Category Archives: Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesday

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

Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

After feasting on Ian Rankin’s Rebus books, I’ve gone back to reading Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett.  After reading Wolf Hall I’m in the mood for more about Thomas More, and this time the spotlight is on his family and in particular his adopted daughter Meg and her involvement with John Clement, the former family tutor and later President of the Royal College of Physicians and Hans Holbein, the German portrait painter.

Here is Hans Holbein’s reaction on meeting Meg:

She stopped a bit breathless, and looked provocatively at him. Hans Holbein had never seen a woman looking provocative in this completely unflirtatious way, any more than he’d ever come across a woman who had read the Imitation of Christ. She was challenging his mind instead of his body. But Erasmus had told him about More’s family school. This must be what happened to women when you taught them Latin and Greek and the skills of argument. (page 97)

Tuesday Teasers

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I’ve come to a halt. I’ve finished the books I’ve been reading and can’t make my mind up what to read next. I have books out on loan from the library and plenty of books of my own that I want to read sometime. The problem is, which one should I read next?

So I thought I’d try a few teasers out on myself, taken from the opening chapters of books closest to hand.

The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carré, in which George Smiley has become chief of the battered British Secret Service at a time when the betrayals of a Soviet double agent have riddled the spy network.

Afterwards, in the dusty little corners where London’s secret servants drink together, there was argument about where the Dolphin case history should really begin. One crowd, led by a blimpish fellow in charge of microphone transcription, went so far as to claim that the fitting date was sixty years ago when ‘that arch-cad Bill Haydon’ was born into the world under a treacherous star. Haydon’s very name struck a chill into them. (page 15)

The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan about Gwenni Morgan, who is inquisitive and bookish. She can fly in her sleep and loves playing detective.

Like every other night, I sped from the sea to drift along the road that winds its way down beyond the Baptism Pool and the Reservoir high into the hills behind the town. As I passed above the Pool I saw a man floating in it with his arms outstretched and the moon drowning in his eyes. (page 4)

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie in which Poirot investigates a complicated crime when the Blue Train steams into Nice and a murder is discovered.

It was close on midnight when a man crossed the Place de la Concorde. In spite of the handsome fur coat which garbed his meagre form, there was something essentially weak and paltry about him.

A little man with the face like a rat. (page 1)

Hector and the Search for Happiness by François Lelord about a young psychiatrist finding out whether there is such a thing as the secret of true happiness.

And yet Hector felt dissatisfied.

He felt dissatisfied because he could see perfectly well that he couldn’t make people happy. (page 5)

Well, I still don’t know what to read next. Has anyone read any of these? What would you suggest?

Teaser Tuesdays

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

Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

My teaser is from King Arthur’s Bones by The Medieval Murderers:

Each of the individuals who stared at these remains in the abbot’s parlour was lost for a time in his imagination, seeing a great and final battle in which a warrior-king had been fatally struck down. They put out their hands – even Michael and the other labourers – to touch the scullcap, the jaw-bone, the mighty shin-bone, the fragments of ribcage, as if some trace of Arthur’s spirit might be transmitted to their own blood and sinew. (page 22) 

This is a book of shortish interlinked stories tracing the whereabouts of King Arthur’s skeletal remains. It begins in 1191, when monks at Glastonbury Abbey discover an ancient cross and lying beneath in a hollowed out tree trunk are bones in the form of a body.

 Are these really King Arthur’s bones? As soon as the bones are found they are carried away by the ‘Guardians’ whose heritage is to protect them until the legend is fulfilled and Arthur returns to save his country. The story moves forward through the centuries and treachery, theft, blackmail  and murder follow the bones.

Teaser Tuesdays – Hearts and Minds

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

Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

I’ve just started to read Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig. I bought this book last year, attracted by the description on the back cover which describes it a contemporary novel which is entertaining and asking questions about the way we live. It’s about five people, all immigrants living in London, an illegal mini-cab driver from Zimbabwe, an idealistic supply teacher, from South Africa, a miserable dogsbody at a political magazine, from New York and a teenager trafficked into sexual slavery.

I remembered it when I saw that it’s on the Orange Prize for Fiction longlist and thought it was time I read it.

My teaser is from page 7.

Polly thinks gratefully of Iryna overhead. Bill has teased her about the way her life is dependent on cheap foreign labour, and she is conscious of the irony that, while her professional life often consists of helping refugees and illegal immigrants, her ability to do so depends upon exploiting them.

More teasers can be found here.

Teaser Tuesdays – Crime on the Move

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

Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

My teaser this week is from Crime on the Move: the Official Anthology of the Crime Writers’ Association of 2005, a collection of short stories edited by Martin Edwards. The last one in the book is Seeing Off George by David Williams.

Disposing of the body was so often the undoing of conspirators like Tristan and Laura, and she knew it. But not only had she lighted upon the perfect solution to their problem, she had also devised a credible story to account for George’s disappearance which would purportedly take place more than a thousand miles away from Farringly. (page 318)

I’ve now finished reading this book, which is an excellent selection of crime stories from a number of authors who were new to me, as well as some very well known ones.

