Teaser Tuesday - May 31

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!

Gregorius hesitated. The Liceu, as Agostinha had found out, had not been a religious school.

Very gnomic! Pascal Mercier's Night Train to Lisbon I've just finished this and am still thinking it over - I think it's a fascinating story - or is it just confusing. The story of Portugal in the 20th century and a book within a novel. The pianist Maria João Pires hovers around the text, sometimes mentioned and then in the name of another. I might give it a slower and more connected re-read. Here's a review:

It is a last chance for Gregorius to round-off his own heretofore inert life by scouring the landscape of a man who, in spite of his own unfulfilled ambitions, lived inside the bone-marrow of life at its most intense levels. If Gregorius wasn’t able to have it in own life, he is willing to live off the scraps of recounted memories and letters of someone else.

And Gregorius is even more willing to take a last-minute risk of spontaneity by walking out of the school where he teaches, packing his clothes, and taking a train to Lisbon.

I've just noticed that my second hand copy of this book has a mysterious phone number written on the first page! (you'll need to read at least the first chapter to understand this!)

Mutterings - May 31

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Trailor :: Tinker (!)
2. Marvel :: Comic
3. Socks :: Cat (the Clintons?)
4. Clump :: Nettles
5. Pick :: Bunch
6. Yellow :: Fever
7. Punished :: Beaten
8. Brass :: Monkey
9. Splatter :: Water pistol
10. Parts :: Naming (of)

Mutterings- May 22

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Disdain :: Scorn
2. Ridiculous :: Posture
3. Staple :: Diet
4. Junk :: Food
5. Sally :: Aunt
6. Satire :: TW3 (That Was The Week That Was - satire from the 60s)
7. Calculate :: Log
8. Remove :: List
9. Swollen :: Glands
10. Helpful :: Message

List

Mutterings- May 17

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Relevant :: Contemporary
2. Fester :: Wound
3. Moving :: Pictures
4. Bubble :: Westminster
5. Skyline :: Silhouette (spelt correctly I hope, well firefox agrees with me!)
6. Purchase :: Card
7. Strange :: Scary
8. Sticky :: Bob (a plant with lots of hooks and stickyness on its seed pods, I think that's what we called it)
9. Haircut :: Bob (inevitable given the line above!)
10. Package :: Postal

Teaser Tuesday - May 10

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!

While a dowry was an accepted part of a young woman's admission to holy orders, advance payment may have bordered on irregular practice. Gradually as the women started to show their worth, local support grew and the carping decreased.

from Fiona Maddocks Hildegard of Bingen The Woman of her Age lots of interesting historical detail but I'm not sure it quite gets to the person of the woman, though as a lot of the documentation is rather sketchy maybe that's not surprising? From the Observer review:

The 12th century anchorite Hildegard of Bingen possessed a clutch of talents which would make even the most eclectic of media-donnas curdle with envy. Writer, visionary, prophet, composer, artist, herbalist, politician, preacher, property owner, upbraider of emperors and favourite of Popes, she could even exorcise demons and heal the sick. She invented her own language, wrote one of the earliest surviving morality plays, established her own convent, terrorised her detractors, and, when she died, was mourned by nuns and reverently biographised by monks.

Maddocks reluctant view - in so far as she passes it on - is that Hildegard is more likely to have encouraged the music rather than written it herself.

Mutterings - May 10

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Training :: Physical
2. Welcome! :: Mat
3. Mold :: Penicillin
4. Transcript :: Verbatim
5. Inbox :: Folder
6. Spoils :: War (or to the victor?)
7. Presentation :: Laptop
8. Week :: 18 (at least it was on Friday!)
9. Keeper :: Finder
10. Mandatory :: Field

Teaser Tuesday - May 5

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 the meadow where the trail had been trodden into a narrow trench several inches deep she told me about the time the campers complained that there was a crazy guy in their campground who stayed up all night wandering in circles muttering to himself, a guy who turned out to be an eminent but deranged mathematician. Somewhere in the course of these stories - maybe during the one about the babysitter and the amanita mushrooms - Michael commented that the consequence of the theory that nature is supposed to make you happy is that those most desperately in search of happiness tend to show up there.

From Rebecca Solnit's wanderlust - A History of Walking' - I carefully chose these 2 sentences as they were far too much fun - 'there' is the Sierra Nevada. This book had - I thought a slow start I nearly abandoned it but I am now really enjoying the book. Here's the author's website and a review. I enjoyed the wide breadth of topics she covered - I'd read much of the climbing histories and rights of way issues in the Peak District in the 1930's but her writing about walking in Paris was interesting and often provocative. There did seem to be a lot of coverage of the same places though!

Mutterings - May 2

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Destroy :: Create
2. Recipe :: Method
3. Condemn :: Rule
4. Hallucinate :: Flashing
5. Blurry :: Vision
6. Notification :: Emailed
7. Version 2.0 :: 0 1
8. Moist :: Moss
9. Stagnate :: Stink (I don't think I'd spotted stagnate to get the above answer - sphagnum moss?)
10. Disaster :: Titanic