Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Teaser Tuesday - 28 Aug



Teaser Tuesday

The rules are:
  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
  • You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!
When I noticed the first book missing, I thought I had simply misplaced it, but then I saw the outlines of some feet on the floor in certain patches of the light.
It made me smile.
Getting towards the end of my re-read of Markus Zusak's Book Thief.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Mutterings - 26th August

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:
  1. Call :: Phone
  2. Instinct :: Gut
  3. Toffee :: Hammer
  4. Cleaner :: Joke
  5. Gut :: Digestion
  6. Leveled :: Scraped
  7. Discover :: Surprise
  8. Together :: Better
  9. Attack :: Bot
  10. String :: Puppet (Sandie Shaw....)

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Teaser Tuesday - 21 August



Teaser Tuesday

The rules are:
  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
  • You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!
Enter Mr Guppy, who nods to Mr Snagsby, and touches his hat with the chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.
`I was strolling away from the office just now, when I found this row going on' says Mr Guppy to the law-stationer, 'and as your name was mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be looked into.'
More from Dickens' Bleak House - I'm nearly half way through the 750 pages...

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Mutterings - 19th August

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:
  1. Course :: Golf
  2. Delusion :: Paranoid
  3. Silly :: Billy
  4. Intrepid :: Disaster
  5. Candle :: Both Ends
  6. Entrance :: Grand (of the Queen of Sheba)
  7. Voracious :: Hunger
  8. Taste :: Honey
  9. Bobble :: Hat
  10. Horror :: Story

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Cocktail Music

In the evenings I'm currently slowly reading my way through an anthology of the poetry of Chase Twichell - I've quoted her before here - I found a large anthology of her poetry at the Oxfam in Alderley Edge a few months ago. This poem seemed especially appropriate as, the evening I read it, we'd just returned from an evening which started with contemplative prayer and ended with a cocktail party (at the same place!) - note the initials of both events! Twichell has made a close study of Zen Buddhism and her poems reflect that.
         Cocktail Music

All my life a brook of voices
has run in my ears,
many separate instruments
tuning and playing, tuning.
It's cocktail music,
the sound of my parents
in their thirties,
glass-lined ice bucket loaded
and reloaded but no one tending bar,
little paper napkins, cigarettes,
kids passing hors d'oeuvres.
It's drinking music,
riffle of water over stones,
ice in glasses, rise and fall
of many voices touching-
that music. Husbands grilling meat,
squirting the fire to keep it down,
a joke erupting, bird voices snipping
at something secret by the bar.
It's all the voices collapsed
into one voice,
urgent and muscled like a river
then lowered as in a drought,
but never gone. It's the background.
When I lift the shell to my ear
it's in there.
(from Dog Language)
And here she is reading Negligent Worldicide (from Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been)

Teaser Tuesday - 14th August



Teaser Tuesday

The rules are:
  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
  • You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!
He followed him over to the right and jabbed him once more and opened him up with a punch that reached into his ribs. The right hand that ended him landed on his chin.
Dramatic stuff! A re-read of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief - I teased this a few years ago it is now my book group's book for the month so I'm reading both this and continuing to progress slowly through Dicken's Bleak House!

Monday, August 13, 2012

Lilies - i

Lilies - i by rajmarshall
Lilies - i, a photo by rajmarshall on Flickr.

Even though it wasn't a sunny day, the lilies were out in the garden and I wandered out at lunchtime to see them.

Mutterings - 12th August

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:
  1. View :: World (Room with a...)
  2. Yoga :: Position
  3. Giggle :: Fun
  4. Raider :: Dawn
  5. Summer :: (of) Love
  6. Debt :: Clearing
  7. Cleaning :: Party
  8. Sneakers :: Pumps
  9. Thwarted :: Scheme
  10. Recipes :: Book

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Teaser Tuesday - 7th August



Teaser Tuesday

The rules are:
  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
  • You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!
In consequence of which she got into the habit of saying to me at meals, "Mr Snagsby, you haven't found Nimrod any work yet!" or "My Snagsby, why didn't you give that eight-and-thirty Chancery folio in Jarndyce, to Nimrod?" or suchlike. And that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our place; and that is the most I know of him, except that he was a quick hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work; and that if you gave him, say five-and-forty folio on Wednesday night, you would have it brought in on the Thursday morning.
Sentences within sentences! Bleak House - Charles Dickens analysis of the intricacies of the 19th century English legal system. It's hard going - a very complex novel with lots of characters, I've never read it before and I dont think I saw any of the BBC adaptions - but it summons up an era. Look at that second sentence starting with 'And' together with a few more 'ands' in the rest of it - some of my English teachers would have had a seizure! The wikipedia plot summary may be helpful at the expense of a few spoilers!
(looks like I'm eventually back on the correct date for these postings!)

Sunday, August 05, 2012

Mutterings - 5th August

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:
  1. Rude :: Health
  2. Leather :: Chaps
  3. Headquarters :: General
  4. Good guys :: White hats
  5. Blowing :: Bubbles
  6. Doddering :: Stick
  7. Instructional :: Manual
  8. Standards :: Coding
  9. Eatery :: Winery
  10. Vampire :: Bats