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My friends and posters here have often commented that in choosing a book to read they will look at the first page and then maybe a couple more pages inside.
I agree that is a good idea, especially if the blurb has been interesting enough to capture my attention. Good writing does show itself pretty quickly.
I have some books on hand and some of them have been mentioned earlier, but I thought I would share some quotations that lured me into buying the book. I hope you will share some passages from a favorite book or one that you are reading.
Would these passages from the first pages lure you in? Or does it take more such as having read another book by the author or having the story recommended by a friend?
1.
The children of the embassy all saw the boat land. Their teachers and shiftparents had had them painting it for days. One wall of the room had been given over to their ideas. It’s been centuries since any voidcraft vented fire, as they imagined this one doing, but it’s a tradition to represent them with such trails. When I was young, I painted ships the same way.
I looked at the pictures and the man beside me leaned in too. “Look,” I said. “See? That’s you.” A face at the boat window. The man smiled. He gripped a pretend wheel like the simply rendered figure.
Embassytown by China Mieville
From reading this first page I know it is going to be a first person narrator and that he is a friendly sort as is the visitor so far. The narrative is easy to read so far compared to two other books I have read by Mieville. Farther down the page a ball is mentioned and I like balls. But in this case, it is the author’s reputation that will make me read on, not the first page.
2.
The worst thing about having a roommate, in Kaylin’s opinion-and admittedly after only two weeks-was morning. The fact that this particular roommate was a Dragon didn’t help. Bellusdeo was clean, tidy, and ate very little. She didn’t actually require sleep, and for the first couple of nights, that had seemed like a good thing because Kaylin’s apartment only had one bed. It only had one room.
But around morning number four, which come on the heels of an urgent mirror message from the Guild of Midwives and a hideously touch-and-go birth, the “good thing” developed the preceding words “too much of a ..”
Ten days-which included three more emergency calls-later, Kaylin struggled out of bed when the shadows in the room were far too short, and came face-to-face with someone who looked refreshed and annoyingly cheerful.
Cast in Peril by Michelle Sagara
This is part of a series I already like, I did know an egg was going to hatch, and I am interested in how dragons develop. Still, though this beginning makes me smile, I am not sure I would be impressed if it was the first book I had read in the series. I do like dragon stories, though, so maybe it would be enough.
On page 185 of The Pillars of Hercules, Theroux mentions what he thinks Italians have in common with the Chinese:
...an ancient belief in dragons.
I have not been able to find any Italian ancestors, yet, but I admit to loving the idea of dragons and happily reading lots of stories about them.
3.
In the deepest heart of England there is a place where everything is at fault. That is to say that the land rests upon a fault; and there, ancient rocks are sent hurtling from the deep to the surface of the earth with such force that they break free like oceanic waves, or like monstrous sea creatures coming up for air. Some say that the land has still to settle and that it continues to roil and breathe fumes, and that out of these fumes pour stories. Others are confident that the old volcanoes are long dead, and that all its tales are told.
Of course, everything depends on who is telling the story. It always does. I have a story and though there are considerable parts I’ve had to imagine, the way I saw it was as follows.
Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce
The first person narrator then changes to third after this introduction. I like the intro.
4.
In Botswana, home to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency for the problems of ladies, and others, it is customary-one might say very customary-to inquire of the people whom you meet whether they slept well. The answer to that question is almost inevitably that they have indeed slept well, even if they have not, and have spent the night tossing and turning as a result of the nocturnal barking of dogs, the activity of mosquitoes or the prickings of a bad conscience.
Of course, mosquitoes may be defeated by nets or sprays, just as dogs may be roundly scolded; a bad conscience, though, is not so easily stifled. If somebody were to invent a spray capable of dealing with an uncomfortable conscience, that person would undoubtedly do rather well-but perhaps might not sleep as soundly as before, were he to reflect on the consequences of his invention.
Bad consciences, it would appear, are there for a purpose: to make us fell regret over our failings. Should they be silenced, then our entirely human weaknesses, our manifold omissions, would become all the greater-and that, as Mma Ramotswe would certainly say, is not a good thing.
The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith
And with these observations, I am sucked into the world of Precious and her interesting life.
5.
Joyce Davisson awoke as if she had been stabbed.
The whistle came again, strong enough to penetrate mortar and metal and insulation, on into her eardrums. She sat up in the dark with a gasp of recognition. When last she heard that wildcat wail, it was in the Chabanda, and it meant that two bands were hunting each other. But then she had been safely aloft in a flitter, armed men on either side of her and a grave Ancient for guide.
What she saw and heard came to her amplified by instruments that scanned the ice desert glittering beneath. Those tiger-stripped warriors who slew and died were only figures in a screen. She had felt sorry for them, yet somehow they were not quite real: individuals only, whom she had never met, atoms that perished because their world was perishing. Her concern was the whole.
Now the whistle was against her station.
