~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. To participate share the opening paragraph or two of a book (I have a third one, today, sorry!) you've decided to read based on that paragraph. I enjoy books that are set in Ireland  or include Irish characters since, with half my family Irish, Ireland has always been an influence in my life. This book, first published in 1929, is set primarily in Cork, during the Irish War of Independence, or the Anglo-Irish War, a time of unrest and violence in Ireland when, in a fight for independence, the Irish Republican Army attacked the British government forces in Ireland.. A movie based on this book came out in 1999. I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie, although it seems it's taken me a while to get around to reading the book!

Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this fun meme.

The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen

About six o'clock the sound of a motor, collected out of the wide country and narrowed under the trees of the avenue, brought the household out in excitement on to the steps. Up among the beeches, a thin iron gate twanged; the car slid out of a net of shadows down the slope to the house. Behind the flashing windscreen Mr. and Mrs. Montmorency produced--arms waving and a wild escape to the wind of her mauve motor veil--an agitation of greeting. They were long-promised visitors. They exclaimed, Sir Richard and Lady Naylor exclaimed and signalled: no one spoke yet. It was a moment of happiness, of perfection.

In those days, girls wore crisp white skirts and transparent blouses clotted with white flowers; ribbons threaded through with a view to appearance, ap-peared over the shoulders. So that Lois stood at the top of the steps looking cool and fresh; she knew how fresh she must look, like other young girls, and clasping her elbows tightly behind her back tried hard to conceal her embarrassment. The dogs came pattering out from the hail and stood beside her; above, the large façade of the house stared coldly over its mounting lawns. She wished she could freeze the moment and keep it always. But as the car approached, as it stopped, she stooped down and patted one of the dogs.

As the car drew up the Montmorencys unwound from their rugs. They stood shaking hands and laughing in the yellow theatrical sunshine. They had motored over from Carlow. Two toppling waves of excitement had crashed and mingled; for moments, everybody was inaudible. Mrs. Montmorency looked up the steps. "And this is the niece!" she exclaimed with delight. "Aren't we dusty!" she added, as Lois said nothing. "Aren't we too terribly dusty!" And a tired look came down at the back of her eyes at the thought of how dusty she was.

What are your thoughts about these paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. To participate share the opening paragraph or two of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph. When I had the opportunity to review this book, I read the information provided by Trish at TLC Book Tours and then searched for an excerpt. When I read the excerpt, I was hooked and knew I had to read this book despite how painful and sad it might be.

Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme who can be found in the comments!

Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty

Muscle has memory; the body knows things the mind won’t admit. Two police officers were at my door - uniformed, arranged - yet even as the door swung open upon them, which was surely the moment that I knew, even then, my conscious self was seeking other explanations, turning around and around, like a rat in a cage. Muscle memory - not the same thing as instinct, of course, but related: pianists know about this, and tap dancers, and anyone who has ever given birth. Even those who have never done anything more physical than toe their shoelaces know it. The body is quicker than the mind. The body can be trusted.

It has taken them longer than it should have to come to my house with the news. Betty was not carrying any form of identification. When this policewoman explains this she does so gently, neutrally, but I choose to hear criticism. I am sitting on my sofa, perched on the edge. The gas fire is on. On the carpet before me a magazine from the previous weekend’s newspapers lies open where I left it - I was reading it this morning, crouched before the fire. The more junior of the officers, a young man, thin and pale, is standing by the door. The woman in charge - older, blonde - has sat down next to me but her body is half-turned to face me. I have invited them in I have asked this news across my threshold.

I am trying to understand what they are telling me, the larger picture, but I seize upon a detail. They weren’t carrying identification. They. She was with her friend Willow. Willow and Betty. “She’s nine,” I say.

What are your thoughts about these paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. To participate share the opening paragraph or two of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph. I read about this book on the website of the book publisher, Algonquin and was hooked. Algonquin was great about sending me a copy and I’m looking forward to reading this satiric story about a frustrated novelist who discovers online poker...for better or worse.

Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme who can be found in the comments!

