First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #45

 

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 Picking Lemons: A C.J. Whitmore Mystery by J.T. Toman, which was gifted to me by the author for an upcoming blog tour organized by Escape With Dollycas.  My review will be posted on January 30th.

 

 Picking Lemons  

Monday

When people looked at Edmund DeBeyer, they saw the remnants of a handsome, affable man.  At just over six feet with unruly, black hair and intense, blue eyes, Edmund DeBeyer had been considered the most eligible bachelor in the Ivy league when a student.  The young Edmund had started a promising career in pre-med, with the idea of curing cancer or vaccinating the poor in Africa.  But with a quick analysis of the hours worked to dollars earned ratio, he became an economics major instead.

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

I love novels about faculty and colleges, so when I had the opportunity to sign on for a blog tour of this book, I jumped at the chance.  Based on the first paragraph, there are interesting characters in store.

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #45 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.

Sunday's Weekly Book Recap #49

We're enjoying a much-needed respite from winter at the moment.  After temperatures in the single digits with wind chills below zero earlier this week, the weekend is downright balmy.  Despite the fact that it's been raining cats and dogs, the current temperature of 58 degrees is delightful.  Finally, some days without layer upon layer of clothing.

Lots of books have been coming my way since the start of the new year.  Here are the latest, which I am sharing on the following blogs:

  

 Sunday Post hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer  

Showcase Sunday hosted by Vicky at  Books, Biscuits, and Tea

  

Finished reading . . .

  The Book of Eve by Constance Beresford-Howe

Set in Montreal, this novel is an interesting reflection on an older woman's life and marriage after she abruptly leaves her husband and home. 

  

I was rooting for Eva Carroll, the novel's protagonist, hoping she would finally create the life she wanted. As I read on, however, I found myself baffled by some of her choices. The story is a poignant reminder that life and relationships are complex and messy, and that even when one gets what she wants--or what she thinks she wants--it is no guarantee of happiness. 
  
Currently reading . . .

    The Master, Colm Toibin's fictional account of writer Henry James's life in Europe, which I borrowed from the library.

  
From Picador Books and The New Yorker Book Talk . . .

   The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal

  
Ebooks downloaded . . .

               

Nook:  Leave No Stone Unturned by Jeanne Glidewell; Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin. Kindle:  War Brides by Helen Bryan

Which books did you get this week?
   

Catherine

Sunday's Weekly Book Recap #49 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.   

Waiting on Wednesday: New Sarah Addison Allen 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: St. Martin's Press 

Publication Date: January 21, 2014

 Preorder from online and books and mortar bookstores

 

From barnesandnoble.com:   
From the author of New York Times bestseller Garden Spells comes a beautiful, haunting story of old loves and new, and the power of the connections that bind us forever…

The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future.

That was half a life ago. Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby’s past. Her husband George is long passed. Most of her demanding extended family are gone. All that’s left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the Southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires.

It’s a lot, but not enough to keep Eby from relinquishing Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand, and calling this her final summer at the lake. Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.

Lost Lake is where Kate Pheris spent her last best summer at the age of twelve,  before she learned of loneliness, and heartbreak, and loss. Now she’s all too familiar with those things, but she knows about hope too, thanks to her resilient daughter Devin, and her own willingness to start moving forward. Perhaps at Lost Lake her little girl can cling to her own childhood for just a little longer… and maybe Kate herself can rediscover something that slipped through her fingers so long ago.

One after another, people find their way to Lost Lake, looking for something that they weren’t sure they needed in the first place:  love, closure, a second chance, peace, a mystery solved, a heart mended.  Can they find what they need before it’s too late? 

At once atmospheric and enchanting, Lost Lake shows Sarah Addison Allen at her finest, illuminating the secret longings and the everyday magic that wait to be discovered in the unlikeliest of places.

Which book are you waiting for?

 

Enjoy life with books . . .

 

Catherine

 

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

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #44

 

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 paragraphs from The Book of Eve by Constance Beresford-Howe which I purchased in 2013 and am currently reading.

