know more about the narrator and her story.  I'm looking forward to reading this new-to-me author's work.  

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

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #133

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

                                                      

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

Today I'm featuring my current read, The Thing About December by Donal Ryan, which I purchased on a recent trip to Dublin.

 

Goodreads Page 

January

Mother always said January is a lovely month.  Everything starts over again in the New Year.  The visitors are all finished with and you won't see sight nor hear sound of them until next Christmas with the help of God.  Before you know it you'll see a stretch in the evenings.  The calving starts in January and as each new life wobbles into the slatted house your wealth grows a little bit.  It'd want to -- you have to try and claw back what was squandered in December on rubbish that no one really wanted.  The bit of frost kills any lingering badness.  That's the thing about January: it makes the world fresh. That's what Mother used to say anyway, back when she used to have a lot more to say for herself. 

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

The narrator makes some spot on comments about the month of January in the opening paragraph.  I really relate to the idea of a fresh start, quieter moments, and the need to put one's earnings toward paying for those Christmas gifts.

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #133 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution. Retweeting and sharing on Google+ encouraged.

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #94

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 Academy Street by Mary Costello, borrowed from the library.

Beginning:  It is evening and the window is open a little.  There are voices in the hall, footsteps running up and down the stairs, then along the back corridor towards the kitchen.  Now and then Tess hears the crunch of gravel outside, the sound of a bell as a bicycle is laid against the wall.  Earlier a car drove up the avenue, into the yard, and horses and traps too, the horses whinnying as they were pulled up.  She is sitting on the dining-room floor in her good dress and shoes.  The sun is streaming in through the tall windows, the light falling on the floor, the sofa, the marble hearth.  She holds her face up to feel its warmth.

*********************
Page 56:  "'Their familiar accents pleased her.  A shy boy from Kerry got up and gave her his chair, moved away with his plate of eggs.  She looked around at their open happy faces and sat among them." 

*********************   

My thoughts:  This short novel (145 pages) caught my eye while I was browsing the library shelves.  After reading the book jacket and first few pages detailing a momentous family gathering during her childhood, I wanted to know more about the protagonist and her life in Ireland and America.

**********************

From Goodreads:  A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer.

Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely — a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with.  

Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess from her girlhood in western Ireland through her relocation to America and her life there, concluding with a moving re-encounter with her Irish family after forty years of exile. The novel has a hypnotic pull and a steadily mounting emotional force. It speaks of disappointments but also of great joy. It shows how the signal events of the last half century affect the course of a life lived in New York City.

Anne Enright has said that Costello's first collection of stories, The China Factory, "has the feel of work that refused to be abandoned; of stories that were written for the sake of getting something important right ... Her writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand" (The Guardian).  

Academy Street is driven by this same urgency. In sentence after sentence it captures the rhythm and intensity of inner life.

  

Which book are you reading now or about to start?

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #94 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.  Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are encouraged and appreciated.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley

   

 

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.  Today I'm featuring The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley, a debut novel by Jeremy Massey.

  

Publisher:  Penguin Publishing Group

Publication Date:  May 12, 2015

From barnesandnoble.com:  A dark and unexpected novel about a Dublin undertaker who finds himself on the wrong side of the Irish mob.

Paddy Buckley is a grieving widower who has worked for years for Gallagher’s, a long-established—some say the best—funeral home in Dublin. One night driving home after an unexpected encounter with a client, Paddy hits a pedestrian crossing the street. He pulls over and gets out of his car, intending to do the right thing. As he bends over to help the man, he recognizes him. It’s Donal Cullen, brother of one of the most notorious mobsters in Dublin. And he’s dead.

Shocked and scared, Paddy jumps back in his car and drives away before anyone notices what’s happened.

The next morning, the Cullen family calls Gallagher’s to oversee the funeral arrangements. Paddy, to his dismay, is given the task of meeting with the grieving Vincent Cullen, Dublin’s crime boss, and Cullen’s entourage. When events go awry, Paddy is plunged into an unexpected eddy of intrigue, deceit, and treachery.

By turns a thriller, a love story, and a black comedy of ill manners, The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley is a surprising, compulsively readable debut novel.

Which book are you waiting for?

...Will you add this one to your list of must-reads?

Waiting on Wednesday: The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.  (Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are encouraged.)

