TEASER TUESDAYS

Here we are at Tuesday again, with this exciting meme hosted by Miz B, at Should Be Reading.

Here’s what you do:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I’m reading from a great book, House Rules, by Jodi Picoult.

Imagine what it would be like if you were suddenly dropped from America into England.   Suddenly bloody would be a swear word, not a description of a crime scene.  Pissed would be not angry but drunk.  p. 160.

All of this  is a peek into the life of Jacob Hunt, a teenage boy with Asperger’s syndrome.  He’s hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself to others, and like many kids with AS, Jacob has a special focus on one subject—in his case, forensic analysis…

What teasers can you share today?  I hope you’ll stop by and leave some comments and links.

MONDAY POTPOURRI

On a Monday morning, especially a Monday that brings wonderful spring breezes through my open windows, I am feeling so…well, content!  Especially since I was at my wit’s end a couple of hours ago.

Yes, waking up and blithely heading to my trusty computer, I tried to turn it on…alas, that horrible glitch that I get from time to time.  It wouldn’t turn on.

When that happened two times before, I thought we had it sorted out.  The first time, my son switched some things around (plugs, etc.), so the second time, I did the same and fixed it.  Then I had him come over and rearrange the power strips and things plugged in, and even added a power strip.  So I thought we were done with this issue!

But I’m now convinced that whenever I feel secure that my world (computers, etc.) is…well, secure!  Stuff happens.

So perhaps the lesson here is…don’t get smug?  Don’t feel secure?  Don’t put all your eggs in one basket…Wait!  This one is not like the others!  LOL.

At any rate, I am feeling happy now.  All is well for now, but you can be sure that I won’t feel blithe or secure for the next several mornings…until my computer comes on!

Happy Monday!

TEASER TUESDAYS — MARCH 23

This meme is hosted by Miz B, of  Should Be Reading.

Here’s how it works:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here’s mine:

Eight weeks might not sound like very long, but when you’re spending much of that talking to or sitting alone with the same person—we essentially learned to forget about Isaac—often engaged in an extraordinarily monotonous activity, your sense of time begins to distort, much as I imagine it does in prison.  No matter how hard we tried to stay on point, we couldn’t talk only about the case.  p. 217

This is an excerpt from The Genius, by Jesse Kellerman.

A blurb from Amazon reveals:

A young art dealer named Ethan Muller manages to get hold of a treasure trove of original art after the artist, an unknown shut-in named Victor Cracke, disappears. The first sign of trouble crops up when a retired cop recognizes one of the figures as being a boy who died some 40 years earlier. Ethan’s life spirals out of control from there. Before the story is over, Ethan will learn to question everything about his “wonderful” discovery–as well as his own family’s destiny.

What tidbits can you share this week?  Hope you’ll stop by and leave your links.

HEADER MANIA

When I’m not reading or posting or visiting blogs around the ‘sphere, I am probably doing something obsessive like changing my headers.

This weekend, I changed some headers that have been unchanged for quite awhile…the ones on Embrace the Whirlwind and Miles to Go.

Then, of course, this one.  This blog has more changes than all of them, being all about Potpourri.

I just discovered this particular photo at my son Craig’s website earlier today!

I don’t plan to change the header on my Reflections blog any time soon, as I simply LOVE that photo.

If you’re looking to visit some blogs today, check out the It’s Monday post at Sheila’s Journey Through Books. She has an intriguing header that is like a collage of special moments.

Have a great day!

THE FRIDAY 56

This weekly meme is hosted by Tonya, at Storytime With Tonya.

The rules are quite simple:  we are supposed to do something that might seem a little strange, at first, but then you realize, afterwards, what delightful plums you discover…those on the most unlikely branches of the tree, perhaps.

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

So here’s mine:

“I should have called her,” he said, settling back in his chair.  “But I couldn’t have pulled it off.  She’d know something was up.” p. 56

That excerpt is from The Space Between Before and After, by Jean Reynolds Page.

Here’s a snippet from Amazon:

n this complex, multilayered book, Page (Accidental Happiness) revisits familiar themes in the story of one family coming to terms with loss and past events. On the morning of the space shuttle Columbia disaster, Holli Templeton is sick with worry, as NASA milestones have proven to be harbingers of raw, personal events…

So what was your discovery today?  Please stop by and share some comments and links.

Happy Reading!

TEASER TUESDAYS

Hi everyone, it’s time for Teaser Tuesdays again!  This meme, hosted by Miz B, at Should Be Reading, offers the opportunity to share tidbits from our current reads.

Here’s how it works:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here’s mine:

Flopping onto the faded mocha suede couch, the one they’d bought for $150 from the old lady moving out next door, she pushed aside a pile of laundry.  At first, she had washed everything—all the sheets, all the towels, the ones that had been used, that Elon had touched, and then all the ones that had been resting in the linen cupboard. p.171

From The Friday Night Knitting Club, by Kate Jacobs, this snippet gives us a glimpse of the story.

On Amazon, we can read this blurb:

Between running her Manhattan yarn shop, Walker & Daughter, and raising her 12-year-old biracial daughter, Dakota, Georgia Walker has plenty on her plate in Jacobs’s debut novel. But when Dakota’s father reappears and a former friend contacts Georgia, Georgia’s orderly existence begins to unravel…

What delightful tidbits did you find this week?

Hope you’ll stop by, leave some comments, and share!

MONDAY POTPOURRI OR “BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH”

Does anyone remember that Shakespearean warning?

The other night, I was watching the news and there was a brief clip about “accidents” likely to occur on Monday (March 15).  It took me a minute, but then I recalled that old warning about the “ides of March.”

Does anyone remember which play that was in, and what was the substance of that warning?

