Teaser Tuesdays

Published on December 8, 2009 by Margaret10 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

We’re still not in our new home, but still have access to the internet and I’m still reading! Next week it’ll be more difficult with all the unpacking and settling in, so I’ll probably be missing from the blogosphere then.

Currently I’m reading Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin.

About the book (from the back cover): It is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing… A brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city’s ancient subterranean streets and marks on the corpse cause Rebus to suspect the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a city heaving with tourists is almost unthinkable. When the victim turns out to be the son of a notorious gangster, Rebus realises he is sitting atop a volcano of mayhem – and it’s just about to erupt.

My teaser is from page 54:

Rebus shrugged. I’m just wondering how professional all of this really was. I mean on the surface, if you look at the style of execution, then yes, it was a pro job, no question. But then things start to niggle.

I always enjoy reading the Rebus books. Although you can read each one as a stand alone book, reading them in order helps with understanding the background and the characters as they develop. I prefer reading to watching the TV series, but inevitably it is the faces of the actors I imagine as I’m reading.

Teaser Tuesday

Published on December 1, 2009 by Margaret11 Comments

I finished reading The Light of Day byGraham Swift yesterday. Table Talk asked in the comments on my Sunday Salon post whether to try books by Swift. Well, maybe. This one turned out to be a bit drawn out towards the end, but I felt compelled to finish it. I’m still not sure I like his style of writing, nor the enigmatic way of introducing characters. As Jane said in the comments on Sunday it’s hard to start a book sometimes because of the learning curve and it was.

Here is the teaser:

Back to being you.

There are times, there always will be, when you still wish you weren’t, you’d never been you. Or when you could almost believe it really was some other person, not you – how could it have been you? – who did what you’re supposed to have done. (page 197)

For more teasers, visit Should Be Reading.

Teaser Tuesday:Excursion to Tindari by Andrea Camilleri

Published on November 17, 2009 by Margaret5 Comments

I’m just going to write a short note about Excursion to Tindari by Andrea Camilleri because it’s a library book and I’m going to return it this afternoon in one of my last trips to my local library.

This is the fifth Inspector Montalbano mystery but the first one I’ve read. My impression of the book as a whole is that it is well constructed, with plenty of colourful characters, and the mystery kept me guessing to the end. Montalbano investigates the death of a young man, Nene Sanfilippo and the disappearance of an elderly couple, the Griffos. They had lived in the same apartment building, but at first this seems to be merely a coincidence. Montalbano is soon plunged into the dangerous world of Sciliy’s “New Mafia”. (This much is revealed on the back cover).

I particularly liked the way Montalbano’s thoughts are revealed and his relationship with his bosses. He’s another detective who works well on his own and with his own team independently of his superiors. He loves food and there are various desciptions of the meals he savours with great relish. He is also a bit of a philosopher – sitting in an old olive tree whilst musing on life and his work:

Straddling one of the lower branches, he would light a cigarette and begin to reflect on problems in need of resolution.

He had discovered that, in some mysterious way, the entanglement, contortion, overlapping, in short, the labyrinth of branches, almost mimetically mirrored what was happening inside his head, the intertwining hypotheses and accumulating arguments. And if some conjecture happened to seem at first too reckless or rash, the sight of a branch tracing an even more far-fetched path than his thought would reassure him and allow him to proceed.

Ensconced among the silvery-green leaves, he could stay there for hours without moving. (pages 99 – 100)

At times this book reads like a comedy, with some of the police talking in dialect before plunging back into the dark criminal world. I couldn’t work out what was behind the crimes at all, which for me was immensely satisfying. When you can see the end coming chapters away and have worked out who “did it” I sometimes feel let down – not so with this book.

Teaser Tuesday – City of the Mind by Penelope Lively

Published on November 10, 2009 by Margaret16 Comments

I’ve been away for the weekend celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary. We took the family to Center Parcs in Sherwood Forest. It was a wonderful weekend, if rather exhausting too. I’ll be writing about it and posting some photos later. In the meantime this is just a short post to get back me into the swing of blog writing.

My teaser today is from City of the Mind by Penelope Lively. I’m about to start reading this book and this quote is from page 2. I think it captures my amazement at the nature of time, and of the power of thought to transport me to different places and different times. It’s also significant now thinking back over the last 40 years, so many people, so many places, so many happy and sad events, so much to celebrate.

And thus, driving through the city, he is both here and now, there and then. He carries yesterday with him, but pushes forward into today and tomorrow, skipping as he will from one to the other. He is in London, on a May morning of the late twentieth century, but is also in many other places, and at other times.

Teaser Tuesday – All the Colours of Darkness

Published on November 3, 2009 by Margaret5 Comments

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

I haven’t finished reading All the Colours of Darkness by Peter Robinson but I thought I’d quote a few sentences from it as a “teaser”. Robinson is a “new to me author”, but by no means a new author. He’s written many books and received numerous awards, all listed on his website.

All the Colours of Darkness is the eighteenth book in his Inspector Banks series. Banks and DI Annie Cabbot are investigating the deaths of Mark Hardcastle, found hanging from an oak tree in Hindswell Woods, and his partner Laurence Silbert found battered to death in his house in the Heights, the ‘posh’ part of Eastvale (a fictional Yorkshire town).

It looks like a textbook case of murder-suicide, a crime of passion. But somehow I have my doubts as this is set out in the first few chapters. This seems to be confirmed in the chapter I’m currently reading when Banks is interviewing Laurence’s mother Edwina, now in her eighties, the owner of the enormously successful Viva boutique chain in the 60s:

‘Edwina’, Banks said in exasperation. You’re keeping something from me. I can tell. You were doing it last night and now you’re doing it again. What on earth is it? What are you holding back?’

Edwina paused and sighed.’Oh, very well. It is naughty of me, isn’t it? I suppose you’d find out sooner or later, anyway.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and looked Banks in the eye. ‘He was a spy, Mr Banks. My son, Laurence Silbert. He was a spook.’ (pages133-4)

There are theatrical references as Mark was a set and costume designer for a production of Othello at the Eastvale Theatre and the epigraphs at the beginning of the book are from Shakepeare’s Othello and Puccini’s Tosca. So it’s promising to be a mix of different elements – jealousy, murder, revenge, envy and ambition.

Teaser Tuesday – Nocturnes

Published on October 13, 2009 by Margaret10 Comments

teaser-tuesday

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) ‘teaser’ sentences from that page.
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I’ve just finished Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is a book of five short stories in which Ishiguro explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. I enjoyed some of them more than others; some of them just seem to stop rather than ending, leaving me wanting more. There’s nothing dramatic here, rather they are gentle stories with a touch of nostalgia and a sense of loss for what has gone or what could have been.

My teaser is from the title story Nocturne:

Maybe Lindy’s right. Maybe like she says, I need some perspective, and life really is much bigger than loving a person. Maybe this really is a turning point for me, and the big league’s waiting. (page 185)