Teaser Tuesday - 13 Feb

Well a bit late but lets try to bring this back!
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!

Mrs Ellis had spotted them: Tom and Gabiella. She'd been a witness, one of the last people to have seen my sister.

From our BATS (book group) book of the month - `The Missing Girl' Jenny Quintana - we're currently working our way through the Author alphabet and this month is (surprise!) Q. I think this is heading to be traumatic if it isn't there already!

I see Teaser Tuesday is now hosted here if you wish to go and thank Ambrosia or get other ideas.

Teaser Tuesday - May 15

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!

Shelley and Stanley passed a joint between them and we all drank tea and talked and then went out and stood crowded on their tiny balcony to watch the muted sunrise through columns of blown rain. It was a good night.

from Gwendoline Riley's Cold Water our book group book of March, I selected this having been asked for a book of local interest. This book of a worker in a Manchester Northern Quarter bar with an ex-boyfriend in Macclesfield appeared to fit the bill! I was though one of the few who enjoyed the book - a bit dank and dismal but wonderful observations!

Teaser Tuesday - Aug 29

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!

I instinctively performed an appraisal comparable to a Homeland Security Threat Assessment. Were we facing a Low, Guarded, Elevated, High, or Severe Threat Level?

from Jesus, My Father, The CIA and Me by Ian Morgan Cron. This was our book group book of the month. I wanted to like this and it tried very hard (too hard!) to be liked, but I just couldn't engage with this. It's a story of US minister growing up with an alcoholic father who worked for the CIA and sidelong looks at how his childhood affected his life. Glowing testimonies by well known Christian writers prefaced the book I wondered whether they'd read the same book! It was a book you either loved or hated the ceaseless rush of peripheral anecdotes just turned me off! Another sentence

Every eleven-year-old boy in the Western Hemisphere chooses to play one of two instruments: the snare drum or the trumpet.

- no they don't!

Teaser Tuesday - Aug 1

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!

"It's not easy to open, Mr Okada," said Creta Kano. I realized she was standing there - and in her early sixties outfit.

from Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Our book group book of the month, some seriously weird stuff here! A novel on contemporary Japan and its development from World War II.

Teaser Tuesday - Aug 24

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!

Nombeko answered him in English and told the truth: that the Israeli Mossad had just barged into the house with the aim of commandeering the atomic bomb in the potato truck. And maybe, while he was at it, killing one or two of the people in the room.

I don't think this is really a spoiler, nothing would surprise me with this plot of The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden (Jonas Jonasson). But I found it hard to be involved - or amused.

Teaser Tuesday - Aug 9

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 perhaps this arrangement was the solution to Nombeko's dilemma. She could move in with the engineer, let her wounds heal and run away on the day she felt that the National Library in Pretoria could no longer wait.

The Girl who saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson. Our book group book of the month - I think this was a book set in a foreign country. Fast paced but maybe a little too fast for its own good? Early days yet! Here's the goodreads comments - looks like a book to either love or hate!

Teaser Tuesday - July 28

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 knew he had not thought sufficiently of this, that he had been carried away by enthusiasm, and had hitherto not brought home to himself the full reality of his position.
He thought most about his daughter, naturally.

From Anthony Trollope's The Warden - our BATS book of the month - a classic read category - which I've quite enjoyed his dissection of the foibles of the Victorian Church. (getting to this post in the end!)

Teaser Tuesday - June 22

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!

'We have missed you,' I said. 'We have rejoiced at your victory.'
Henry risked a kiss to my icy cheek.

from Anne O'Brien's The Queen's Choice Our book group (BATS) book of the month - historical category - Here's a review and an interview with the author. With some reservations I'm quite enjoying this tale of a piece of English history I didn't know much about.

Teaser Tuesday - June 7

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!

I have great respect for Brian Cox. He has a brain so big that it crosses whole time zones. and he is normally impeccable with the language, so why on earth would he say 'the bombardier beetle and me' when it is surely more natural, and clearly more respectable, to say 'the bombardier beetle and I'?

Bill Bryson - The Road to Little Dribbling. This was our book group book for last month, I seem not to have teased it yet. I wanted to like this and did enjoy bits of it but there was far too much irony in it for my taste. I caricatured it, at our meeting last night as hunks of irony separated by disasters at sea!
(Finally notices that Teaser tuesday has moved!)

Teaser Tuesday - Apr 19

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!

"Those who are on the bottom always want to be on top, those who are on top want to stay on top, and one way or another they always reach the point where they're kicking and spitting at each other."
"That's exactly why problems should be resolved before violence breaks out."

From The Story of a New Name Elena Ferrante. Our book group book for the month I'm currently enjoying this - I've not read the first book in the series but I didn't find that an obstacle. We've gone from one pseudonymous novel (The Cuckoo's Calling) to another. It's not a short novel but easy to read and carries you with it, the way she (the writer) inhabits each moment makes the growing up that the characters undergo fascinating. Here'a Guardian article about her.

Teaser Tuesday - Mar 29

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!