Pocket Kings by Ted Heller

It is a cold and harrowing morning in the life of a man the day he wakes up, looks at himself in the mirror, and finally realizes that he is not, has never been and never will be George Clooney. A magnificent, eternal ideal has been floating out there: it was a paragon of the perfect human being this man had wanted to become. He wanted to look like him, act like him, talk and think like him. He wanted to be him and shed the creaky body and cranky soul and unexciting past of the man he was. And now he realizes: it isn’t happening and it’s not going to - Damn it, I’m just going to go on being me.


Perfection will not only forever elude this broken man; it won’t even get close enough to tickle his bald spot, pinch his love handles, or tug on his double chin. If he were as much as half-perfect he wouldn’t be here; he wouldn’t be looking at his reflection in his smudged bathroom mirror, wishing with all his might that he were someone else. And it’s too late: it won’t ever happen. He knows it now. Excellence, courage, wit, grace, confidence...they’ve all slipped away. The luminous spirit of the ideal man has fled the scene and isn’t coming back. It’s all over now, Baby Blue. James Bond is long gone, my friend. You will never play centerfield for the Yankees, you will never be Tiger Woods or Spider-man, you won’t win an Oscar and own a large yacht and sleep with famous women. The closest you’ll ever get to being Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen is playing Guitar Hero. You’ve always been you and will always be you and now there’s nothing left to do but ride Life’s Moving Sidewalk Unto Death.

What are your thoughts about these paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday.   To participate share the opening paragraph or two of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph. When I was contacted about reviewing this book, I read an excerpt and was immediately hooked. The author’s writing is beautiful and I’m curious about the story...I also love that part of the book is set in New York City!

Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme who can be found in the comments!

Open City by Teju Cole

And so when I began to go on evening walks last fall, I found Morningside Heights an easy place from which to set out into the city. The path that drops down from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and crosses Morningside Park is only fifteen minutes from Central Park. In the other direction, going west, it is some ten minutes to Sakura Park, and walking northward from there brings you toward Harlem, along the Hudson, though traffic makes the river on the other side of the trees inaudible. These walks, a counterpoint to my busy days at the hospital, steadily lengthened, taking me farther and farther a field each time, so that I often found myself at quite a distance from home late at night, and was compelled to return home by subway. In this way, at the beginning of the final year of my psychiatry fellowship, New York City worked itself into my life at walking pace.

Not long before this aimless wandering began, I had fallen into the habit of watching bird migrations from my apartment, and I wonder now if the two are connected. On the days when I was home early enough from the hospital, I used to look out the window like someone taking auspices, hoping to see the miracle of natural immigration. Each time I caught sight of geese swooping in formation across the sky, I wondered how our life below might look from their perspective, and imagined that, were they ever to indulge in such speculation, the high-rises might seem to them like firs massed in a grove. Often, as I searched the sky, all I saw was rain, or the faint contrail of an airplane bisecting the window, and I doubted in some part of myself whether these birds, with their dark wings and throats, their pale bodies and tireless little hearts, really did exist. So amazed was I by them that I couldn’t trust my memory when they weren’t there.

What are your thoughts about these paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. In this meme, share the opening paragraph(s) of a book you've decided to read based on the paragraph(s). There was no question for me that I wanted to review this book after reading an excerpt from it. I’m really looking forward to experiencing this promising debut. A few different passages from this book can be found on-line, if you‘re interested.


Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants. Chances are you’ll find at least one book to add to your wish list!

Night Swim by Jessica Keener

Prelude

Mickey Fineburg’s email brings everything back again.


Hi, Sarah. Remembering those good ol’ days in the neighborhood. Saw your CDs online. Sampled the links. Wow! Impressive. How did you end up in California?


I kissed Mickey under a broken pool table in my basement. We were eight, his lips warm as play dough, pressing with earnest intention. I pressed back, happy and unafraid, oblivious to Mickey’s younger brother watching us. That night at the dinner table Mother looked stern and surprised. She said: Mickey’s mother called me. You’re too young to start, Sarah.


Start what? I wondered.


I do a quick search online. His company bio says he resides in Greenwich, Connecticut, after living in London for twenty-three years. Married with three children. I write Mickey back - “Thank you so much. I moved west after high school. Just read your company bio. Did you like living overseas?”

