Book Beginning: Cora Siré's Behold Things Beautiful

Delmira Agustini leaves her parents' house at dusk. She walks down her street to the plaza Internacional, where the drenched tips of cypress trees loom above the buildings, then turns onto Calle Andes, catching the singsong cries, ¡Diario! Diario!, of boys peddling El Día's evening edition. The street is congested with buggies and motor cars. As she steps over gutters and murky streams to avoid the jostling horses, her umbrella tips crape the stone facades of houses.

Delmira Agustini is a real Uruguayan poet from the early 1900s. I'd never heard of her. But the main events of the novel take place when Alma Alvarez goes to the fictional country of Luscano, in South America, to give a lecture on Agustini in the present day. I'm not very far in, but it looks like there will be political and romantic complications.

I'm a total sucker for romance and politics set in fictional countries, whether it be Graustark and Ruritania or Orsinia and Costaguana.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. ¡Hola!

Book Beginning: Joshua Ferris' To Rise Again At A Decent Hour

The mouth is a weird place. Not quite inside and not quite out, not skin and not organ, but something in between: dark, wet, admitting access to an interior most people would rather not contemplate--where cancer starts, where the heart is broken, where the soul might just fail to turn up. 

I encouraged my patients to floss.

...is the beginning of Joshua Ferris' To Rise Again At A Decent Hour. A couple of years ago I read Ferris' And Then We Came To The End, a Chicago novel, and liked it, so I had this one in mind when it came out and got good reviews. It was longlisted for the Man Booker and won the Dylan Thomas prize.

Sneaking in 'where the heart is broken' gives me a clue there's more going on here!

The blurb tells me that the narrator gets into some sort of identity theft trouble which causes him to rethink his life. I've only just started so I don't know much more. The only other dentist novel I know is Frank Norris' McTeague, which I read a long time ago, and is a terribly grim story. I'm hoping this is nothing like that. In any case our dentist narrator seems rather amusingly philosophical, which was not the case with McTeague the dentist.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. And be sure to remember to floss!

Book Beginning: David Mamet's Chicago

Parlow and Mike sat quiet in the duck blind. A camouflage screen of marsh grass and twigs had been set before them; the blind itself was five feet deep, dug into the soft earth, and lined with discarded lumber. The day was dry, and the blind was dry.

...is the beginning of David Mamet's Chicago.

I was in the library the other day and they had this on the new releases shelf. My vague sense is that Mamet has become crotchety and conservative as he's aged, but I've liked his plays and his movies in the past. I'm a Chicago native, and his American Buffalo takes place in my old hood. So a gangster novel set in Chicago in the 20s sounds like it could be fun. Mike (Hodge) is a reporter in love with Annie Walsh who's loosely entwined with the Mob. Trouble ensues.

I'm about 30 pages in and I don't quite understand why a novel with that cover and that theme starts in a duck blind, but oh, well. We do learn Mike Hodge isn't a very good shot. (Though Parlow is.) I get the impression that will be important.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. Or I'll play you a little tune on my violin, see...

Book Beginning: Emily Barton's The Book of Esther

Dim pricks of blue light shone through the shutter's decorative punchwork. Careful not to wake her sister, Esther braced her hand against one door while she drew back the other. The wooden panel stuck a moment before popping free, letting in the damp, salty air and a view of purplish sky.  To the east, the sun cast its first pink glow over the place where the mighty River Atil spilled into the Khazar Sea. Esther raced through her morning prayers, her voice a sibilant whisper.

...is the beginning of Emily Barton's The Book of Esther.

I don't know if that beginning by itself would be enough to get me to read this, but I read Barton's first two novels and really liked them. Barton writes a sort of historical alternative world. Her first novel, The Testament of Yves Gondron, takes place in an English village lost to the modern world--their technological level is early medieval--that's stumbled on by a Harvard anthropologist. In Brookland, her second novel, the Brooklyn bridge is built, out of wood, by the daughter of a brewer a hundred years before the one we know. In this, her newest novel, according to the blurb, the early medieval, possibly Jewish, state of Khazar survives until 1942 and World War II. The novel came out in 2016 and I just got it from the library.