The film jumped. Here again was the blurred view of the same intersection, apparently deserted, the same heavy flakes of snow obscuring the view, but now the clock in the lower corner read 02:12.

The private investigator trawls through CCTV footage in Robert Galbraith's 'The Cuckoo's Calling'. (maybe not next week!). We've - as a book group - recently started another sequence of novels for each month on themes and are starting off with crime.

Teaser Tuesday -

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!

Why did you die when the lambs were cropping?
You should have died at the apples’ dropping,
When the grasshopper comes to trouble,
And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble,
And all winds go sighing
For sweet things dying.

Bit of an atypical teaser as it's the poem by Christina Rossetti which introduces Robert Galbraith (aka J K Rowling's) the Cuckoo's Calling - the book title occurs earlier in the quote! Our bookgroup book of the month, and this is a easy (and good) read - at least so far! I intend to tease something from the actual text next week!

Teaser Tuesday - Mar 2

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 came and got it for me, and after she put the bottle back I could gloat over there being more gone out of it then out of the crme de menthe bottle. "Now everyone will think the cherry brandy's the popular one," I thought.

Cassandra sample's the pub's spirit section in a final teaser from Dodie Smith's 'I capture the castle' which I finished last night. Here's my previous teaser, I think it rather overdoes the quirky and I wondered if Harper Lee had seen it before writing To Kill a Mockingbird, totally different environments and one narrator far more frivolous than the other but...

Teaser Tuesday - Feb 17

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!

As it turned out, the potato-cakes were spoilt; because while we were eating them, we had one of those family rows which are so funny in books and on the pictures. They aren't funny in real life, particularly when they happen at meals, as they so often do.

From Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle our book group book of the month. Here's the goodread reviews and another review:

the novel’s plot wavers between the predictable and the absurd, with a superfluous dash of theatricality.

Teaser Tuesday - Jan 20

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!

A little late again!

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.

Anne Bradstreet 'To My Dear and Loving Husband' from Poems to Learn by Heart - Ana Sampson. Here's a piece on the Bradstreet poem. The Sampson anthology is our book group book of the month, it contains a lot that's very familiar but also some rarer items. Here's an interview with Sampson.

Teaser Tuesday - Dec 15

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!

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchants cellar.

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, I thought the 3rd sentence continued the teaser nicely. Well enough known for the passage I've quoted to be identified easily? Seasonal reading for our book group, it's been many years since I read this, a vivid description of social conditions in the 1800s but sometimes over-flowery!

Teaser Tuesday - Dec 1

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!

A saddler in Eyup assumed the leadership of the throng. He preached that the Jews and the Christians were People of the Book and, though in error, they were not evil.

Another teaser from Elif Shafak's 'The Architect's Apprentice, I'm still enjoying this but am finding it a bit episodic. And then there's the moments when I think that instead of being in the medieval Middle East this book is really based in Yorkshire - based on the place name in the above extract! Sorry I'll get my coat.

Teaser Tuesday - Nov 24

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!

'Yes, your Highness. Chota fought well,' said Jahan. He did not tell her how the animal had gored soldiers, and how he still felt guilty about having taught him to do so.

From Elif Shafak's 'The Architect's Apprentice' - our book group book of the month. Here's the review from the Spectator. So far, an easy read which I'm quite enjoying, lots of derring-do and holds the attention, as that review says there's a simplicity which might almost suggest a children's book apart from some uncompromising scenes. Shafak is a Turkish author who conjours up 16th century Istanbul well and in the plot I'm about to get to Rome and Michelangelo!

Teaser Tuesday -Nov 17

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!

It is now William who is stepping into the sunset and Dorothy who has lost direction, looking behind her as she goes. She writes up the honeymoon as is she were feeling her way back into herself.

A final teaser from The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth' by Frances Wilson. I said last time I teased from this book that I was finding it very hard going. I found the final 3 chapters a lot easier. Maybe I was getting into the style but it did feel as if there were more of a narrative thread I could get a handle on towards the end. The honeymoon was that of William and Mary Wordsworth, Dorothy was 'just' an onlooker. I was reading in parallel with this the short stories of Somerset Maugham and it was spooky to be reading his tale the Bookbag alongside this (totally coincidentally!) which deals with a tale of brother sister incest told in the light of the probable relationship between Lord Byron and his sister!

Teaser Tuesday - Oct 27

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!

There is also, Liveing says, a form of migraine 'trance' in which the sufferer feels a drowsiness so extreme that he falls into a waking sleep or a living death. Dorothy described to Jane back in her Forncett days how she was unable to deal with the tiredness that came on with her headaches, being 'less able to support any fatigue and ... more troubled with headache than I ever remember to have been'.

From our BATS (book group) book of the month - The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth' by Frances Wilson. It's described as a biography of Dorothy, there's an awful lot of digging into the psyche, and I'm currently finding it hard going (and I'm not alone!). Here's an extract, she quotes this -

Ernest de Selincourt's describes Dorothy as 'probably the most remarkable and the most distinguished of English prose writers who never wrote a line for the general public'.

and the Guardian review.