First line in your present read

margo · **Posted:** Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:33 pm

Sometimes a first line of a novel is so good, or so interesting, or downright funny that it sort of sets the tone...which of course it should...of the entire book.

I thought we could enter the first lines of whatever we are reading at present [and maybe a little bit about it] as I just couldn't resist sharing the one I just started.

"Justice?--You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law."

A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis

This is supposedly his most approachable book. Hmmm, we'll see. I do like the first few pages. LOL Real Dysfunctional Southern Family time.

:book:

Durga · **Joined:** Mon Jun 09, 2008 11:09 am **Posts:** 1631

Statistics show that most mortals sell their souls for five reasons: sex, money, power, revenge, and love. In that order.

This is from "Succubus Blues" - first part of series about Georgina Kincaid by Richelle Mead. Yes, i am much into series now

It;s "Urban Fantasy" and i've just started it. So far i like the idea of immortals (angels, deamons, succubus, vampire etc.) living among us. And the funny thong is - their needs are still very similar to ours

Indigo Jo · **Joined:** Sun Jun 01, 2008 7:06 pm **Posts:** 4427

Gwenllyn Lyons stood in the small dim interior of the church and glanced at the man stood beside her, in a few minutes she would be married to a stranger with her her belly full of another man's child.

Iris Gower's ~ The Other Woman.

The tale of a Welsh woman who's only crime is to fall in love with a man whom she only found out when time said "Too late" that he was already married. As soon as she broke the news of her pregnancy he left her cold and went back to his loving wife leaving her penniless, homeless with child and desperate.

Just goes to show that although this book is written in the years of early 1900's nothing really changes does it?

margo · **Posted:** Sat Apr 11, 2009 8:05 pm

I'm still reading the Gaddis book listed above, but have started another one as well that caught my eye in a friend's stack of books.

A Book of One's Own, People and Their Diaries by Thomas Mallon

There are about thirty of them now--notebooks of different sizes, every page of them filled up with handwriting. They're across the room in the cabinet full of blankets and gloves and piles of papers I've meant to sort out for several years.

Ah well, maybe the first Two sentences. lol

The front flap says in part...

"...a deliciously witty and wide-ranging exploration of the art and history of diary writing. It is a guide to the great diaries--from Samuel Pepys's to Anais Nin's--and to the private chronicles of the famous, the infamous, and the anonymous. Who keeps diaries and why?"

margo · **Posted:** Fri Apr 24, 2009 3:59 am

"These are the last things, she wrote. One by one they disappear and never come back."

In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster

Dystopian to the Nth degree, this was fully depressing and flat for the first 30 pages or so, then all of a sudden it picked up. I'm about 2/3rds through and enjoying it. I think Auster is an acquired taste.

margo · **Posted:** Wed May 13, 2009 11:19 pm

In the middle of the eulogy at my mother's boring and heartbreaking funeral, I began to think about calling off the wedding.

From Come to Me, a small collection of short stories by Amy Bloom.

From the back cover:
"This stunning collection of stories takes us into the inner worlds of families, the hidden corners of marriages and affairs and friendships, and introduces us to people whose lives are shaken and changed by love. This is fiction that stays with you long after you've turned the last page, that celebrates the flawed dignity of the human and reminds us all of the fine venture of living in grace and hope in the worlds we are born to and make."

I've had this quite a while, and only the other day read somewhere about another of her books that was supposedly very good.
So, we'll see.

Marc · **Posted:** Thu May 14, 2009 7:41 am

"Do you Believe in Magic? I mean, real Magic, capital M. Not rabbits out of hats, disappearing sequined ladies, or silver spheres that dance in the air."

From The Magic Cottage by James Herbert.

I'm really enjoying it. I'm reading that while Issi is reading Mr Whicher, then we are going to swap when finished

Durga · **Joined:** Mon Jun 09, 2008 11:09 am **Posts:** 1631

I'll read "The Magic Cottage" too - i love the beginning and the whole description sounds great

margo · **Posted:** Thu May 14, 2009 10:42 am

I was born in the city of Bombay. . . once upon a time.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

This will be my first full length Rushdie, having only read a short story by him. Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize in 1981 and last year won the Booker of Booker Prize.

The title refers to the 1000 children born at midnight August 15, 1947, the precise moment of India's independence from England, that share telepathic powers.
Sometimes I like magic realism, sometimes not. It'll be an interesting ride at any rate.

