Book Beginnings on Friday – Page 25

My Friday Post: The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone

Published on October 11, 2019 by Margaret17 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Agony & Ecstasy

My old, tatty copy of The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone has been sitting on my desk for months now, whilst I’ve been wondering about reading it. I bought for 50p more 20 years ago (no idea exactly when or where I bought it). It was old when I first bought it and it’s falling to pieces now, the pages are brown and the font is so small, which is why I’m not reading it. So I think I’ll have to get a new edition.

It’s a biographical novel of Michelangelo.

He sat before the mirror of the second-floor bedroom sketching his lean cheeks with their high bone ridges, the flat broad forehead, and ears too far back on the head, the dark hair curling forward in thatches, the amber-coloured eyes wide set but heavy-lidded.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56 These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

Michelangelo went into the yard and sat in the baking sun with his chin resting on his chest. He had made a nuisance of himself.

Have read this book? What did you think about it? And if you haven’t, would you keep on reading?

My Friday Post: Black Water Lilies by Michel Bussi

Published on October 4, 2019 by Margaret5 Comments

Last week I bought Black Water Lilies by Michel Bussi and I can’t resist starting it even though there are plenty of books in my TBR piles that I ‘should’ be reading.

Three women lived in a village.

The first was mean, the second a liar, and the third was an egoist.

Their village bore the pretty name of a garden, Giverny.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56 These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Pages 56 -7:

He used to be an art teacher in the United States, he tells her. He never stops saying that she talks all the time, and even though she’s very gifted, she needs to be able to concentrate more. Like Monet did.

I’ve read one other book by Michel Bussi, Time is a Killer, which I really enjoyed and so I thought I’d like this one. It’s the story of a mystery, of thirteen days that begin with one murder and end with another. Jérôme Morval, a man whose passion for art was matched only by his passion for women, has been found dead in the stream that runs through the gardens at Giverny, where Monet did his famous paintings.

Have read this book? What did you think about it? And if you haven’t, would you keep on reading?

My Friday Post: Maigret’s Holiday by Georges Simenon

Published on September 27, 2019 by Margaret10 Comments

Maigret’s Holiday by Georges Simenon is one of my TBRs, the 28th Inspector Maigret novel in which Maigret’s wife falls ill whilst on their seaside holiday at Les Sables d’Olonne and a visit to the hospital sends him on an unexpected quest to find justice for a young girl.

Maigret's Holiday

The street was narrow, like all the streets in the old quarter of Les Sables d’Olonne, with uneven cobblestones and pavements so narrow that you had to step off to let another person pass.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56 These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

‘I was very fond of that girl, but I repeat that my feelings for her were purely fraternal. I am aware that things are often otherwise. A man can easily be in love with two sisters, especially if they are both living under his roof. That is not the case and besides, Lili was not in love with me. I’ll go further. I was the exactly the opposite of what she loved. She found me cold and cynical. She often said I had no heart.’

I’ve been reading the Maigret books as I come across them – so, totally out of order of publication. It doesn’t seem to matter. Maigret’s Holiday was originally published in 1948

Have read this book? What did you think about it? And if you haven’t, would you keep on reading?

My Friday Post: Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill

Published on September 6, 2019September 6, 2019 by Margaret9 Comments

Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill is one of the books I’m reading at the moment. It’s one of my TBRs, the third Dalziel and Pascoe book in which Pascoe finds his social life and work uncomfortably brought together by a terrible triple murder. Meanwhile, Dalziel is pressuring him about a string of unsolved burglaries, and as events unfold the two cases keep getting jumbled in his mind.

Ruling passion

Brookside Cottage,Thornton Lacey. September 4th.

Well hello, Peter Pascoe!

A voice from the grave! Or should I say the underworld? Out of which Ellie (who gave me the glad news of your existence when we met in town last month) hopes to lead you, for a while at least, back into the land of the living.

As soon as I finished reading the 2nd book in the series, An Advancement of Learning, I just had to start the third. I’ve read some of the later books but not the early ones, so I’m keen to know more about Dalziel and Pascoe. In An Advancement of Learning Pascoe and Ellie (his wife in the later books) had just renewed the relationship they’d had at university and so I’m pleased to see in the opening chapters of this book that they are together. In this first chapter a friend from their university days has invited them to stay for a weekend in the country.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56 These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

‘We got on very well from the start. I’d only known her and Colin a couple of months, but we soon got on friendly terms. That’s why it came as such a shock … I still can’t believe it.’

The weekend in the country has turned into a nightmare!

Have read this book? What did you think about it? And if you haven’t, would you keep on reading?

