Tag Archives: am reading

Great Opening Paragraph 100… ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly – Tom’s Aunt Polly , she is – and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.”
Mark TwainFrom ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ by Mark Twain

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Diary of an Ordinary Woman’ by Margaret Forster
‘A Passage to India’ by EM Forster
‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ by Clare Morrall

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qJ via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 99… ‘Couples’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“‘What did you make of the new couple?’
The Hanemas, Piet and Angela, were undressing. Their bed-chamber was a low-ceilinged colonial room whose woodwork was painted the shade of off-white commercially called eggshell. A spring midnight pressed on the cold windows.”
John Updike From ‘Couples’ by John Updike 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Go-Between’ by LP Hartley
‘Vanishing Acts’ by Jodi Picoult
‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis

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

Great Opening Paragraph 97… ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.”
Mark Haddon From ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by Mark Haddon 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Brighton Rock’ by Graham Greene
‘Spies’ by Michael Frayn
‘Bel Canto’ by Anne Patchett

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME by Mark Haddon http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qu via @SandraDanby

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 share a link:
#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, featured in ‘Two Lives’

… and my review of LAST STORIES

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 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
THREE DAYS IN JUNE
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 share a link:
#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 share a link:
#Books #FirstPara QUEEN CAMILLA by Sue Townsend #books http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vr via @SandraDanby