Tag Archives: am reading

Great Opening Paragraph 96… ‘The Secret History’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
Donna Tartt From ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt 

Read my review of THE GOLDFINCH by Donna Tartt.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Herzog’ by Saul Bellow
‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote
‘The Murder Room’ by PD James

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qp

Great Opening Paragraph 95… ‘Perfume’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages. His story will be told here. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name – in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations, de Sade’s, for instance, or Stain-Just’s, Fouché’s, Bonaparte’s, etc. – has been forgotten today, it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immortality, or, more succinctly, wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of smell.”
Patrick Süskind From ‘Perfume’ by Patrick Süskind 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Mara and Dann’ by Doris Lessing
‘A Bouquet of Barbed Wire’ by Andrea Newman
‘The Last Tycoon’ by F Scott Fitzgerald

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara PERFUME by Patrick Süskind http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2ql via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 94… ‘Tipping the Velvet’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? If you have, you will remember it. Some quirk of the Kentish coastline makes Whitstable natives – as they are properly called – the largest and the juiciest, the savouriest yet the subtlest, oysters in the whole of England. Whitstable oysters are, quite rightly, famous. The French, who are known for their sensitive palates, regularly cross the Channel for them; they are shipping, in barrels of ice, to the dining-tables of Hamburg and Berlin. Why, the King himself, I heard, makes special trips to Whitstable with Mrs Keppel, to eat oyster suppers in a private hotel; and as for the old Queen – she dined on a native a day [or so they say] till the day she died.”
Sarah WatersFrom ‘Tipping the Velvet’ by Sarah Waters

Here are two more #FirstParas by Sarah Waters:-
AFFINITY
THE PAYING GUESTS

Read my review of THE PAYING GUESTS.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Mara and Dann’ by Doris Lessing
‘Lucky You’ by Carl Hiasson
‘Middlesex’ by Jeffrey Eugenides

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara TIPPING THE VELVET by Sarah Waters http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2lj via @SandraDanby 

Great Opening Paragraph 93… ‘Death in Summer’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“After the funeral the hiatus that tragedy brought takes a different form. The suddenness of the death has gone, irrelevant now. Thaddeus has stood and knelt in the church of St Nicholas, has heard his wife called good, the word he himself gave to a clergyman he has known all his life. People were present in the church who were strangers to him, who afterwards, in the house, introduced themselves as a few of Letitia’s friends from the time before he knew her. ‘And where is Letitia now?’ an undertaker a week ago inquired, confusing Thaddeus, who for a moment wondered if the man knew why he had been summoned. ‘It’s Letitia who has died,’ he said, and answered, when the man explained, that Letitia was in the mortuary, where she’d been taken.”
William TrevorFrom ‘Death in Summer’ by William Trevor

Here’s another #FirstPara by William Trevor:-
READING TURGENEV

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers 
‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ by Clare Morrall 
‘The Crying of Lot 49’ by Thomas Pynchon 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara DEATH IN SUMMER by William Trevor via http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vz @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Roundabout Man’ by Clare Morrall #contemporary

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The Roundabout Man is a clever and involved story by Clare Morrall about a man, his real mother, father and triplet sisters, and the seemingly identical fictional family created by his author mother in her popular series ‘The Triplets and Quinn.’ It is a gentle story which reels you in. Clare Morrall At the age of 60 Quinn is living in a caravan parked in the middle of a wooded roundabout. He enjoys the quiet and the solitude. He forages for items to reuse, and scavenges for leftover food at the nearby Primrose Valley service station. We learn he fled the family home, The Cedars, the setting for The Triplets and Quinn series, after spending his adult years there caring for his eccentric widowed mother and showing fans of her stories around the house. The real story of this family has been subsumed by his mother’s fiction, easy answers to inquisitive fans who spout fiction as if it is reality, and his unwillingness to face up to unpalatable truths.
As real life and his mother’s fiction merge in Quinn’s head, it is a while before Quinn (and we) start to piece together the real story. Meanwhile real life intrudes at the roundabout and Quinn is forced to socialise with the service station employees. When, individually, his sisters visit him, he ends up with no answers and more questions. Why did his parents foster so many disadvantaged children, and then seem not to care about them? Was the story about the fictional Quinn’s kidnap as a baby based on a true event? And are the casseroles, left anonymously on his caravan doorstep, left there by foster child Annie of whom Quinn has fond memories?
Yet again, another delightful novel from Clare Morrall. She is so good at delving into human nature, family connections and the unintended misunderstandings and mis-firings which can affect a person’s life. Is it too late for Quinn? With his parents, Mumski and the Professor dead, is the truth out of reach?
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Click the title to read my reviews of these other novels by Clare Morrall:-
AFTER THE BOMBING
NATURAL FLIGHTS OF THE HUMAN MIND
THE LANGUAGE OF OTHERS
THE LAST OF THE GREENWOODS
THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED

Read the first paragraph of ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR here.