Waiting on Wednesday: New Anne Enright 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.  Today I'm featuring The Green Road by critically acclaimed author Anne Enright.

 

Publisher:  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Publication Date: May 11, 2015

From barnesandnoble.com:  A major new novel from the winner of the Man Booker Prize.  From internationally acclaimed author Anne Enright comes a shattering novel set in a small town on Ireland's Atlantic coast.  The Green Road is a tale of family and fracture, compassion, and selfishness—a book about the gaps in the human heart and how we strive to fill them.  Spanning thirty years, The Green Road tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling irreparably apart.  As they grow up, Rosaleen's four children leave the west of Ireland for lives they could have never imagined in Dublin, New York, and Mali, West Africa.  In her early old age their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she’s decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds.  Her adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold.

A profoundly moving work about a family's desperate attempt to recover the relationships they've lost and forge the ones they never had, The Green Road is Enright's most mature, accomplished, and unforgettable novel to date. 

Which book are you waiting for?

...Will you add this one to your list of must-reads?

Waiting on Wednesday: New Anne Enright Novel was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.  Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are encouraged.

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #84 and Teaser Tuesdays

   It's Tuesday . . . time to share book excerpts with:
         

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

• Teaser Tuesdays hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading, where bloggers post two (2) random “teaser” sentences--no spoilers allowed--to try to entice others to seek out these books.

Today I'm featuring the opening and a teaser from one of my next reads, Secrets of the Lighthouse by Santa Montefiore, which I borrowed from the library.

  

Prologue

It is autumn and yet it feels more like summer.  The sun is bright and warm, the sky a translucent, flawless blue.  Ringed plovers and little terns cavort on the sand, and bees search for nectar in the purple bell heather, for the frosts are yet to come and the rays are still hot on their backs.  Hares seek cover in the long grasses, and butterflies, hatched in the unseasonal weather, flutter about the gorse in search of food.  Only the shadows are longer now, and the nights close in early, damp and cold and dark.

Chapter 1

Ellen Trawton arrived at Shannon Airport with a single suitcase, fake-fur jacket, skinny jeans, and a pair of fine leather boots, which would soon prove highly unsuitable for the wild and rugged countryside of Connemara.  She had never been to Ireland before and had no memory of her mother's sister, Peg, with whom she had arranged to stay, under the pretext of seeking peace and solitude in order to write a novel.  As a London girl, Ellen rather dreaded the countryside, considering it muddy and notoriously quiet, but her aunt's was the only place she knew where her mother would not come looking for her--and the only place she could stay without having to spend a great deal of money.  Having quit her job in marketing for a small Chelsea jeweler, she was in no position to be extravagant.  She hoped Aunt Peg was rich and lived in a big house in a civilized part of the country, near a thriving town with shops and cafes.  She didn't think she'd last if she lived in the middle of nowhere with only sheep to talk to.

--------------------------

Teaser:  "Ellen felt uplifted by Oswald's advice.  She was used to her mother squashing her enthusiasm."

~ p. 36

---------------------- 

What do you think?  Would you continue reading? 

My thoughts:  I'm wondering why Ellen left her job and is removing herself from life as she knows it.  And having just returned from a week in Dublin, I'm looking forward to extending my "stay" in one of my favorite countries, even if only by reading.

 

What are you reading now or planning to read soon?

 

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #84 and Teaser Tuesdays was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #68 and Teaser Tuesdays

 
It's Tuesday . . . time to share book excerpts with: 

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

• Teaser Tuesdays hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading, where bloggers post two (2) random “teaser” sentences--no spoilers allowed--from their current reads to try to entice others to seek out these books.

Today I'm featuring the opening paragraph and a teaser from The Visitors by Patrick O'Keeffe.

  

Part One

1.

Seven years ago, near the end of July 2000, was the first time he appeared at the screen door.  Two weeks earlier I passed him on a sidewalk three streets over, and the week before, he was sitting beside the homeless on their bench outside the post office, and two nights before, I saw him on Main Street.  A street festival was ending.  I was out for a walk.  He was staring into a brimming trash can, and his face was closed to its mouth.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Teaser: "--You'll get us all into trouble.  That's what you'll do, Hannah used to say."  ~ p.57

 

 

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?  

The opening lines make me curious about the narrator and the person he is describing.  I'll definitely be reading on to satisfy my curiosity.   

 

What are you reading now or planning to read soon?