This will be my third (!) Khazar novel, after Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars and Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road. 

I'm looking forward to it.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. Did you hear the one where a priest, an imam, and a rabbi walked into a central Asian state?

Book Beginning: Michael Innes' The Secret Vanguard

Peaceful is the the first word which a house-agent would have chosen in describing the home of Philip Ploss.

...is the beginning of Michael Innes' The Secret Vanguard. (1941)

Well, now, you just know something bad is about to happen, don't you? (Not to mention the cover.) The first chapter tells us more about Ploss, that he inherited a competence, but isn't fantastically rich, that he earns a little money writing poems about buttercups and daisies that are considered old-fashioned and harmless, that he likes to take the train to London and see friends at his club.

Then (bonus quote!) there's the beginning of the second chapter, page eight:

"Ploss," said John Appleby deliberately. "Philip Ploss, the Cow-and-Gate poet. Who would want, now, to shoot a quiet fellow like that?"

I guess I'm going to find out!

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. It seems I'm in for another Innes.

Book Beginning: Michael Innes' Lament For A Maker

It will appear in full plain in this narrative that Mr. Wedderburn, the writer from Edinburgh, is as guileful as he's douce - and that he has need of all the guile that Eve passed on from the Serpent may be supposed, him with his living to make among the lawyers. Gleg he is. 

...is the beginning of Michael Innes' Lament For A Maker.

Lament For A Maker is a Detective Appleby novel from 1936, fairly early in the series.

I pulled this one off a pile of unread mysteries earlier in the week, because I needed a book that fit in my pocket for a subway ride. It wasn't too beat up yet, and it was the right size. I didn't realize the first seventy pages were written in Scots dialect and I'd need a dictionary handy. Douce and gleg! Innes has constructed this like The Woman In White or The Moonstone--it's made up of parts by different narrators and our first narrator is a provincial Scottish shoemaker. I'm nearly on to the next section, which looks easier.

I am sometimes a sucker for an unknown word or two, but I wasn't expecting it this time. Would this put you off or interest you?

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. What a gleg old soul I am to figure these words out, but they did leave me fair stammagasted for a bit.

Book Beginning: J. F. Powers' Morte D'Urban

It had been a lucky day for the Order of St. Clement the day Mr. Billy Cosgrove entered the sacristy of a suburban church after Mass and shook the hand of Father Urban.

...is the beginning of J. F. Powers' Morte D'Urban.

Powers' novel came out in 1962 and won the National Book Award. It's a comic novel about life in the priesthood and that first sentence definitely lets you know where you are. It's recently been reissued in the New York Review books series, but I decided to stick with my somewhat beat up old paperback.

I pulled it off my Classics Club list and the mighty power of the random number generator designated it my spin read.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. Spring has finally (?) sprung here in Toronto. Good day for a book on fishing!

Book Beginning: Cynthea Masson's The Flaw In The Stone

Genevre had merely wanted time alone to contemplate matters. Within months, she would turn thirty, thus reaching her Day of Decision. Like all in the Flaw dimension -- whether rebel alchemists or outside world scribes -- she would formally announce her choice on that day.

...is the beginning of Cynthea Masson's The Flaw In The Stone.

This second volume of a planned trilogy has just come out. I raced, very enjoyably, through the first volume The Alchemists' Council last week. There's a conflict between the Alchemist's Council and the Rebel branch that has philosophical overtones about free will: Masson is, according to the author bio, a professor with an interest medieval mysticism as well as the work of Joss Whedon. (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among other things.)

The first volume took a while to get going--fantasy trilogies need time to explain themselves before starting, it seems, though that wasn't true of Lord of the Rings. This one looks like it will get going a little faster.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. They're predicting freezing rain tonight. Good thing I've got a good book!

Book Beginning: Patricia Wentworth's Eternity Ring

Maggie Bell stretched out a hand and picked up the telephone. It was a thin, bony hand with jutting knuckles and it moved with a jerk. Maggie did everything in jerks. She was twenty-nine years old, but she had not grown or developed very much since she had had what was always alluded to with some family pride as her "accident." A car had knocked her down in the village street when she was twelve.

