Teaser Tuesday - July 12

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!

She hears the tap, tap, tap of the women's tobacco pipes.
During the night, fleas or lice feasted on her neck, breast and midriff.

This is a re-read of David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumn's of Jacob de Zoet. I originally read it back in 2010 and had been hoping our book group would get around to it, but it is a bit long for a month and there's some bits that are tough to read! But as a historical novel of the interaction between East and West it is fascinating. Set at the end of the 18th century in Nagasaki, I am much enjoying the re-read - here's my (few) thoughts from first time (with the other entry tagged so that it can be found!).

Teaser Tuesday - 13 July

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!

But Oost, on whom Grote's rum is having a benign effect. `Aye it did'. "Oost" is from "oost-Indische Compagnie" who funded the orphanage, and who'd deny there's "East" in my blood?

(Another extract, see yesterday for a slightly different feel) From David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - was nearly put off this by an uncomplimentary Guardian review but having heard a Radio 3 review of it I decided to give it a go. The interaction of East and West, Holland and Japan at the end of the 18th century. Here's Geoff Coupe's thoughts on the book.
(apologies for folk who comment here from teaser tuesday - I'm in a hotel on a slow connection but will eventually get around to looking at your links, for which I am grateful!)

Stillness

DSCF8175
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Another week of working away - two books to read (or at least start) and I enjoyed the conjunction of these two passages:

I can remember, as quite a small boy, lying beneath a huge chestnut tree and staring up into its branches, wondering at its nascent fruitfulness, and resting not just under its presence but somehow within it. All this is part of the person I am, but, for the present, it is chiefly lost to me. I am much too busy....

from Stephen Cottrell's DO nothing to change your life.

Gardening is harder labour than Jacob is used to, and yet, he admits to himself, I enjoy it. His tired eyes are rested by the living green; rosefinches pluck worms from the ramped-up earth; and a black-masked bunting, whose song sounds like clinking cutlery, watches from the empty cistern

from David Michell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

The picture is another from Buxton's Pavilion Gardens - anyone want to name the plant?