What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. In this meme share the opening paragraph(s) of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph(s). I’m participating in Orange January being hosted by Jill at The Magic Lasso. This book was nominated for the Orange Prize several years ago. I have read two other books by this author, one of which was fantastic, the other just okay. I’m interested to see what I think about this book which looks promising based on the premise!
Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants. Chances are you’ll find at least one book to add to your wish list!

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

At eight o'clock in the evening, the Baltimore airport was nearly deserted. The wide gray corridors were empty, and the newsstands were dark, and the coffee shops were closed. Most of the gates had admitted their last flights. Their signboards were blank and their rows of vinyl chairs unoccupied and ghostly.


But you could hear a distant hum, a murmur of anticipation, at the far end of Pier D. You could see an overexcited child spinning herself into dizziness in the center of the corridor, and then a grownup popping forth to scoop her up and carry her, giggling and squirming, back into the waiting area. And a latecomer, a woman in a yellow dress, was rushing toward the gate with an armful of long-stemmed roses.


Step around the bend, then, and you'd come upon what looked like a gigantic baby shower. The entire waiting area for the flight from San Francisco was packed with people bearing pink- and blue-wrapped gifts, or hanging on to flotillas of silvery balloons printed with IT'S A GIRL! and trailing spirals of pink ribbon. A man gripped the wicker handle of a wheeled and skirted bassinet as if he planned to roll it onto the plane, and a woman stood ready with a stroller so chrome-trimmed and bristling with levers that it seemed capable of entering the Indy 500. At least half a dozen people held video cameras, and many more had regular cameras slung around their necks. A woman spoke into a tape recorder in an urgent, secretive way. The man next to her clasped an infant's velour-upholstered car seat close to his chest.

What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. In this meme, I share the opening paragraph(s) of a book I've decided to read based on the paragraph(s). I’m participating in Orange January  hosted by The Magic Lasso. This is one of the books nominated for the Orange Prize that I plan to read. It’s received some wonderful reviews from other bloggers and I’m really looking forward to reading this book as well as several of the author‘s other books.
Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
 

So this, said Kay to herself, is the sort of person you've become: a person whose clocks and wrist-watches have stopped, and who tells the time, instead, by the particular kind of cripple arriving at her landlord's door.


For she was standing at her open window, in a collarless shirt and a pair of greyish underpants, smoking a cigarette and watching the coming and going of Mr Leonard's patients. Punctually, they came — so punctually, she really could tell the time by them: the woman with the crooked back, on Mondays at ten; the wounded soldier, on Thursdays at eleven. On Tuesdays at one an elderly man came, with a fey-looking boy to help him: Kay enjoyed watching for them. She liked to see them making their slow way up the street: the man neat and dark-suited as an undertaker, the boy patient, serious, handsome — like an allegory of youth and age, she thought, as done by Stanley Spencer or some finicky modern painter like that.


After them there came a woman with her son, a little lame boy in spectacles; after that, an elderly Indian lady with rheumatics. The little lame boy would sometimes stand scuffing up moss and dirt from the broken path to the house with his great boot, while his mother spoke with Mr Leonard in the hall. Once, recently, he'd looked up and seen Kay watching; and she'd heard him making a fuss on the stairs, then, about going on his own to the lavatory.


"Is it them angels on the door?" she had heard his mother say. "Good heavens, they're only pictures! A great boy like you!"
Kay guessed it wasn't Mr Leonard's lurid Edwardian angels that frightened him, but the thought of encountering her. He must have supposed she haunted the attic floor like a ghost or a lunatic.

What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. In this meme, share the opening paragraph (or two) of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph. This is a book I requested from TLC Book Tours to review for their January/February book tours after I read an excerpt of this book This book sounds sad and harrowing but very interesting with a compelling female character at the center of the story. I could not pass up this book!


Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea to read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme!

All the Flowers in Shanghai by Duncan Jepson

I still know your face. I see it clearly as it was at the very beginning, not how it was left after I had hurt you.


I did not see the brightness of new life in your eyes when you were born or cradle your warm fleshy body to my chest, and wish now that I had. I wish I had just looked… but I did not let myself because to me you were still-born. You were not a living person to me then, but an object of hatred, created merely to be beaten and scarred.