...is the beginning of Patricia Wentworth's Eternity Ring. (1950)

Patricia Wentworth writes well about spinsters or those that are doomed to become them. Nowadays such a character would be treated differently, of course. In fact, it's likely enough Maggie will be either the murderer or the victim. This is a terrible generalization, but I feel like I've read enough Miss Silver mysteries to get away with it; I was briefly worried I was about to finish the whole series, but I see there's still a couple I haven't read. Whew.

Anyway, I liked the opening, but I was prepared to like it.

From page 2, a bonus quote:

Miss Cicely brought her real nice books, and not the improving kind neither. Maggie had a sharp eye for being improved, and an impenetrable armor against it.

That makes Maggie seem much more likeable, at least to me...

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. It's snowing here in Toronto. Good day to curl up with a mystery!

Book Beginning: Matt Cohen's The Bookseller

October light. The long thin knife of memory. October light gets right inside and gives you the little twist. Take an afternoon in late October, an afternoon when the last light of summer is slanting over the fallen leaves, the cold damp green of October grass. Today, for example.

...is the beginning of Matt Cohen's The Bookseller.

Matt Cohen was a Canadian writer--he died young in 1999--and he lived at the end of his life in my neighborhood. There's a series of outdoors signs to his memory only a few blocks from my home. I haven't read any Cohen, but I bought this a couple of years ago when my local indy bookstore was going out of business. (I tried! I did my best!) This one looked the most interesting. Paul Stevens, the narrator, sells used books and gets into a complicated love affair.

As someone who's spent almost all of his life on one Great Lake or another, I quite agree about the quality of light in fall, in late October. I'm a bit more positive than the narrator seems to be, but it got my attention.

This will serve as my 'read local' book for the Monthly Motif challenge. I think at this point it doesn't get much more local for me than Matt Cohen.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. 

Book Beginning: Olga Tokarczuk's Flights

I'm a few years old. I'm sitting on the window sill, surrounded by strewn toys and toppled-over block towers and dolls with bulging eyes.

...is the beginning of Olga Tokarczuk's Flights.

This came out in English last year from Fitzcarraldo Editions (they're not spending any money on cover design, are they?) but originally in Polish in 2009, where it apparently won some awards. It's translated by Jennifer Croft.

The description on the back begins, "Flights, a novel about travel in the twenty-first century and human anatomy (!) is Olga Tokarczuk's most ambitious to date. It interweaves travel narratives and reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body."

The first section, a little more than a page long, is a rather dreamy recollection of the narrator's childhood. I'm not much past that at the moment. It's going to cover Poland for my Europe challenge at Rose City Reader.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like.

Book Beginning: Ben Lerner's Leaving The Atocha Station

The first phase of my research involved waking up weekday mornings in a barely furnished attic apartment, the first apartment I'd looked at after arriving in Madrid, or letting myself be woken by the noise from La Plaza Santa Ana, failing to assimilate that noise fully into my dream, then putting on the rusty stovetop espresso machine and rolling a spliff while I waited for the coffee.

...is the beginning of Ben Lerner's Leaving The Atocha Station.

I heard some buzz about this when it came out a few years ago (2011) and mentally put it on my it might be interesting list. But I recently realized the Atocha station is the main Madrid train station (Vacation in Spain coming up. Yay!) I thought I'd try it.

Ben Lerner wrote a couple of books of poetry but this is his first novel. (There's now a second.) I haven't read anything of his before this. I'm not much beyond that sentence at the moment, but I suppose it sets the picture: impoverished student-y ex-pat life. It's a short novel, and it even has pictures, so I suppose I'll finish it soon. Anybody know this one?

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. Hola! Me llamo Reese. 

Book Beginning: Amélie Nothomb's Pétronille

Intoxication doesn't just happen. It's an art, one that requires talent and application. Haphazard drinking leads nowhere.

... is the beginning of Amélie Nothomb's Pétronille.

