First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the sea posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This is the First Chapter First Paragraph meme.

My entry this week comes from Shelley Jackson's Half Life: A Novel

Blanche, white night of my dark day. My sister, my self. Blanche: a cry building behind sealed lips, then blowing through. First the pout, then the plosive; the meow of the vowel; then the fricative sound of silence.
Shhhh.
Blanch is sleeping. She has been sleeping for fifteen years.
I can tell you the exact moment I knew she was waking up. But allow me a day's grace. Let me remember that last afternoon, unimportant in itself, wonderfully unimportant, when I was still Nora, just Nora, Nora Olney, Nora alone.

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the sea posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This is the First Chapter First Paragraph meme.


My entry this week comes from Amor Towles' Rules of Civility

On the night of October 4th, 1966, Val and I, both in late middle age, attended the opening of Many Are Called at the Museum of Modern Art--the first exhibit of the portraits taken by Walker Evans in the late 1930s on the New York City subways with a hidden camera.

It was what the social columnists liked to refer to as "a superlative affair.

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the sea posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This is the First Chapter First Paragraph meme.

After a few weeks away, my entry this week comes from Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending

I remember, in no particular order:

--a shiny inner wrist;
--steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;
--gouts of sperm circling a plughole, before being sluiced down the full length of a tall house;
--a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by a half dozen chasing torchbeams;
--another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface;
--bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door.

This last isn't something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

Ain't that the truth!

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the sea posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This is the First Chapter First Paragraph meme.


My entry this week comes from Ann Patchett's State of Wonder

The news of Anders Eckman's death came by way of Aerogram, a piece of bright blue airmail paper that served as both the stationery and, when folded over and sealed along the edges, the envelope. Who even knew they still made such things? This single sheet had traveled from Brazil to Minnesota to mark the passing of a man, a breath of tissue so insubstantial that only the stamp seemed to anchor it to this world. Mr. Fox had the letter in his hand when he came to the lab to tell Marina the news. When she saw him there at the door she smiled at him and in the light of that smile he faltered.

Patchett always gets me at the start and then it devolves into tedium around page 70. Perhaps this one will turnout differently!

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the sea posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This is the First Chapter First Paragraph meme.

My entry this week comes from Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton

The day I returned to Templeton steeped in disgrace, the fifty-foot corpse of a monster surfaced in Lake Glimmerglass. It was one of those strange purple dawns that color July there, when the bowl made by the hills fills with a thick fog and even the songbirds sing timorously, unsure of day or night.

Evocative, no? This has been on my TBR for years; perhaps this is the year!

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the sea posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This is the First Chapter First Paragraph meme.

My entry this week comes from Jay McInerney's The Good Life

Summer used to be as endless as the ocean when she was a girl and her family rented the gray shingled cottage on Nantucket. Now, she found it hard to believe she was already back in Manhattan and the kids were in school and she was already racing home, late again, feeling guilty that she'd lingered over a drink with Casey Reynes. The kids had been home for hours after their first day in first grade, and she had yet to hear about it.

Women blame themselves; men blamed anything but.

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the sea posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This is the First Chapter First Paragraph meme.

My entry this week comes from Martha Cooley's The Archivist

With a little effort, anything can be shown to connect with anything else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced. And everything has more than one definition. A cat is a mammal, a narcissist, a companion, a riddle.

Very true, very true. The complexity of human existence is best understood that everything connects to everything else in some fashion. Like Kevin Bacon.

First Chapter First Paragrah Tuesday

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the sea posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This is the First Chapter First Paragraph meme.


My entry this week comes from Paul Auster's Oracle Night: A Novel:

I had been sick for a long time. When the day came for me to leave the hospital, I barely knew how to walk anymore, could barely remember who I was supposed to be. Make an effort, the doctor said, and in three or four months you'll be back in the swing of things. I didn't believe him, but I followed his advice anyway. They had given me up for dead, and now that I had confounded their predictions and mysteriously failed to die, what choice did I have but to live as though a future life were waiting for me?

I've wanted to read this for awhile, and now that is the January read for The Rory Gilmore Book Club there is no excuse for not pulling it off the shelf. I'm intrigued as why the protagonist was given up for dead and, of course, why that route "didn't take."

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the sea posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This is the First Chapter First Paragraph meme.


My entry this week comes from Matthew Norman's Domestic Violets: A Novel (P.S.)

I splash cold water on my face.

This is what men in movies do when they're about to fly off the handle, when shit is getting out of control. I do this sometimes. I react to things based on what characters in movies do. That's kind of ironic, considering I've always thought of myself as a book person.

At least I think that's ironic. That word gets misused a lot.

My reaction upon reading this was "how can I not read this book?" Men in movies also splash cold water on their faces after shit has gotten out of control. Just saying.

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the sea posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This is the First Chapter First Paragraph meme.


My entry this week comes from Alice McDermott's Charming Billy: A Novel

Somewhere in the Bronx, only twenty minutes or so from the cemetery, Maeve found a small bar-and-grill in a wooded alcove set well off the street that was willing to serve the funeral party of forty-seven medium-rare roast beef and boiled potatoes and green beans amandine, with fruit salad to begin and vanilla ice cream to go with the coffee. Pitchers of beer and of iced tea would be placed along the table at intervals and the bar left open--it being a regular business day--for anyone who wanted a drink.

The inclusion of the number of servings of food would be available is what pulled me in. Who were the 47 members of the funeral party? Why were they attending "Charming Billy's" funeral? A quiet yet emotionally evocative read.

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros

Something new I want to try this year is participating in one or two book memes. One of the first I have decided to participate in is from Diane at Bibliophile by the sea.

Every Tuesday she posts the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). This sounds like a fun activity, so am going to schedule this activity for the next few weeks.


And for my inaugural "intro": Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce

When there was no Pepsi left for my rye whiskey, nieces, there was always ginger ale. No ginger ale? Then I had river water. River water's light like something between those two. And brown Moose River water's cold. Cold like living between two colours. Like living in this town. When the whiskey was Crown Royal, then brown Moose River water was a fine, fine mix.