My Friday Post: The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley

Published on August 30, 2019 by Margaret14 Comments

The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley is one of the books on my 20 Books of Summer list and it’s also one of my TBRs. I recently finished reading it. It’s the first book in her Seven Sisters series of books based on the legends of the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades.

seven sisters ebook

I will always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard that my father had died.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56 These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

‘Presumably, you had a tough night last night, Maia, dealing with Electra’s usual histrionics? said Ce-Ce.

‘As a matter of fact, for Electra, she was relatively calm,’ I answered, knowing there was little love lost between my fourth and fifth sisters. Each was the antithesis of the other: Ce-Ce so practical and loath to show any emotion, and Electra so volatile.

Blurb:

Maia D’Aplièse and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home, ‘Atlantis’ – a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva – having been told that their beloved father, the elusive billionaire they call Pa Salt, has died. Maia and her sisters were all adopted by him as babies and, discovering he has already been buried at sea, each of them is handed a tantalising clue to their true heritage – a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Once there, she begins to put together the pieces of where her story began . . .

Eighty years earlier, in the Belle Epoque of Rio, 1927, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into aristocracy. Meanwhile, architect Heitor da Silva Costa is working on a statue, to be called Christ the Redeemer, and will soon travel to Paris to find the right sculptor to complete his vision. Izabela – passionate and longing to see the world – convinces her father to allow her to accompany him and his family to Europe before she is married. There, at Paul Landowski’s studio and in the heady, vibrant cafés of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.

My thoughts:

I knew very little about this series when I began reading the book, but I was soon caught up in this family saga. It’s not crime fiction but there is plenty of mystery – first of all why are there only six sisters, not seven? Who was Pa Salt and why did he adopt these girls from the four corners of the globe when they were babies? He has died before the book begins and immediately buried and, as I read a lot of crime fiction, my first thought was – why was he adamant that as soon as he died his body was to be buried at sea, with none of the girls present? And I wondered if he had really died? Please don’t tell me the answers to my questions – I intend to read all the Seven Sisters books, when I hope all will become clear.

Pa Salt has left clues for each girl so that if they want they can discover who their parents were and the circumstances of their birth. Having introduced all the sisters Maia’s story unfolds and it is an amazing story, taking her back to Brazil, the country of her birth. It’s beautifully written and completely convincing and I raced through it eager to find out the details of Maia’s family history.

I loved all the details about the building of the statue of Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Mountain in the Carioca Range, overlooking the city of Rio de Janeiro and how Lucinda Riley incorporated it so seamlessly into Maia’s story.

Have read this book? What did you think about it? And if you haven’t, would you keep on reading?

For more about the series see Lucinda Riley’s website, where she explains why she based the books on the legends of The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades and about the details of her extensive research for each story.

I’ll be reading the next book – The Storm Sister as soon as possible. The six books in the series are:

1. The Seven Sisters (2014)
2. The Storm Sister (2015) – Ally (Alcyone)
3. The Shadow Sister (2016) – Star (Asterope)
4. The Pearl Sister (2017) – CeCe (Celaeno)
5. The Moon Sister (2018) – Tiggy (Taygete)
6. The Sun Sister (2019) – Electra

The seventh sister is Merope – in the cast of characters at the beginning of the first book she is described as ‘missing’ …

The Seven Sisters:

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 2822 KB
Print Length: 641 pages
Publisher: Pan; Main Market edition (6 Nov. 2014)
Source: I bought the book
My Rating: 5*

My Friday Post: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Published on August 23, 2019 by Margaret22 Comments

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is one of my TBRs and is one of the books on my 20 Books of Summer list. It’s about Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. I bought it 5 years ago and have started reading it more than once, but have never finished it. But ever since I read and loved A God in Ruins about Ursula’s brother Teddy, I have been meaning to pick it up again.

Life after life

November 1930

A fug of tobacco smoke and damp clammy air hit her as she entered the café. She had come in from the rain and drops of water still trembled like delicate dew on the fur coats of some of the women inside. A regiment of white-aproned waiters rushed around at tempo, serving the needs of the Münchner at leisure – coffee, cake and gossip.

So far, this time round I think this may be the right time for me to read this book.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56 These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

On the way home, Pamela carried both baby rabbits in her pinafore, holding it out proudly in front of her like Bridget with a tea-tray.

‘Look at you,’ Hugh said when they walked wearily through the garden gate. ‘Golden and kissed by the sun. You look like real countrywomen.’

‘More red than gold, I’m afraid,’ Sylvie said ruefully.

Blurb:

What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?

Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in life’s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.

If you have read this book I’d love to know what you think about it. And if you haven’t, would you keep reading?