If you like this,try:-
‘Perfect’ by Rachel Joyce
‘The Signature of All Things’ by Elizabeth Gilbert
‘The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes’ by Anna McPartlin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE ROUNDABOUT MAN by Clare Morrall http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1ZL via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 92… ‘Back When we were Grown-Ups’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

She was fifty-three years old by then – a grandmother. Wide and soft and dimpled, with two short wings of dry, fair hair flaring almost horizontally from a center part. Laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. A loose and colourful style of dress edging dangerously close to Bag Lady.

Give her credit: most people her age would say it was too late to make any changes. What’s done is done, they would say. No use trying to alter things at this late date.

It did occur to Rebecca to say that. But she didn’t.”
Anne TylerFrom ‘Back When We Were Grown-Ups’ by Anne Tyler

Here’s the #FirstPara of DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT, also by Anne Tyler.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Anne Tyler:-
A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD 
CLOCK DANCE
FRENCH BRAID
LADDER OF YEARS
REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
VINEGAR GIRL

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Couples’ by John Updike 
‘Jack Maggs’ by Peter Carey 
‘Norwegian Wood’ by Haruki Murakami 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWN-UPS by Anne Tyler http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Tg via @SandraDanby 

Great Opening Paragraph 90… ‘Queen Camilla’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, stood smoking a cheap cigarette on the back doorstep of Number Sixteen Hell Close. It was a cold afternoon in late summer. Occasionally she turned to watch her husband, Charles, the Prince of Wales, clattering the luncheon pots in the red washing-up bowl he’d bought on impulse that morning from the ‘Everything A Pound’ shop. He had borne the bowl home and presented it to her as though it were a precious religious artefact plundered from a sacked city.”
Sue Townsend From ‘Queen Camilla’ by Sue Townsend 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote 
‘The Collector’ by John Fowles 
‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara QUEEN CAMILLA by Sue Townsend #books http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vr via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 89… ‘The Children Act’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“London. Trinity term one week old. Implacable June weather. Fiona Maye, a High Court judge, at home on Sunday evening, supine on a chaise longue, staring past her stockinged feet towards the end of the room, towards a partial view of recessed bookshelves by the fireplace and, to one side, by a tall window, a tiny Renoir lithograph of a bather, bought by her thirty years ago for fifty pounds. Probably a fake. Below it, centred on a round walnut table, a blue vase. No memory of how she came by it. Nor when she last put flowers in it. The fireplace not lit in a year. Blackened raindrops falling irregularly into the grate with a ticking sound against balled-up yellowing newsprint. A Bokhara rug spread on wide polished floorboards. Looming at the edge of vision, a baby grand piano bearing silver-framed family photos on its deep black whine. On the floor by the chaise lounge, within her reach, the draft of a judgment. And Fiona was on her back, wishing all this stuff at the bottom of the sea.”
Ian McEwan From ‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan 

Here’s my review of THE CHILDREN ACT and these other McEwan novels:-
MACHINES LIKE ME
NUTSHELL

And try two more McEwan #FirstParas:-
ENDURING LOVE
THE CEMENT GARDEN

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Sea, The Sea’ by Iris Murdoch 
‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins 
‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE CHILDREN ACT by Ian McEwan http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vp via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 88… ‘To Have and Have Not’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“You know how it is there early in the morning in Havana with the bums still asleep against the walls of the buildings; before even the ice wagons come by with ice for the bars? Well, we came across the square from the dock to the Pearl of San Francisco Café to get coffee and there was only one beggar awake in the square and he was getting a drink out of the fountain. But when we got inside the café and sat down, there were three of them waiting for us.”
Ernest HemingwayFrom ‘To Have and Have Not’ by Ernest Hemingway

And here are the #FirstParas from other novels by Hemingway:-
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell 
‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding 
‘Possession’ by AS Byatt 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT by Ernest Hemingway http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vm via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 87… ‘Time Will Darken It’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“In order to pay off an old debt that someone else had contracted, Austin King had said yes when he knew that he ought to have said no, and now at five o’clock of a July afternoon he saw the grinning face of trouble everywhere he turned. The house was full of strangers from Mississippi; within an hour, friends and neighbours invited to an evening party would begin ringing the doorbell; and his wife (whom he loved) was not speaking to him.” William MaxwellFrom ‘Time Will Darken It’ by William Maxwell

Here’s my review of TIME WILL DARKEN IT.

Sample the #FirstPara of THE CHATEAU.

And read my reviews of these other novels by William Maxwell:-
BRIGHT CENTER OF HEAVEN
THE FOLDED LEAF
THEY CAME LIKE SWALLOWS

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Such a Long Journey’ by Rohinton Mistry 
‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by Mark Haddon 
‘Death in Summer’ by William Trevor 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara TIME WILL DARKEN IT by William Maxwell http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vh via @SandraDanby