When I think back through the tiredness and hunger we have endured for years now, searching through the pages of my memory that still serve me faithfully, I know I saw your lovely face when I was a young girl. It was in 1932 while I was out walking with Grandfather in those public gardens adjacent to our house, now forgotten and laid waste like the rest of Shanghai. I am certain now that I have always known and loved your face, it was only terror and pain that held me back from you. But all that I suffered then seems nothing compared to the suffering now being inflicted across this country and I know that I should never have let anything stop me from loving you. I wish that all those years ago I’d had the courage just to look at you, to feel the need and unconditional love in your fragile little body.

What are your thoughts about these opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. Share the opening paragraph (or two) of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph. I requested an ARC of this book from the publisher through Shelf Awareness after I read about the story and then an excerpt. This is a novel about several flawed characters and their dysfunctional relationships over a period of years. These kind of books always interest me and the opening paragraphs grabbed my attention.


Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea to read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this fun meme!

Carry the One by Carol Anshaw

So Carmen was married, just. She sat under a huge butter moon, on a windless night in the summer of 1983, at a table, in front of the remains of some chicken cordon bleu. She looked toward the improvised dance floor where her very new husband was doing the Mexican hat dance with several other large men, three of them his brothers, other Sloans. Matt was a plodding hat-dancer; his kicks threw the others off the beat. In spite of this lack of aptitude, he was waving her over, beckoning her to join in. She waved back as though she thought he was just saying hi. She was hoping to sit out this early phase of her marriage, the mortifying dances segment.
“Don’t be discouraged. Everything will get better from here.”
This was Jean Arbuthnot, who sat next to Carmen, tapping the ash of her cigarette onto her rice pilaf. Jean and Alice, Carmen’s sister, were among the artists who had taken over this old farm in the middle of Wisconsin. Jean played and recorded traditional folk music in a workshop on the edge of the property. Alice painted in a studio that occupied half the barn.
“Bad dancer doesn’t mean anything else, does it?” Carmen said. Matt was now doing a white-guy boogie to a bad cover of “Let’s Get Physical,” shooting his hands out in an incoherent semaphore. “Like being bad at parallel parking means you’re bad in bed?” She pushed back her chair. “I’ve got to pee. This is apparently a big part of being pregnant. I didn’t know that before.”

What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. Share the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph. I received this book many months ago and it's been catching my eye at least once a day ever since. I wanted to read it when I received it and I want to read it even more now! The author is very well known and highly praised for her short stories. There have been many very positive reviews about this novel, too.  My BBAW interview blogger match, Gayle, Everyday I Write the Book, named it as one of her top five favorite books of 2011, too!


Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme who can be found in the comments!

The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson

The bride and groom had two wedding receptions: the first was in the basement of the Lutheran church right after the ceremony, with punch and cake and coffee and pastel mints. This was for those of the bride's relatives who were stern about alcohol. The basement was low-ceilinged and smelled of metallic furnace heat. Old ladies wearing corsages sat on folding chairs, while other guests stood and managed their cake plates and plastic forks as best they could. The pastor smiled with professional benevolence. The bride and groom posed for pictures, buoyed by adrenaline and relief. There had been so much promised and prepared, and now everything had finally come to pass.


By five o'clock the last of the crowd had retrieved their winter coats and boots from the cloakroom and headed out. It was January, with two weeks of hard-packed snow underfoot and more on the way, and most of them had long drives from Grenada, over country roads to get back home. The second reception was just beginning at the American Legion hall, where there would be a buffet supper, a bar, and a dance band.

What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros: A Visit from the Goon Squad ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday.  Share the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph.  I have wanted to read this book for far too long! It first came to my attention when I saw it displayed on a table in Barnes & Noble shortly after it was published.  When it came out in paperback this year a lot of book bloggers read it and are reading it. I've read many reviews raving about this unique, creative story that sounds different from almost any other book.  It has also won many awards for better or worse! I just know I'm really looking forward to reading this book!


Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea to read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme!