 

  The Book of Eve  

The real surprise - to me anyway - was not really what I did, but how I felt afterwards.  Shocked, of course.  But not guilty.  You might say, and be right, that the very least a woman can be is shocked when she walks out on a sick and blameless husband after forty years.  But to feel no guilt at all - feel nothing, in fact, but simple relief and pleasure - that did seem odd, to say the least.  How annoying to God (not to mention Adam), after all, if Eve had just walked out of Eden without waiting to be evicted, and left behind her pangs of guilt, as it were, with her leaf apron?

In any case, I just walked out.  There was no quarrel with Burt.  No crisis at all.  The clock chimed nine-thirty.  I laid down the breakfast tray carefully (an apple and a cup of cocoa) on the hall desk, and went to my room and packed.  Not a word to anyone, even myself, by way of apology or excuse.  Why?  And why just then?  Truly I'm not sure yet, although my name is Eva.

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

The opening really aroused my curiosity.  Who is Eva and what makes her tick?  What prompted such an abrupt, life-altering decision?  How will it all work out?

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #44 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.

Monday Musings: Downton Abbey Returns

  

The Season 4 premiere episode of Downton Abbey did not disappoint.  I loved the strong female characters whose roles are emerging despite the constrictions of the times. 

While I relish the storyline and episodes to come, I want to share this comic novel that came to my attention this week.

   

Downton Tabby by Chris Kelly

From barnesandnoble.com: Welcome to Downton Tabby

Here, the aristocrats of the animal kingdom dwell in stately splendor, sleeping, grooming, sleeping some more, and being fed by their downstairs cats, unaware that their way of life—providing work for others—is about to be swept away by the tides of history . . . and runaway cars.

The fur will fly.

This humorous parody provides essential information for preserving their Golden Age, including How to Keep a Secret at Downton Tabby, How to Argue with Lord Grimalkin About His Most Deeply Held Beliefs, and some Uninvited but Necessary Words from the Dowager.

Enjoy life with books . . .


Catherine

Downton Abbey Returns was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.

 

Sunday's Weekly Book Recap #48

Happy New Year!  The holidays were a whirlwind of fun activities, followed by a snowstorm earlier this week that left 8 inches of snow on the ground and plunged New York City into a deep freeze.  It's the perfect weather for staying indoors and curling up with a good book.

My first post of 2014 is a recap of books that I'm reading or have acquired during the holidays and this month so far, which I am sharing on the following blogs:

   

 Sunday Post hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer  

Showcase Sunday hosted by Vicky at  Books, Biscuits, and Tea . . .

 

Finished reading . . .

                    

Coral Glynn by Peter Cameron; A Commonplace Killing by Sian Busby

The books I ended the year reading were both set in England after World War II.

 

Currently reading . . .

  The Book of Eve by Constance Beresford-Howe

Set in Montreal, this novel is an interesting reflection on an older woman's life and marriage after she abruptly leaves her husband and home. 

Borrowed from the library . . .

   

The Time of My Life by Cecelia Ahern, The Road Home by Rose Tremain, My Year with Eleanor by Noelle Hancock, and Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman

An even mix of fiction and non-fiction, which is not my usual pattern.  I tend to borrow and read much more fiction than non-fiction.

 

Books received as gifts . . .

             

The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison, All You Could Ask For by Mike Greenberg, and Blue Monday by Nicci French -- books from my wish list sent to me by my Secret Santa, Wendy at Literary Feline.  Thanks, Wendy!!  This event was coordinated by the bloggers at The Broke and the Bookish. 

Ebooks downloaded . . .

              

Nook:  The Wyattsville Series by Bette Lee Crosby: Spare Change, Jubilee's Journey, and A Home in Hopeful;  Scoundrel for Hire by Adrienne deWolfe, and Love Thy Neighbor by Mark Gilleo

  

Kindle:  Frail Blood by Jo Robertson, Nursing a Grudge by Diana Orgain, and Picking Lemons by J.T. Toman (for a book tour later this month)

Which books did you get this week?
   

Catherine

 

Sunday's Weekly Book Recap #48 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.