Friday First Paragraph's # 6

Welcome to another Friday First Paragraph's.

I normally try to bring in a book that I'm about to start, to kind of whet my appetite.  I'm a little bit behind in my reading at the moment, and so this time I thought I'd bring you the first paragraph's of one my favourite books.  Chances are you've read it already, but who knows, maybe this will reach someone who hasn't read it yet, or prompt a re-read of this wonderful book.

It's all pretty good in my opinion and I had a job to know when to cut off, so there's actually quite a bit here.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

DEATH AND CHOCOLATE

First the colours.

Then the humans.

That's usually how I see things.

Or at least, how I try.

HERE IS A SMALL FACT

You are going to die.

I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing in me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can  be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the As. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

REACTION TO THE AFOREMENTIONED FACT

Does this worry you?

I urge you - don't be afraid.

I'm nothing if not fair.

Of course, an introduction.

A beginning.

Where are my manners?

I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in tiem, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A colour will be perched on my shoulder, I will carry you gently away.

It later goes on to say

It's just a small story really, about, amongst other things:

• a girl
• some words
• an accordionist
• some fanatical Germans
• a Jewish fist-fighter
• and quite a lot of thievery.

Friday First Paragraph's # 5

Friday's come around again, so it's First Paragraph's time.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce is next months book club read.  I read it last summer and loved it, and I'm quite looking forward to reading it again.

It's one of those books that feels just about OK while you're reading it.  I remember thinking that it wasn't really living up to the hype, but it's pleasant enough, amusing and at times intriguing, but not overly special.  By the end you realise you've had your socks knocked off.  It's wonderful!!  But you do have to read it all, this is not a book to give up on.

Here goes....

1

Harold and the Letter

The letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday. It was an ordinary morning in mid-April that smelled of clean washing and grass cuttings. Harold Fry sat at the breakfast table, freshly shaved, in a clean shirt and tie, with a slice of toast that he wasn't eating. He gazed beyond the kitchen window at the clipped lawn, which was spiked in the middle by Maureen's telescopic washing line, and trapped on all three sides by the neighbours' close-board fencing.

'Harold!' called Maureen above the vacuum cleaner. 'Post!'

Friday First Paragraph's # 4

Welcome to the fourth installment of my Friday First Paragraph's (original idea from Bibliophile by the sea).

To me non-fiction feels like going back to school and reading a text book.  Biographies don't interest me at all either, so when Touching the Void by Joe Simpson was selected as a book club read I can honestly say I wasn't thrilled. I'd tried watching the film some years ago with little success, so have not been holding out much hope for the book, but actually it's not a bad start. Having to read the first page or so to write this blog entry I've been pleasantly surprised, and am feeling a little more positive about it.

I

BENEATH THE MOUNTAIN LAKES

I was lying in my sleeping bag, staring at the light filtering through the red and green fabric of the dome tent. Simon was snoring loudly, occasionally twitching in his dream world. We could have been anywhere. There is a peculiar anonymity about being in tents. Once the zip is closed and the outside world barred from sight, all sense of location disappears. Scotland, the French Alps, the Karakoram, it was always the same. The sounds of rustling, of fabric flapping in the wind, or of rainfall, the feel of hard lumps under the ground sheet, the smell of rancid socks and sweat - these are universals, as comforting as the warmth of the down sleeping bag.

Outside, in a lightening sky, the peaks would be catching the first of the morning sun, with perhaps even a condor cresting the thermals above the tent. That wasn't too fanciful either since I had seen one circling the camp the previous afternoon. We were in the middle of the Cordillera Huayhuash, in the Peruvian Andes, separated from the nearest village by twenty-eight miles of rough walking, and surrounded by the most spectacular ring of ice mountains I had ever seen, and the only indication of this from within our tent was the regular roaring of avalanches falling off Cerro Sarapo.

Friday First Paragraphs # 3

Welcome to the third installment of my Friday First Paragraph's (original idea from Bibliophile by the sea).

I originally saw this on Mr B's website, then later saw a good review on Fennell Books, so when I was perusing the shelves in a highstreet bookstore on a recent trip to Basingstoke, I had a read of the first paragraph. I couldn't put it back on the shelf, I HAD to buy it. I hope it grabs you like it grabbed me.

Edit: Thanks Nellie for pointing out that I didn't include the title...  This first paragraph is from The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman.  Enjoy!