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Found Objects


It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel. Sasha was adjusting her yellow eye shadow in the mirror when she noticed a bag on the floor beside the sink that must have belonged to the woman whose peeing she could faintly hear through the vaultlike door of a toilet stall. Inside the rim of the bag, barely visible, was a wallet made of pale green leather. It was easy for Sasha to recognize, looking back, that the peeing woman's blind trust had provoked her: We live in a city where people will steal the hair off your head if you give them half a chance, but you leave your stuff lying in plain sight and expect it to be waiting for you when you come back? It made her want to teach the woman a lesson. But this wish only camouflaged the deeper feeling Sasha always had: that at, tender wallet, offering itself to her hand-it seemed so dull, so life-as-usual to just leave it there rather than seize the moment, accept the challenge, take the leap, fly the coop, throw caution to the wind, live dangerously ("I get it," Coz, her therapist, said), and take the fucking thing.


"You mean steal it."

What are your thoughts about this opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. Share the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph. I've been a fan of Jane Austen since before college so this modern tribute to Sense and Sensibility has been on my wish list since shortly after it was published.
Don't forget to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme who can be found in the comments!

The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine

When Joseph Weissmann divorced his wife, he was seventy-eight years old and she was seventy-five. He announced his decision in the kitchen of their apartment on the tenth floor of a large, graceful Central Park West building built at the turn of the last century, the original white tiles of the kitchen still gleaming on the walls around them. Joseph, known as Joe to his colleagues at work but always called Joseph by his wife, said the words “irreconcilable differences,” and saw real confusion in his wife’s eyes.
Irreconcilable differences? she said. Of course there are irreconcilable differences. What on earth does that have to do with divorce?


In Joe’s case it had very little to do with divorce. In Joe’s case, as is so often the case, the reason for the divorce was a woman. But a woman was not, unsurprisingly, the reason he gave his wife.
Irreconcilable differences?

What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. The idea is to share the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you've decided to read based on that paragraph. This book is by a fantastic author whom many of you will know, if not by name, then by the title of his most well known book, Revolutionary Road. I was fortunate to win the book I'm highlighting today, along with one other title by the same author, in a giveaway hosted by Diane, the creator of the wonderful blog hosting this weekly meme! As I say much too often, I have wanted to read all of the other books written by this author for a long time! I haven't yet had a chance too because there are so many books that I want to read therefore, it takes me a long time to get through the various lists of authors and books I have everywhere and anywhere. Hopefully this book is the beginning of spending many months reading, savoring this author's works. Be sure to visit Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and those of the other participants in this meme!

The Easter Parade by Richard Yates

Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce. That happened in 1930, when Sarah was nine years old and Emily five. Their mother, who encouraged both girls to call her "Pookie", took them out of New York to a rented house in Tenafly, New Jersey, where she thought the schools would be better and where she hoped to launch a career in suburban real estate. It didn't work out - very few of her plans for independence - and they left Tenafly after two years, but it was a memorable time for the girls.
"Doesn't your father ever come home?" other children would ask, and Sarah would always take the lead in explaining what a divorce was.
"Do you ever get to see him?"
"Sure we do."
"Where does he live?"
"In New York City."
"What does he do?"
"He writes headlines. He writes headlines in the New York Sun." And the way she said it made it clear they ought to be impressed.

What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

(Bibliophile by the Sea doesn't have power due to the freak snow storm so if you visit her blog there isn't a meme entry for today - hopefully Diane will be back tomorrow)

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. The idea is to share the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you've decided to read based on the opening paragraph. I've wanted to read this book for a long time, particularly after I read several wonderful reviews about it. Last week I discovered that Beauty is a Sleeping Cat is hosting a group read of this book at the end of the month. I'm so excited about this!
Be sure to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme who can be found in the comments!

