Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog John Grogan (blog) Harper, 2008 (paperback) (ISBN 0060817089 / 9780060817084) Memoir, 320 pages First sentence: In the summer of 1967, when I was ten years old, my father gave in to my persistent pleas and took me to get my own dog. (from the Preface) Book description: John and Jenny were just beginning their life together. They were young and in love, with a […]
The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel Garth Stein Harper, 2009 (paperback) (ISBN 0061537969 / 9780061537967) Fiction, 336 pages First sentence: Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. Book description: Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words […]
This is the first book I read on my Amazon Kindle e-book reader, and counts for the Read Your Own Books (RYOB) 2009 Challenge.AdmissionJean Hanff Korelitz book data via LibraryThing:Grand Central Publishing (2009), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 464 pagesISBN: 0446540706 / 9780446540704 Kindle edition data via Amazon.com:File Size: 750 KBASIN: B0026772YM First sentence: “The flight from Newark to Hartford took no more than fifty-eight minutes, but she still managed to get her heart broken three […]
Fool: A Novel Christopher Moore (blog) William Morrow, 2009 (hardcover) (ISBN 0060590319 / 9780060590314) Fiction, 336 pages First sentence: “Tosser!” Cried the raven. There’s always a bloody raven. Book description: Here’s the Cliff Notes you wished you’d had for King Lear—the mad royal, his devious daughters, rhyming ghosts and a castle full of hot intrigue—in a cheeky and ribald romp that both channels and chides the Bard and all Fate’s bastards. It’s 1288, and the king’s fool, Pocket, and […]
…or, The (Half)Year in Books I “borrowed” this idea from Nymeth‘s Sunday Salon post last week, but as it happens, it was also June 29th’s Musing Mondays question: Now that we’ve come to the middle of the year, what do you think of your 2009 reading so far? Read anything interesting that you’d like to share? Any outstanding favorites? Considering my pathetic total of 35 books read and reviewed in 2008, the fact that I’m […]
Certain Girls: A Novel Jennifer Weiner (blog) Washington Square Press, 2009 (paperback) (ISBN 0743294262 / 9780743294263) Fiction, 416 pages First sentence: When I was a kid, our small-town paper published wedding announcements, with descriptions of the ceremonies and dresses and pictures of the brides. Book description: Cannie Shapiro, the smart, sharp-tongued, bighearted heroine of Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed, is back. After her debut novel — a fictionalized (and highly sexualized) version of her life — […]
Escape Carolyn Jessop (with Laura Palmer) Broadway Books, 2008 (ISBN 0767927575 / 9780767927574) Nonfiction/memoir, 448 pages First sentence: “Escape. The moment had come.” Random clip (page 91): “After several terrible years with Faunita, Audrey said, Merril was forced to marry Ruth. He resisted this marriage as well, until he was reprimanded by the prophet and forced to wed.” Book description: When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with […]
The Senator’s Wife Sue Miller Vintage, 2008 (paperback) (ISBN 0307276694 / 9780307276698) Fiction, 320 pages First sentence: From her perch in the middle of the backseat, Meri surveys the two in front—her husband, Nathan, and Sheila, the real estate agent Random clip (page 23): “She makes her breakfast and sits listening to the news on the local public radio station. There’s much talk, about a year later, about the recovery from Hurricane Andrew in Florida.” […]
Never Let Me Go: A NovelKazuo IshiguroVintage, 2006 (paperback) (ISBN 1400078776 / 9781400078776)Fiction, 304 pages First sentence: My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years. Book description: As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of […]
Gatsby’s Girl: A Novel Caroline Preston Mariner Books, 2007 (paperback) (ISBN 0618872612 / 9780618872619) Fiction, 336 pages First sentence: Scott Fitzgerald’s daughter called long distance, out of the blue. Book description: Before he wrote some of the twentieth century’s greatest fiction, before he married Zelda, F. Scott Fitzgerald loved Ginevra, a fickle young Chicago socialite he met during the winter break from Princeton. But Ginevra threw over the soon-to-be-famous novelist, and the rest is literary […]
Gods Behaving Badly: A Novel Marie Phillips (author’s blog) Back Bay Books, 2008 (paperback) (ISBN 0316067636 / 9780316067638) Fiction, 320 pages First Sentence: One morning, when Artemis was out walking the dogs, she saw a tree where no tree should be. Book description: Being immortal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Life’s hard for a Greek god in the 21st century: nobody believes in you any more, even your own family doesn’t respect you, […]
The Uncommon Reader: A NovellaAlan BennettPicador, 2008 (Paperback) (ISBN 0312427646 / 9780312427641)Fiction, 128 pages First sentence: At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber. Book description: When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to […]