Teaser Tuesdays – Heartland by John MacKay

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My teaser today is from Heartland by John MacKay, which I have just finished reading.

John MacKay is a Scottish broadcast journalist, television presenter and producer, who is currently the chief anchor for the Central Scotland edition of STV News at Six.  This is his second book.

Heartland is about Iain Martin who returns to his home on the Isle of Lewis to rebuild his life after the breakup of his marriage and to reconstruct the ancient family home, a blackhouse, now in ruins. He meets his old friend Neilie and his wife Catriona, bringing back memories of their friend Rob who was lost at sea 20 years earlier. Neilie alone had survived the accident, becoming the local hero as he had piloted the boat back to shore.  Iain also discovers a skeleton under the floor in the blackhouse.

My teaser is from page 50.

The body had been laid to rest in a formal manner, on its back, the arms crossed on its breast and the legs fully extended. Over time it had settled awkwardly, twisted towards the right, with the distortion more exaggerated from the waist down.

Is it Rob’s body he has found? His suspicions are increased when Neilie confesses he had not been on Rob’s boat that night. At times the narrative stalls with lengthy descriptions of the locality and its history, all of which is interesting but it does slow down the story. I liked it well enough to look for MacKay’s other books - The Road Dance and Last of the Line.

See Should Be Reading for more ‘teasers’.

Teaser Tuesday – Crime on the Move

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

Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

This week I’ve been reading short stories from Crime on the Move: the Official Anthology of the Crime Writers Association edited by Martin Edwards. The contributors include  Ann Cleeves, Reginald Hill, Michael Gilbert, Keith Miles Martin Edwards and Kate Ellis who wrote Top Deck, the story  I’m quoting from today.

The theme of the collection of the stories in this book is illustrated in Top Deck through Keith’s journey home from work in Liverpool by bus in 1965. What he sees has a profound effect on the rest of his life.

When the bus stopped briefly in the Ullet Road to let somebody off Keith found himself staring straight across into a lighted upstairs window. The curtains were wide open and two people were silhouetted behind the glass; a man and a woman who, for a split second, seemed faintly familiar. The man seemed to have both his hands raised up to the woman’s throat and they were moving slowly to and fro as if the woman was trying to ward him off, trying to save her life. (page 92)

The stories in this collection are varied, succinct and satisfying, ranging from the macabre and eerie to the comic, about journeys on the sea, in the air and on land. This is a book to dip into and enjoy.

Tuesday Teaser

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In between reading the books shown on the sidebar (Black and Blue and Can Any Mother Help Me?) I’ve also read the beginning of William Fiennes’s  The Music Room, which I borrowed from the library three weeks ago. It’s due back today and I’ve got to decide whether to renew it or return it. Some of it really interests me and makes me want to continue reading but other parts are rather boring and make me put the book to one side. It’s a gentle book, written with sensitivity and warmth.

It’s the story of William Fiennes childhood. It reads in parts like a novel, but is actually a memoir. He lived in a moated castle, in a beautiful setting with his parents, and older brothers and sister. Richard, eleven years older than him suffered from severe epilepsy, which has a profound effect on the family. I like the descriptive passages in this book and the details about the family, the loving memories that William evokes. The castle is open to the public part of the time and is also used by film crews and he was entranced by the filming as well as by the actors. Just fancy meeting Eric Morecambe when you’re five and he asks if you’re married, or selling Ian McKellen a postcard.

Here’s his description of the castle:

Our house was almost seven hundred years old, a medieval beginning transformed in the sixteenth century into a Tudor stately home, a castle surrounded by a broad moat, with woods, farmland and a landscaped park on the far side and a gatehouse tower guarding the two-arched stone bridge, the island’s only point of access and departure.

The gatehouse doors hung on rusty iron hinges, grids of sun-bleached vertical and cross beams, like the gates of an ancient city, a Troy or Jericho, creaking like ships as you manoeuvred them. (page 4)

Interspersed with the narrative about his family are sections on early experiments with electricity which, although interesting in themselves, slow down the book for me and make me impatient for the author to get on with his story.

But looking at the book again this morning has revived my interest in it. I hope I can renew it

Teaser Tuesday – Can Any Mother Help Me?

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teaser-tuesdayOne of the books I’m reading is Can any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey. It’s an edited collection of letters between a group of women calling themselves the Cooperative Correspondence Club, or CCC. They created a magazine that was circulated between the members for over 55 years. They wrote chatty letters to each other about all aspects of their lives, becoming close friends through their letters.

This extract is from letter from Roberta, who was living in Kent in September 1940. It was a Sunday, the sun was shining and just as the family sat down to lunch the peace and quiet was shattered by the sound of the siren and machine gunfire could be heard in the distance. Then suddenly the noise was terrifyingly close, as right overhead six planes were fighting and one plane was shot down in front of their eyes.

Roberta wrote:

This is war, I said, this is war. No, God, no, I screamed inside myself. This is wrong, wrong. (page 72)

Teaser Tuesdays

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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.