Out of Africa – BooksPlease

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. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m currently reading two long books, one nonfiction and the other fiction, so it will be some time before I can read another book. But I’m thinking of read Out of Africa by Karen Blixen next.

The Book Begins:

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice. *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader . If you have to improvise, that is okay. *Find a snippet, short and sweet, but no spoilers!

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:

‘After Kamante had become a Christian he was no longer afraid to touch a dead body.

Summary:

‘I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills . . . Up in this high air you breathed easily . . . you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.’

From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. Drawn to the intense colours and ravishing landscapes, Blixen spent her happiest years on the farm, and her experiences and friendships with the people around her are vividly recalled in these memoirs.

Out of Africa is the story of a remarkable and unconventional woman, and of a way of life that has vanished for ever. (Goodreads)

~~~

What have you been reading lately?

Two books were in my postbox yesterday. I’m very lucky because after deciding not to buy any more books until I’ve read 6 of my unread books these two are gifts, so I don’t have to count them, and I’m very grateful for them too.

The first is Out of Africa by Karen Blixen, which I won from Gaskella’s blog. The back cover says that it is ‘the story of a remarkable and unconventional woman, and of a way of life that has vanished for ever.’ Karen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation and spent the happiest years of her life on the farm. I love the cover of this book.

The other is Gillespie and I by Jane Harris, an uncorrected proof, which I won on LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Programme. This is a big book. It sounded so good from the publishers’ information – I just hope it lives up to my expectations.

As she sits in her Bloomsbury home, with her two birds for company, elderly Harriet Baxter sets out to relate the story of her acquaintance, nearly four decades previously, with Ned Gillespie, a talented artist who never achieved the fame she maintains he deserved. Back in 1888, the young, art-loving, Harriet arrives in Glasgow at the time of the International Exhibition. After a chance encounter she befriends the Gillespie family and soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes – leading to a notorious criminal trial – the promise and certainties of this world all too rapidly disorientate into mystery and deception. Featuring a memorable cast of characters, infused with atmosphere and period detail, and shot through with wicked humour, Gillespie and I is a tour de force from one of the emerging names of British fiction.

I love the cover of this one too.

Now I just need a few more hours in the day – I want to start reading these straight away. Actually I couldn’t resist and I have read the opening pages! They’re both looking good, but I have The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann to read first.