Durga · **Joined:** Mon Jun 09, 2008 11:09 am **Posts:** 1631

The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If thi were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the silence of snow.

Snow by Orhan Pamuk

This is already my third attempt to read this book. It is interesting a nd i quite like it, so far. But every time i start reading it something important happens and i have to stop :roll:

Since next month i will only pack i guess i will finally finish reading it

margo · **Posted:** Tue Jul 21, 2009 3:44 pm

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage, there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt, as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed--this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:

ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH-HALL

Nothing egotistical about him, eh?

Persuasion by Jane Austen

margo · **Posted:** Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:02 pm

When I first found my mother's battered little sewing table--or rather, first asked the silver-haired woman who managed the antiques store, or rather that section of the tenth floor with its expensive, museum-quality French provincials, near the back of a building on West Twenty-fifth Street, in a room lit by pools of halogen light, what exactly the homely little table was, and what on earth it was doing there, tucked in among all the grand buffets and elegant secrétaires--I was careful to keep my damp hands very still, and to look down puzzled and unrecognizing at it, blinking from under my homburg, to make clear I was stunned only that she would have anything so ordinary, so obviously anachronistic and anonymous and crude and utterly out of keeping with the rest of her very fine and select trade.

The Deadwood Beetle by Mylene Dressler

LOL, it isn't as twisty as Faulkner, the sentence that is, but it's about as long!

Marc · **Posted:** Mon Jul 27, 2009 9:58 pm

What did you ask, Andy Bissette? Do I 'understand these rights as you've explained em to me'? Gorry! What makes some men so numb? No, you never mind - still your jawin and listen to me for awhile. I got an idear you're gonna be listenin to me most of the night, so you might as well get used to it. Coss I understand what you read to me! Do I look like I lost all m'brains since I seen you down to the market? That was just Monday afternoon, in case you lost track. I told you your wife would give you merry hell about buying that day-old bread - penny wise and pound foolish, the old saying is - and I bet I was right, wasn't I?

Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King

It's one of the second hand books I got from the shop at Ashridge national park which you can see in one of them photos in the bar

margo · **Posted:** Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:03 am

Oh! I have that in my TBR stack Marc, I have read a few Stephen King, but had gone off him....but a friend told me about this one and was raving about it, so I bought it...awhile back. Just haven't gotten to it yet. Let me know how you like it, and if you think it is typical King.

Marc · **Posted:** Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:12 pm

Will do Katherine

margo · **Posted:** Wed Jul 29, 2009 4:18 am

If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as 'the Bridge of Hesitation', you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tips of two gingko trees.

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

I'd given up in Ishiguro until I finished The Remains of the Day last year....after getting through that, digesting and finally enjoying it I decided to tackle another and I'm glad I am. I'm already 60 pages in and it unfolds beautifully.

An artist that has, in his own eyes betrayed his formidable talent comes to terms with his role in the War, WWII. Pre and postwar Japan is beautifully portrayed in this tale in a very real and personal manner.

So far so good.

margo · **Posted:** Sat Aug 01, 2009 6:17 am

September. It seems these luminous days will never end.

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter

Had to cheat ever so slightly, first sentence was only one word long.

I've only read one other Salter, Light Years, and it was one of those books that is enjoyed more in retrospect than at the time of reading, I suppose I'm due for a reread in that case, but this one first.

margo · **Posted:** Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:28 pm

The trial was irretrievably over;everything that could be said had been said, but he had never doubted that he would lose.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

First of the Millennium Trilogy by Larsson, only the first two have been translated so far.I've only read the first 21 pages, but am hooked.

From Amazon:

Quote:

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2008: Once you start The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's no turning back. This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson--is a serious page-turner rivaling the best of Charlie Huston and Michael Connelly. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo. --Dave Callanan

Indigo Jo · **Joined:** Sun Jun 01, 2008 7:06 pm **Posts:** 4427

" Yesterday is gone forever and once each day is gone it can only be seen through a one way mirror of what has happened between then and now, in this way, every minute of every day that passes is a kind of bereavement."

Rosie Thomas ~ EVERY WOMAN KNOWS A SECRET.

margo · **Posted:** Sun Aug 09, 2009 12:00 am

Here they come. From down the road we can hear harnesses jingling and see dust rising into the warm spring sky.

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

First line in your present read

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