SomeReads

I’m debating what to do with this blog. I like blogging, but I don’t think I have enough to say to *just* book blog. I’m considering consolidating into just one blog that is general. If I do, I’ll post the link, just in case anyone is actually still reading when I *do* write.

Today’s teaser is from Soul Enchilada by David Macinnis Gill, p. 241.

We all shook hands and said thanks. I didn’t mind her kicking us to the curb. There wasn’t nothing else to say, and it was time for me to suck it up and take care of business. In junior English, we read this book about a mean-assed old lady who made this neighbor boy come over and read to her every day. Turned out, she was addicted to morphine, and she was using the reading to help kick the drug. She didn’t want to pass on in debt to anybody or anything. That’s exactly how I felt. I didn’t want to end my life beholden to anybody. But I didn’t want to give up trying, either. If I could only find somebody, anybody who could stand up to Beals the way that Old Scratch did.

I’m almost done with this one, so I can mostly write a review. Soul Enchilada is kind of like girl-from-the-hood meats Christopher Moore. Eighteen-year-old Bug has to save her soul, which was hocked for a Cadillac by her no-good grandfather. Good use of dialogue – you can really hear the different characters speak. A bit of word play. Overall, a cute book, but I won’t count it as a favorite.

I’m gonna do my own thing here. I don’t want to limit myself to 2 sentences. I want a whole paragraph. A whole paragraph gives a better feel for the author’s writing style.

From Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb, p. 187

“No, I didn’t know. Really?” My stomach twisted. In a shadowy corner of my mind, memories of my night with Felix peeked through – his lips on mine, his fingers. Ugh. What had I been thinking? Kelsey called him the Boy Whose Fingers Have Gone Where No Fingers Have Gone Before. It was disturbing on a staggering number of levels that my father’s best man would be someone I’d made out with and, even worse, would soon be related to. I’d never told Alex nor my father what we’d done; I hoped if I stopped thinking about it, it would just go away. After all, Felix seemed to have the same attitude. The couple of times we’d seen each other since, he’d ignore me. He was probably just as embarrassed as I was.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Today’s quote is from One Night of Madness by Stokes McMillan. This self-published book tells about a crime that took place in my home county in Mississippi in the 1950s. A real-live To Kill a Mockingbird in a way – just reversed. In this crime, the victims were African American and the perpetrators Caucasian. Having grown up the granddaughter of one of the Circuit Court judges (a position my father now holds), I recognize many names in this story (including my father’s, who is listed in the acknowledgments). However close to my heart, I am reading this book through the eyes of a librarian, though, and I must say, so far I am very much enjoying it!

As the cold air hit her bare arms and legs, Verlene jumped to the floor and charged past Leon. She ran to her traditional place of refuge when frightened as a little girl — her mother’s bed; crawling over Mary Ella, Nell, and James, she scampered to the spot of the mattress at the room’s corner.

p. 148

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Today’s quote should be my last from The Autobiography of Henry VIII, as I am less than 100 pages from finishing this tome. I apologize for my absence lately. Work has been so insanely busy that I honestly forget which day it is. There has been a change, though, and I think I might get my sanity back, if the past two days are any indication. Hopefully this will also mean more blogging.

We became husband and wife at four in the long summer afternoon at Oatlands, a royal manor house in Weybridge, about fifteen miles from London. The ceremony was entirely private, in contrast to that gaudy mistake with Anne of Cleves.

p. 678

This particular marriage was number 5, to Catherine Howard, by the way.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Today’s quote comes, again,  from The Autobiography of Henry VIII, with Notes by His Fool, Will Somers by Margaret George. I’m sure this trend will continue for the next few weeks, since this is such a tome! It’s good, though! I’m posting this quote for the pleasure of my husband, the astronomer, and am adding in a extra sentence.

Now I waited impatiently for More upon the flat roof directly over the royal apartments, which I had fitted up for my observatory. I had an astrolabe, a torquetum, and a solar quadrant mounted there, and a table for my charts and books. This roof afforded an exceptionally unobstructed view of the sky, as the Palace was on high ground far above all the surrounding trees, and the diffuse, distracting lights of London were five miles upstream.

p. 120

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Today’s quote comes from The Autobiography of Henry VIII, with Notes by His Fool, Will Somers by Margaret George.

The wedding banquet following the ceremony was splendid. Enormous tables ran down the entire length of the Hall at Westminster, heavy with gold plate and extravagant dishes–three-tiered castles, pheasants, gilded swans, replicas of lakes–all created by the King’s clever pastry artists.

p. 47

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Today’s quote comes from a bound galley of Drake’s Bay by T.A. Roberts.  Since my page numbers don’t correspond with Goodreads, I’m sure they differ from the published edition.

I drove Molly downtown and waited while she found a cab. By the time I got back to the boat it was dark, and I had a peaceful moment contemplating Drake, portholes aglow and the sounds of Corelli drifting up the companionway.

Drake’s Bay by T.A. Roberts, p. 54, bound galley

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week’s quote comes from Lights, Camera, Amalee by Dar Williams, p. 75

By the end of the afternoon, we had three papier-maiche masks: a big one for John, a small one for Marin, and a bigger one for Sarah that had two heads. Marin would be the tiny, colorful rainforest frog with the poisonous skin.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My first Teaser Tuesday in a while…

I just started A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert, so I don’t have much to pick from right now. (I only pick from a part of the book I’ve already read.) This quote is from p. 8:

This, this, they say, gesturing out to the cold blue hills beyond or the pile of rubble, a former castle, on the crest, or the rotten silver oak they have hacked to a stump, the weather already turned and Madame Lane’s in need of heat. There is never enough heat, and the women who look after us rise earliest in the morning to scour the dead limbs of the silver oak for kindling, the heels of their palms riddled with splinters, hard blisters.

So far, I don’t care for the book, but it’s written from the perspective of 5 different generations of women, and I have only read the first section. I am going to give it more time and see if the writing style changes with the different women.

The northern hemisphere, at least, is socked in by winter right now… So, on a cold, wintry day, when you want nothing more than to curl up with a good book on the couch … what kind of reading do you want to do?

Houston doesn’t get all that many cold, wintry days, and inevitably when we do, I have to work! However, on those rare occasions that I do get to curl up with a good book on a cold day, it doesn’t really matter that much to me what I’m reading, as long as I’m reading! I prefer something that I can lose myself in, but usually I just pick up whatever I happen to be reading at the time.