Teaser Tuesday - June 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!

On another occasion, Sunday morning, and grandfather being in bed, a detective disguised as a poor working man that was almost dying for a drink, wheedled the old man's daughter to sell him liquor over the back wall - the result being a summons for supplying drink during closed hours, followed by a heavy fine, which was at once paid. The third time was at my trial with five other desperadoes, as described in the preceding chapter.

A final teaser from W H Davies 'The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp' - our BATS (book group) of last month. I generally enjoyed this it had some longeurs and some points where you felt you were reading a tale about a totally different person. I hadn't read this before but I remember a school friend praising it.

Teaser Tuesday - May 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!

Not knowing what to do with ourselves until that time arrived, we continued to drink until we were not in a fit condition for this hazardous undertaking - except we were fortunate to get an empty car, so as to lie down and sleep upon the journey. At last we made our way towards the yards, where we saw the men making up the train.

From W H Davies 'The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp' - our BATS (book group) book of the month - this one was a book from school days for one of our members. The tale of a man from the UK travelling around America in the late 19th century hitching lifts on the railways - the hazardous process he was about to undertake in the teaser.

Teaser Tuesday - June 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!

'Henry, so nice to see you again.' Mr Okabe wore grey flannel pants and a hat that made him look like Cary Grant. Like Keiko, he spoke beautiful English.

Another one from Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. I think this is heading toward the school of Dan Brown.. I spotted this sentence on p 238 'Even though near the end, as wonderful as it sounded, she'd had little appetite.' - the end is a character's death and the 'wonderful' relates to the menu in the previous sentence, it's not the end that is wonderful! I think that's just a little convoluted! What sort of hat does Cary Grant wear?

Teaser Tuesday - June 18

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 mean they weren't just Chinese, they were super-Chinese, if you know what I mean. They were like ice cubes in America's melting pot, you know - they had one way of doing things.'

Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - our book group book of the month. A tale of the Chinese and Japanese communities in Seattle during World War II and its aftermath. Bit of a breathless style so far, I will see whether I settle into it! (Yes I'm late for Tuesday again!)

Teaser Tuesday - Sept 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!

I feel when I am in it as if the air around me has shifted and it
is not the same air I breathed and moved in back in England, but
is some other substance. Can a building do such a thing?

From Tracy Chevalier's The Last Runaway our BATS (book group) book for the month, an American immigrant from a Quaker community view of the USA of the 1850's. I'm looking forward to this one!

A different pace?

A film taken from a streetcar in San Francisco though an area destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. Stephen Hough says this film from from 4 days before the earthquake though the youtube poster claims it is 1905 - there's various other dates floating around in the comments on Hough's blog.
A different attitude to traffic but with those folk diving across the road in front of things I'm not sure that it's much slower!

2 days in Paris

The final SilkScreen of the season, last night, was Julie Delpy's 2 days in Paris. You probably needed to like Woody Allen's work to enjoy this evisceration of certain attitudes and styles. Funny, bawdy and a delight. It took me a little time to get into - and that was combined with the SilkScreen's twitchy sound system and some projection issues but it is a lovely frothy comedy of manners - it had its dead moments - that argument by the canal just didn't work for me at all - but I would otherwise recommend it. I didn't realise until afterwards that Delpy's father, in the film, is her real father, their interaction is wonderful. Here's the trailer:

A dark and non-globally warmed night

The Slate has announced the results of a Write like Sarah Palin competition there's some wonderful (? ed) examples there. Here's part of Anne Sensenbrenner's winning entry:

One night after a long day of campaigning, when the haters had made my spirits reach a nadir, I looked into Todd's eyes, which were as blue as the stripes on Old Glory, and too representing truth and loyalty, and he looked back at me with a twinkle of determination which I hadn't seen since I told him my goal of having another baby in my fifties and naming it Tron, then did I know for sure

(etc), but go and read them all. Thanks to Chris Ambidge for the pointer.

Energy photos

Some sensational (IMHO) photos in todays Guardian of various power plants by Mitch Epstein.

In Britain, this might be regarded as somewhat cranky though pretty harmless, but in the mass paranoia of the post-9/11 Bush era, Epstein's journey became the act of an enemy of the state.
He was regularly stopped, searched, followed, run out of town, shouted at and interrogated by state police and the FBI. Simple pictures of electrical power production in the everyday landscape of middle America became an exploration of political and corporate power, a portrait of the American landscape and people defined by an energy-dependent consumer lifestyle.

We were lucky last week in our tour of Welsh power plants! His book is available here with some more photos.

Telling the truth about the NHS

A avaaz petition trying to educate American legislators about the NHS in their own health debate - go and sign it - there's currently over 90.000 names! (drawn to my attention by Mad Priest)
And an unrelated link about dreams after eating cheese fromBishop Alan - what dreams do you get after eating Stinking Bishop I wonder? (no imputation about that blogger's hygiene or attitudes!)
(Alas the shop in Macclesfield which used to sell Stinking Bishop has long gone)

Hatred and Intimidation in the USA

From Mark Doty's blog:

Later, my legs feel liquid, my heart isn't ready to slow down. Thinking about how strange it is for a woman alone to come after two six-foot guys. Thinking how she wanted this to happen, somehow -- singling us out for her rage instead of the people in the car ahead of her, coming back to provoke us, then running into the restaurant to fetch the men. So that she could feel her power over them, or us?

But go and read the whole thing!

Things have changed

.. at last Keep them to it! and may we support them in that