Goodness, what a week it’s been! Yesterday, of course, we were snowed in, with about two feet of snow here yesterday. Somehow, today, I got roped in to shoveling snow, so that’s where I’ve been all morning. My first question wasn’t: so how am I going to get out of the garage in order to get to work? More: how is the mail delivery guy going to get up the driveway in order to deliver packages? LOL.
It’s hard to believe the holdays are upon us! I’m not nearly done with my Christmas shopping yet. I’ve done a bit of it online, as I hate brick-and-mortar shopping around this time of year.
In terms of reading, here’s what I’ve completed:
An advance copy of Sadie Jones’s forthcoming novel, Small Wars. Good, but maybe not 100% my style.
Saplings, by Noel Streatfeild. A coming-of-age novel set during WWII.
Little Bird of Heaven, by Joyce Carol Oates. Stunning, and wuite possibly one of the best books I’ve read all year. I really don’t know how Joyce Carol Oates keeps turning out excellent fiction at the rate she’s going at.
Then this morning, I started Prima Donna, by Megan Chance. A New York opera singer murders her manager, and escapes to Seattle, in the 1870s. How’s this for a first line?:
“Behind me, I heard his gurgling, choking breath, the sound of him choking on his own blood, and then, suddenly, it stopped altogether.”
I do think that the first line of a novel can make or break the book. The first line of a book is the first impression the reader gets of it, so I think the first sentence of a book should always be arresting enough to keep the reader going. What do you think?
It’s hard to believe the holdays are upon us! I’m not nearly done with my Christmas shopping yet. I’ve done a bit of it online, as I hate brick-and-mortar shopping around this time of year.
In terms of reading, here’s what I’ve completed:
An advance copy of Sadie Jones’s forthcoming novel, Small Wars. Good, but maybe not 100% my style.
Saplings, by Noel Streatfeild. A coming-of-age novel set during WWII.
Little Bird of Heaven, by Joyce Carol Oates. Stunning, and wuite possibly one of the best books I’ve read all year. I really don’t know how Joyce Carol Oates keeps turning out excellent fiction at the rate she’s going at.
Then this morning, I started Prima Donna, by Megan Chance. A New York opera singer murders her manager, and escapes to Seattle, in the 1870s. How’s this for a first line?:
“Behind me, I heard his gurgling, choking breath, the sound of him choking on his own blood, and then, suddenly, it stopped altogether.”
I do think that the first line of a novel can make or break the book. The first line of a book is the first impression the reader gets of it, so I think the first sentence of a book should always be arresting enough to keep the reader going. What do you think?
Comments
I hope your Christmas shopping goes well!
Then I impressed myself by reading Desert by J M G LeClezio, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2008. It was so good, it just killed me. Historical fiction for sure but set in North Africa.
I was interested to read about the book on King Alfred, because I am now in the middle of Below the Salt, by Thomas B Costain, which covers the Saxons vs the Normans in the 12th century.