1

BERLIN, 1931

When you knock a bowl of sugar on to your host's carpet, it is a parody of the avalanche that killed his mother and father, just as the duck's beak that your new girlfriend's lips form when she attempts a seductive pout is a quotation of the quacking noise your last girlfriend made during sex. When the telephone rings in the night because a stranger has given a wrong extension to the operator, it is a homage to the inadvertent substitution of telegrams that terminated your adulterous cousin's marriage, just as the resonant alcove between the counterpoised struts of your new girlfriend's clavicle is a rebuttal to the apparent beauty of your last girlfriend's fleshier decolletage. Or this is how it seemed to Egon Loeser, anyway, because the two subjects most hostile to his sense of a man's life as an essentially steady, comprehensible and Newtonian-mechanical undertaking were accidents and women, And it sometimes seemed as if the only way to prevent that dread pair from toppling him all the way over into derangement was to treat them not as prodigies but rather as texts to be studied. Hence the principle: accidents, like women, allude. These allusions are no less witty or astute for being unconscious; indeed, they are more so, which is one reason why it's probably a mistake to construct them deliberately. The other reason is that everyone might conclude you're a total prick.

Friday First Paragraphs # 2

Though I originally found this little meme on Bibliophile by the sea's blog, I've decided to make it a Friday feature, purely because I like the alliteration.  There won't necessarily be one every week, it all depends what's happening in real life and what I'm reading at the time.

But here's today's Friday First Paragraph's...

This one has been on my shelf since it's hardback publication date, I bought it on pre-order and then it languished on my bookshelf until the Top Ten Tuesday feature last week, when I decided it was about time I picked it up and made room for more books.

The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde

I

Monday: Swindon

" 'The Special Operations Network was formed in 1928 to handle policing duties considered too specialised to be tackled by the regular force.  Despite considerable success in the many varied areas of expertise in which SpecOps operated, all but three of the thirty-six divisions were disbanded in the winter of 1991/92, allegedly because of budegetary cutbacks.  By 2004 it was realised that this was a bad move, and plans were drawn up to reinstigate the service.'

Millon de Floss - A Short History of SpecOps

     Everything comes to an end.  A good bottle of wine, a summer's day, a long-running sitcom, one's life, and eventually our species.  The question for many of us is not that everything will come to an end, but when, and can we do anything vaguely useful until it does?

     In the case of a good bottle of wine, probably not much - although the very act of consumption might make one believe otherwise.  A well-lazed summer's day should not expect too much of itself either, and sitcoms never die.  They simply move to a zombie-like existence in repeat heaven.  Of the remaining two - the end of one's life and that of our species - regular subscribers to my exploits will recall that I had seen myself die a few years back, and given my past record, it would be probable that much useful work would be done between then and now.  As to the end of our species, the possibility of annihilation was quite real, well documented, and went by the unimaginative title of Asteroid HR-6984.  Wether the human race managed to figure out a worthwhile function for itself in the thirty-seven years until possible collision was dependent upon your level of optimism."

Friday First Paragraphs - 1

Though I originally found this little meme on Bibliophile by the sea's blog, I've decided to make it a Friday feature, purely because I like the alliteration.  There won't necessarily be one every week, it all depends what's happening in real life and what I'm reading at the time.

But here's the first of my Friday First Paragraph's...


This book was picked up at the weekend from a high street bookstore just hours after I vowed not to buy any more books until I'd cleared some room on my TBR shelves.

I know very little about it, and it's purchase was an experiment in buying something I'd not heard about, seen blogged or recommended and from an author I'd not read before, so something a little out of my comfort zone.  I was relieved to see afterwards it has very positive reviews on Amazon, so I'm feeling OK about it.

The Universe versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence.  

They finally stopped me at Dover as I was trying to get back into the country. I was half expecting it, but it still came as kind of a shock when the barrier stayed down. It's funny how some things can be so mixed up like that. Having come this far I'd started to think that I might make it the whole way home after all. It would have been nice to have been able to explain things to my mother. You know: before anyone else had to get involved.

It was 1 a.m., and and it was raining. I'd rolled Mr Peterson's car up to the booth in the 'Nothing to Declare' lane, where a single customs officer was on duty. His weight rested on his elbows, his chin was cupped in his hands, and, but for this crude arrangement of scaffolding, his whole body looked ready to fall like a sack of potatoes to the floor. The graveyard shift - dreary dull from dusk till dawn - and for a few heartbeats it seemed that the customs officer lacked the willpower necessary to rotate his eyeballs and check my credentials. But then the moment collapsed. His gaze shifted; his eyes widened. He signalled for me to wait and spoke into his walkie-talkie, rapidly and with obvious agitation. That was the instance I knew for sure. I found out later that my picture had been circulated in every major port from Aberdeen to Plymouth. With that and the TV appeals, I never stood a chance.