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

April 28, 1975

The city teetered in a dream state. Helen walked down the deserted street. The quiet was eerie. Time running out. A long-handled barber’s razor, cradled in the nest of its strop, lay on the ground, the blade’s metal grabbing the sun. Unable to resist, she leaned down to pick it up, afraid someone would split his foot open running across it. A crashing noise down the street distracted her — dogs overturning garbage cans — and she snatched blind at the razor. Drawing her hand back, a bright pinprick of blood swelled on her finger. She cursed at her stupidity and kicked the razor, strop and all, to the side of the road and hurried on.
The unnatural silence allowed Helen to hear the wailing of the girl. The child’s howl was high and breathless, defiant, rising, alone and forlorn against the buildings, threading its way through the air, a long, plaintive note spreading its complaint. Helen crossed the alley and went around a corner to see a small child of three or four, hard to tell with the ubiquitous malnourishment, standing against the padlocked doorway of a bar. Her face and hair drenched with the effort of her crying. She wore a dirty yellow cotton shirt sizes too large, bottom bare, no shoes. Dirt circled between her toes.

What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs? 

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. The idea is to share the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you've decided to read based on the opening paragraph.  My book choice today is a psychological thriller that's been getting great reviews and I'm so excited to read it.  It's also another perfect title for the R.I.P. Challenge.
Be sure to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's terrific selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme who can be found in the comments!

Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson

The bedroom is strange. Unfamiliar. I don’t know where I am, how I came to be here. I don’t know how I’m going to get home.
I have spent the night here. I was woken by a woman’s voice – at first I thought she was in bed with me, but then realized she was reading the news and I was hearing a radio alarm – and when I opened my eyes I found myself here. In this room I don’t recognize.
My eyes adjust and I look around in the near dark. A dressing gown hangs off the back of the wardrobe door – suitable for a woman, but someone much older than I am – and some dark-coloured trousers are folded neatly over the back of a chair at the dressing table, but I can make out little else. The alarm clock looks complicated, but I find a button and manage to silence it.
It is then that I hear a juddering intake of breath behind me and realize I am not alone.

What are your thoughts about this opening paragraph? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. The idea is to share the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you've decided to read based on the opening paragraph. This is an ARC copy I received several months ago but I'm just getting to now. It's a perfect book for this time of year because it's a mysterious, suspenseful story that falls within the parameters of the R.I.P. Challenge.
Be sure to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants who can be found in the comments!

Don't Breathe a Word by Jennifer McMahon

June 23, Fifteen Years Ago

Hotter than hot, no air-conditioning, sweat pouring down in rivers, the Magic Fingers motel bed vibrating beneath her, Mr. Ice Cream doing his thing above. He's not bad-looking, a little paunch-bellied, but he's got a nice face. Blue eyes that remind her of a crystal stream. Of that song, "Crystal Blue Persuasion" - something her ma listened to all the time. Of course, she told him that, and now sometimes he sings it to her, his idea of foreplay. She wishes he'd shave his moustache, but no chance, the wife loves it.


What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. The idea is to share the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you've decided to read based on the opening paragraph(s). I included the first two paragraphs of Chapter 1 for the book I chose to share this week. I have wanted to read this book for a couple of years. It's also received wonderful reviews and this years R.I.P. Challenge at Stainless Steel Droppings was the impetus for me to finally read it! Be sure to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's terrific selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this fun meme who can be found in the comments!

In the Woods by Tana French
1

What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception. The truth is the most desirable woman in the world and we are the most jealous lovers, reflexively denying anyone else the slightest glimpse of her. We betray her routinely, spending hours and days stupor-deep in lies, and then turn back to her holding out the lover's ultimate Möbius strip: But I only did it because I love you so much.


I have a pretty knack for imagery, especially the cheap, facile kind. Don't let me fool you into seeing us as a bunch of parfit gentil knights galloping off in doublets after Lady Truth on her white palfrey. What we do is crude, crass and nasty. A girl gives her boyfriend an alibi for the evening when we suspect him of robbing a north-side Centra and stabbing the clerk. I flirt with her at first, telling her I can see why he would want to stay home when he's got her; she is peroxided and greasy, with the flat, stunted features of generations of malnutrition, and privately I am thinking that if I were her boyfriend I would be relieved to trade her even for a hairy cellmate named Razor. Then I tell her we've found marked bills from the till in his classy white tracksuit bottoms, and he's claiming that she went out that evening and gave them to him when she got back.