 

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #68 and Teaser Tuesdays was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #53

   

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.

Today I'm featuring the opening paragraphs from A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry, which I borrowed from the library, and am reading for one of my book clubs.

   

Chapter One

He was born in the dying days.

It was the withering end of 1896.  He was called William after the long-dead Orange King, because his father took  an interest in such distant matters.  On top of that, an old great-uncle, William Cullen, was yet living in Wicklow, across the mountains as they used to say, where his father himself had been reared.

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

This new-to-me Irish author recently came to my attention.  After reading the opening paragraphs, I want to know more about the narrator and the family.

What are you reading now or planning to read soon?

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #53 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.

Waiting on Wednesday: New Sebastian Barry 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: Viking Adult 

Publication date: May 1, 2014

Preorder from online and bricks and mortar bookstores

 

From barnesandnoble.com:   A stunning new novel from the two-time Man Booker shortlisted author of The Secret Scripture.

In this highly anticipated new novel, Irishman Jack McNulty is a “temporary gentleman”—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in World War II was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he’s writing the story of his life with desperate urgency. He cannot take one step further without examining all the extraordinary events that he has seen. A lifetime of war and world travel—as a soldier in World War II, an engineer, a UN observer—has brought him to this point. But the memory that weighs heaviest on his heart is that of the beautiful Mai Kirwan, and their tempestuous, heartbreaking marriage. Mai was once the great beauty of Sligo, a magnetic yet unstable woman who, after sharing a life with Jack, gradually slipped from his grasp.

Award-winning author Sebastian Barry’s The Temporary Gentleman is the sixth book in his cycle of separate yet interconnected novels that brilliantly reimagine characters from Barry’s own family.

 

Which book are you waiting for?

 

 

Enjoy life with books . . .

 

Catherine 

 

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

 

 

Waiting on Wednesday: New Maeve Binchy 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: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 

Publication date: April 22, 2014

Preorder from online and books and mortar bookstores

 

From barnesandnoble.com:  While she was writing columns for The Irish Times and her best-selling novels, Maeve Binchy also had in mind to write a book that revolved around one street with many characters coming and going. Every once in a while, she would write about one these people. She would then put it in a drawer. "For the future," she would say. The future is now.

Just around the corner from St. Jarlath's Crescent (which readers will recognize from Minding Frankie) is Chestnut Street, where neighbors come and go. Behind their closed doors we encounter very different people with different life circumstances, occupations, and sensibilities. Written with the humor and understanding that are earmarks of Maeve Binchy's work, it is a pleasure to be part of this world with all of its joys and sorrows, to get to know the good and the bad, and ultimately to have our hearts warmed by her storytelling.

My thoughts:  Like other Maeve Binchy fans, I am excited that there is another novel from the beloved author that will be published posthumously.  Last year's publication of  A Week in Winter left me feeling bittersweet because I thought it would be the very last novel from the popular author who passed away in July 2012.  Thus I eagerly await another chance to visit Ireland by way of Binchy's prose.

Which book are you waiting for?
 

Enjoy life with books . . .
 

Catherine
 

Waiting on Wednesday: New Maeve Binchy Novel!! was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.  

 

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #27

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:   Chapter One  January 1895

Sometimes in the night he dreamed about the dead - familiar faces and the others, half-forgotten ones, fleetingly summoned up. Now as he woke, it was, he imagined, an hour or more before the dawn; there would be no sound or movement for several hours.

--------------------

Page 56:  "He watched her smiling warmly and then almost sadly as she closed the door.  Everything about her in those moments, from her stance, to the expressions on her face, to her gestures as she turned back to the hallway, was borrowed from their mother.  She was making an effort, Henry saw, to become the woman of the house."

--------------------

From barnesandnoble.com:  Like Michael Cunningham in The Hours, Colm Tóibín captures the extraordinary mind and heart of a great writer. Beautiful and profoundly moving, The Master tells the story of a man born into one of America's first intellectual families who leaves his country in the late nineteenth century to live in Paris, Rome, Venice, and London among privileged artists and writers.

In stunningly resonant prose, Tóibín captures the loneliness and the hope of a master of psychological subtlety whose forays into intimacy inevitably failed those he tried to love. The emotional intensity of this portrait is riveting.

Finalist for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

Enjoy life with books . . .

 

Catherine

 

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #27 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.