What I remember next is kind of muddled and strange, but I'll try to describe it for you as best I can.

First Chapter, First Paragraphs

I've still to write the reviews for three recently finished books, but those should be along shortly... In the meantime I have picked up the next book on my list. There seems to be a theme in my reading lately. Animal farm, the hundred year old man... And now this new book. Unintentional I assure you, but the theme appears to be Russia.

This excerpt is from We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. This isn't just another dystopian novel, this is the first to be written dystopian novel of the major triumvirate consisting of 1984 and Brave New World. I won't say anymore, until the review, except to give you the first chapter, first paragraphs.

Record One

KEYWORDS:
A Declaration. The wisest of lines. An epic.

I am merely copying, word for word, what was printed in the State Gazette today:

IN 120 DAYS, THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE INTEGRAL WILL BE COMPLETE. THE GREAT, HISTORIC HOUR WHEN THE FIRST INTEGRAL WILL SOAR THROUGH OUTER SPACE IS NIGH. SOME THOUSAND YEARS AGO, YOUR HEROIC ANCESTORS SUBJUGATED THE ENTIRE EARTHLY SPHERE TO THE POWER OF THE ONE STATE. TODAY, YOU ARE CONFRONTING AN EVEN GREATER CONQUEST: THE INTEGRATION OF THE OF THE INFINITE EQUATION OF THE UNIVERSE WITH THE ELECTRIFYING AND FIRE-BREATHING GLASS INTEGRAL. YOU ARE CONFRONTING UNKNOWN CREATURES ON ALIEN PLANETS, WHO MAY STILL BE LIVING IN THE SAVAGE STATE OF FREEDOM, AND SUBJUGATING THEM TO THE BENEFICIAL YOKE OF REASON. IF THEY WON'T UNDERSTAND THAT WE BRING THEM MATHEMATICALLY INFALLIBLE HAPPINESS, IT WILL BE OUR DUTY TO FORCE THEM TO BE HAPPY...

There's a little more to the paragraph but this is the best bit, and I'm itching to get on with it.

First Chapter, First Paragraphs

I just finished The 100 year old man, and while I try to compose a suitable review, I thought I'd write the next instalment of First chapter first paragraphs, not least because they're intriguing.

There are 217 pages, the font is large, and the page margins are large too, so I don't think this one will take long to read.  In fact before I knew it 40 pages had slipped by in flash.

The book is The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen.

And the longer and more carefully I examine all these things, the more clearly and distinctly I know that they are true.

Rene Descartes

It was snowing the morning I found the dead boy.  The island with it's two houses and one church was covered in a layer of white.

Papa was pulling in the fishing nets when I saw a hand between two rocks.  It looked like a magic trick; almost as if a bunch of roses was about to appear - boom!  There you are, for you - and then applause.  But everything was quiet and the hand didn't move.

Looking forward to the rest.

First Chapter, First Paragraphs

Advent by James Treadwell

One

A December night 1537

   On a wild night in deep winter in the year 1537, the greatest magus in the world gathered together and dismissed his household servants, wrapped himself in his travelling cloak, took his staff in one hand and in the other a small wooden box sealed with pitch and clasped with silver, and stepped out into the whirling sleet, bound for the harbour and - so he expected - immortality.
   All but the city's most utterly forlorn inhabitants had been driven from the streets by the bitter weather.  The reamining beggars and strays were fully occupied with their struggle to survive until dawn, so the magus walked uninterrupted through alleys of filthy slush.  Nobody so much as saw him; any lifted eyes would have been stung by the icy rain, which felt as if it blew from every direction at once.  Nobody but one.

I'm reading on, would you?

First Chapter - First Paragraphs

I saw this on Bibliophile by the Sea's blog here: http://bibliophilebythesea.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/first-chapter-first-paragraph-tuesday_19.html

I'm not sure if it's something I would do as regularly as once a week, but here's the first paragraphs of the book I'm reading at the moment.

I'm reading The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson.

Monday, 2nd May 2005

You might think he could have made up his mind earlier, and been man enough to tell the others of his decision.  But Allan Karlsson had never been given to pondering things too long.

So the idea had barely taken hold in the old man’s head before he opened the window of his room on the ground floor of the Old People’s Home in the town of Malmköping, and stepped out – into the flowerbed.

Would you read on?