What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. The idea is to share the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you've decided to read based on the opening paragraph(s). The paragraph below is the opening chapter of my book choice. It sounds like a captivating story filled with all sorts of enticing, intriguing themes and occurrences! This book is also September's Book Club choice at Devourer of Books where we will be discussing it the end of September.
Be sure to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's terrific selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme who can be found in the comments!

The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp

Paris, 1971


My name is Mathilde Kschessinska, and I was the greatest Russian ballerina on the imperial stages. But the world I was born to, the world I was bred for, is gone, and all the players in it are also gone—dead, murdered, exiled, walking ghosts. I am one of those ghosts. Today in the Soviet Union, it is forbidden to utter my name. The authorities have wiped it from their histories of the theater. I am ninety-nine years old, an old lady with a hairnet and a pinched mouth and yet they still fear me. I stood barely five feet at the height of my fame—my shoe size a three—but now I neither stand nor walk. I sit with my eyes closed in my Paris home of fifty years and live in the past, the mementos of my old Petersburg life all around—sepia photographs of the imperial family and of my son, my father’s icon of Our Lady of Czestokowa, his ring with the arms of Count Krassinsky, a medal from the tunic of my husband’s old uniform from the Horse Guards. Like those things, I, too, am a relic. But traces of that old world remain, you know, buried somewhere beneath this world. The Winter Palace. The Maryinsky Theater. Tsarskoye Selo. Peterhof. I see that world more clearly than I see the avenues and trees outside my window here in the 16th Arrondissement. What is there to interest me here? The hippie boys in their psychedelic pants, the hippie girls in their short skirts and long, uncombed hair? The world I knew was grand, the court more elaborate than the French court under Louis XIV. I was the lover of two grand dukes, the mistress of the tsar. The last tsar.


He called me Little K.

What are your thoughts about these two opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea every Tuesday. The idea is to share the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you've decided to read based on the opening paragraph(s). The first two paragraphs for my book this week are below. This book has received wonderful reviews and I'm very excited to read it! Be sure to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea to read Diane's terrific selection this week and be sure to visit and read the contributions of other participants in this terrific meme who can be found in the comments!

Prologue: August 20th

This is the first time Alice has been allowed to walk back to their campsite from the Kelp Shed alone. She is fourteen, barefoot, her sneakers tied together by the laces and slung across her shoulder so she can feel the soft sandy dust of the single track road between her toes. Her sister Ellie fell asleep halfway through the square dance, dropping from hyper excitement to unconscious in a flash. Her father carries Ellie draped over his shoulder and casually, or so it seems, her mother says, “Come home when the dance is done.”

She can hardly believe it. The dance is still in her feet, still in her bones, the steps like an intricate game. She danced with everyone and anyone at all, old and young, men and women, just to stay on the floor and moving. The caller was a blind man with two fingers missing from his left hand. His face was wrinkled and brown from the sun, his body heavy and the voice that called the steps strangely high and sweet. A boy’s voice in a man’s body. A boy’s wildness, as though he had no awareness of himself in his body.

What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?

~ First Chapter Paragraph(s) Tuesday Intros ~

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted every Tuesday by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea. Share on your blog the opening paragraph (maybe two) of a book you decided to read based on the opening paragraph(s). The book I've chosen is on Tour with TLC Book Tours next month.
After reading the paragraphs from my book below, be sure to drop by Bibliophile By the Sea and read Diane's terrific selection this week and visit the other participants in this great meme!

When he was born he was alive. That was one thing.

He was a he too, astonishingly - not that anyone expected him to be otherwise, but the notion of one so elemental, so small, carrying the complex mantle of gender seemed preposterous, the designation "male" the linguistic equivalent of a false mustache fixed above his infant lip.

His lips: how barely pink they were, the pink of the rim of the sky at winter dusk. And in their curl - in the way the upper lip rose to peaks and dipped down again, twice, like a bobbing valentine; and in the way the lower bowed out, luxuriant, lush, as if sated already from a lifetime of pleasures - how improbably expressive were his lips.

His hands like sea creatures curled and stretched, as if charged with purpose and intent. Five of his fingers closed around one of his mother's and held it while he slept. He was capable of this.

What are your thoughts about these 2 opening paragraphs? Would you read this book based on these paragraphs?