It couldn’t be.
David Falkayn: Star Trader, “Territory” by Poul Anderson
I have to turn the page!!
6.
This story is about a Greek named Pytheas and a remarkable journey he made more than twenty-three hundred years ago around the Atlantic fringes of Europe to the far north where the dense sea mists and the freezing ocean seemed to merge. Some of his contemporaries regarded him as a brilliant scientist, others as an outright liar. Scholars who have more recently examined the evidence compare him to Captain Cook, Columbus, Galileo, and Darwin. No one now doubts the truth of his claims to have journeyed to the very limits of the inhabited world-to Ultima Thule-but how he traveled, where exactly he went, and what he saw are issues still as shrouded in mystery today as was the frightening north Atlantic shore in the minds of his fellow Greeks.
Pytheas of Massalia (Marseille) and his journey form the main theme, but this is also a book about “how do we know”-of sifting the fragments of evidence, the few scraps of classical texts that survive, and the contribution of many thousands of archaeological excavations, in an attempt to re-create the physical and intellectual world in which Pytheas lived and the barbarian territories he confronted on his travels. All this detective work is necessary because the book-On the Ocean-that Pytheas wrote on his return to the safety of the familiar Mediterranean has been lost for nearly two thousand years.
When it was first published, about 320 B. C., On the Ocean, must have been a shocking book. The Greeks knew virtually nothing of what lay “beyond the Pillars of Hercules”.
The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Barry Cunliffe
This will be a re-read. I read a library book, first, and decided I wanted to buy the book and re-read it when I could take my time.
7.
At first light the mist was soft and smoky over the lagoon and it was cold enough for Simon Serrailler to be glad of his heavy donkey jacket. He stood on the Fondamenta, collar turned up, waiting, cocooned in the muffled silence. Dawn on a Sunday morning in March was not a time for much activity on this side of Venice, where few tourists came; the working city was at rest and even the early churchgoers were not yet about.
He always stayed here, in the same couple of rooms he rented above an empty warehouse belonging to the friend, Ernesto, who would appear any moment to take him across the water…It was a working place and a bolt-hole from his life as a Detective Chief Inspector, as were similar hideouts in Florence and Rome. But it was Venice that he felt most at home, to Venice he always returned.
The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill
I enjoy reading books with Venice as the setting. Hubby and I visited it in 1972 on a sunny day which we heard later was unusual. This is the second book in the Simon Serrailler series and the descriptions are interesting.
8.
Monday, December 24th
Christmas Eve
Something dead strange has happened to Christmas. It’s just not the same as it used be when I was a kid. In fact I’ve never really got over the trauma of finding out that my parents had been lying to me annually about the existence of Santa Claus.
To me then, at the age of eleven, Santa Claus was a bit like God, all-seeing, all-knowing, but without the lousy things that God allows to happen: earthquakes, famines, motorway crashes. I would lie in bed under the blankets…my heart pounding and palms sweaty in anticipation of the virgin Beano album. I would imagine big jolly Santa looking from his celestial sledge over our cul-de-sac and saying to his elves: ‘Give Adrian Mole something decent this year. He is a good lad. He never forgets to put the lavatory seat down.’ Ah…the folly of the child!
Adrian Mole: The Lost Years by Sue Townsend
An incomparable voice…Adrian Mole…and poignant stories are expected.
9.
…He tried to concentrate on the muttering. Mercifully it was recognizable. There were two distinct voices and when he could catch them the words meant something. That was good. That was hopeful.
In a little while the words might start connecting and then, please, God, he would learn something and this appalling fear would recede.
Traitor’s Purse by Margery Allingham
I just finished this hair-raising story and I highly recommend it. It is better after reading the other books in the series, but I think it would do well as a stand alone, too.
10.
In the early hours of July 10, 1943, British and North American troops stormed ashore on the coast of Sicily in the first assault against Hitler’s “Fortress Europe.” In hindsight, the invasion of the Italian island was a triumph, a pivotal moment in the war, and a vital stepping-stone on the way to victory in Europe. It was nearly a disaster.
The offensive-then the largest amphibious landing ever attempted-had been months in the planning, and although the fighting was fierce, the casualty rate among the Allies was limited. Of the 160,000 soldiers who took part in the invasion and conquest of Sicily, more than 153,000 were still alive at the end. That so many survived was due, in no small measure, to a man who had died seven months earlier.
The success of the Sicilian invasion depended on overwhelming strength, logistics, secrecy, and surprise. But it also relied on a wide web of deception, and one deceit in particular: a spectacular trick dreamed up by a team of spies led by an English lawyer.
Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre
What is on the first page of the book you are reading or your favorite book?
Diaries of the Week:
Write On! Binders full of manuscripts.
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
A List of Books
by A Southerner in Yankeeland
http://www.dailykos.com/...
NOTE: plf515 has book talk on Wednesday mornings early