On other fronts, I am thinking:  month half over.  Not good, because with April comes tax time.  Now I’ve already filed electronically, but I have to pay up.  Not a happy thought.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’ve been scrutinizing my budget and trying to modify whatever I can.  I have someone coming out from PG&E today to check one of my appliances, as when it was installed, the bill sky-rocketed.  And here I was blaming the Smart Meters!

I’ve cut down my TV channels, which will save a substantial amount without really sacrificing anything important.

My rent hasn’t increased in the three years I’ve lived here, and since they just offered me a continuing lease at the same cost, I’m thinking…okay, that’s good!  But then I listen to my neighbors making all kinds of weird noises (I share walls with one rather boisterous family), and I am tempted.  But then I remember how I hate moving!  There’s the packing, the dismantling of the computer (I hate that part!), the re-installation of all the TV, Internet, phones, etc.  And I then check the newspaper and find that nothing…I mean, NOTHING in good neighborhoods can match the cost.  The nuisance…well, you never know what a new place will bring!

When I first moved in here, I shared a wall with two quiet girls.  Never heard a thing.  That went on for two years before this nightmare family moved in.

I’m deciding…perhaps I could speak to the neighbors about the noise.  Then I imagine them turning all vigilante on me, and I say…okay, what’s a little noise?

The weather today (and yesterday) is spring-like and tempting.  It looks like the kind of day when you can go to the bookstore and sit outside while you read.  Or have a drink at a favorite restaurant…oh, wait!  That’s one of those items I’m trying to cut out of the budget!

Reading, however, continues to be FREE.  As long as I just read from my TBR stacks (I’ve already paid for these!), contest wins, Amazon Vines, and the library books.

Hope you’re all having a great week.  I just entered my link over at Sheila’s Journey Through Books. And my post on Rainy Days and Mondays is all about my reading week.

Check out Embrace the Whirlwind for the final post from Guest Blogger Anjuelle Floyd.

THE FRIDAY 56

Here’s a weekly meme hosted by Tonya, at Story Time with Tonya.

Here’s how it works:

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Now I have books all around me these days.  I even posted some photos the other day on my Collections blog, just so readers could catch a visual image of how I am literally surrounded by books.

So reaching for the nearest one today meant turning to the right and picking up the book on the top of the stack…um, one of the stacks!

That book happened to be Deception, by Denise Mina.  This one has been on my TBR stacks for quite awhile and I brought it in here just the other day, along with a few other treasures I had to dig for!

Here’s what I found on p. 56:

Susie Wilkins was in the year above us, and her grades were legendary.  She was determined to do psychiatry from the beginning.  Not surgery, not the high-prestige technical stuff.

On the back cover, I read this blurb:

Secrets lurk behind closed doors.  This truth is made chillingly clear when Lachlan Harriot, a hapless suburban househusband, ransacks his wife Susie’s home office in a desperate attempt to find evidence of her innocence after she is convicted of the murder of a paroled serial killer who was under her psychiatric care…

Now I’m wondering why this fascinating book has been languishing on my stacks all these months?  I can see that it will move up on the list, and soon!

What did you find this week?  Hope you’ll come on by, share some comments and links, and above all…have a great weekend!

TEASER TUESDAYS

In this weekly bookish meme hosted by Miz B, at Should Be Reading, we have the opportunity to showcase our current reads.

Here’s how it works:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here’s mine:

The small front room smelled of wood fires and stale sweat.  When Dara had lived on Snowdrop Park, she’d never realized how dirty and drab the house was, with wallpaper that had been the same all her life.  The paper in the living room might once have been small blue flowers on a cream background. p.256

Once in a Lifetime, by Cathy Kelly, an ARC from the Amazon Vine program.

We see this blurb on Amazon:

Kenny’s Department Store isn’t just a place to shop; it’s the heart of Ardagh, Ireland. Behind its stately Edwardian facade is an up-to-date store featuring unusual boutique products in an elegant setting. Here lives intersect…and secrets hide. TV reporter Ingrid Fitzgerald has watched her husband, David Kenny, pour his heart and soul into the family store — the “other woman” in her marriage — for years. Now, as their children fly the nest, Ingrid discovers something that will shake her world to its foundation.

Now I simply must hurry up and read this one!

What are the rest of you discovering today?  Hope you’ll stop by and share!

A FASCINATING AND EMOTIONAL JOURNEY — “Swallow” Review

“Swallow,” by Tonya Plank, is one of those books that sounds frightening, and it is. But it is so much more!

From the first page, I was so fascinated that I simply could not put it down. It’s a story about Sophie Hegel, a shy New York lawyer from a small Arizona town. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, an achievement that she doesn’t seem to feel she deserved. She is excited about landing her first job handling appeals, and her engagement to the love of her life would seemingly forecast wonderful events in her future. So why, then, does she suddenly find herself unable to swallow? As if a huge Fist Ball (hereinafter referred to in the book as FB) had suddenly grown in her throat?

When the condition begins occurring regularly, and when she starts to lose an alarming amount of weight, she seeks medical advice, and, of course, therapy. But unfortunately, nobody can tell her much. And the therapist is one of those who seems to just repeat everything she has said, without offering any help or opinions.

Sophie’s dramatic experiences in this journey through her psychological condition (Globus Sensate) was so fascinating. My mind kept traipsing along various pathways (considering my own background in social work!), as I imagined all sorts of causes. The fact that Sophie’s father is distant and emotionally unavailable grabbed my attention, just as his career as a pornographer sent up red flags.

What about Sophie’s past experiences may have contributed to her condition? Why does this condition recur just at the moment when her life seems destined for good things? And what, if anything, can she do to turn things around?

I wish I could give Swallow more than five stars. It is that engaging!