I have to admit I laughed out loud at that opening and it does go on to be a funny novel. Amélie (the character, not the novelist, and don't confuse them...) is looking for someone to drink champagne with. Surprise, surprise. She finds somebody.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. Here's to you! Bottoms up!

Book Beginning: Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

When people ask me what I do--taxi drivers, hairdressers--I tell them I work in an office. In almost nine years, no one's ever asked what kind of office, or what sort of job I do there.

...is the beginning of Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

I no longer recall where I heard about this that made me want to read it, but I suppose it was one of the usual bloggy suspects. I put it on my library hold list six months ago and was finally able to pick it up Wednesday.

I like the opening. While the narrator thinks of herself a bit dull, it comes with sly humor, There's information packed in, too, and also a question to be answered: what does she do?

And I need to get reading! There's still six times as many holds as there are copies at the Toronto library.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. Must get reading!

Book Beginning: Martin Amis' Money

As my cab pulled off FDR Drive, somewhere in the early Hundreds, a low-slung Tomahawk full of black guys came sharking out of lane and sloped in fast right across our bows. We banked, and hit a deep well or grapple-ridge in the road: to the sound of a rifle-shot the cab roof ducked down and smacked me on the core of my head.

...is the beginning of Martin Amis' Money.

I think the poop on this is, it's supposed to be his best and it's supposed to be funny. Anyway, it's been on my TBR pile for...la la la, I can't hear you, TBR pile, what did you say? I read his father's Lucky Jim years ago and was disappointed; I like my humor a little more genial than Lucky Jim. But that's not very fair to Amis fils. And now Martin Amis is coming to Toronto to give a talk at the downtown public library and I got tickets (they're free) and I haven't read a single one of his books. No doubt he'll mostly talk about his latest, but I have this one, and I decided that would be my homework.

The cover above is way cooler than that of my Penguin paperback.

Anybody have any thoughts about Martin Amis? Is this the one to read? Would that opening keep you going?

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like.

Book Beginning: Lynn Crosbie's Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

"Hey pig!" was one of the many greetings thrown from cars, with bags of warm garbage, each day as I walked home, my chin tucked into my neck.
     At home, a cuff to the face for the bowl left in the sink.
     In my room, I saw under my dead boyfriend's poster, and love flooded through my barren heart, as always.

...is the beginning of Lynn Crosbie's Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

Crosbie's novel came out in 2015 with House of Anansi Press, a small-ish Canadian publisher. Evelyn, the unhappy high school girl whose voice we hear above, is moving from self-harm to drugs, and has just scored some heroin at the start of the novel. She's being raised by her drunk single mother, who's a former hanger-on in the Seattle grunge scene. The dead boyfriend of the poster is Kurt Cobain, with whom Evelyn has no relationship in this world. But maybe in the next.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like.

Book Beginning: Ross MacDonald's The Blue Hammer

I drove up to the house on a private road that widened at the summit into a parking apron. When I got out of my car I could look back over the city and see the towers of the mission and the courthouse half submerged in smog. The channel lay on the other side of the ridge, partly enclosed by its broken girdle of islands.

...is the beginning of Ross Macdonald's The Blue Hammer.

This was Ross Macdonald's final novel and the Lew Archer private eye series was well-established by this point. Macdonald had begun to get the acclaim that has since landed him in the Library of America. It seems to me he's not trying anything flashy here at the beginning in this one. The narrator is Lew Archer but we're not told that. (Though it is on the cover of the book.) He's on his way to see a potential client, but we don't really know that either; all we know is that he's on the grounds of a well-to-do southern California house. (Mission, smog.) It's low-key, but still I like it. Though I have to admit, if I wasn't already a Macdonald fan, I don't know that it would sell me.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. Your reporter is almost on location this week, reporting remotely from (northern) California.

Book Beginning: Julian Symons' The Blackheath Poisonings

The extraordinary series of crimes popularly called the Blackheath Poisonings took place in the early 1890s at a time when the Mortimer family had lived in that suburb on the edge of London for nearly half a century.

...is the beginning of Julian Symons' The Blackheath Poisonings: A Victorian Murder Mystery.

Symons' mystery came out in 1978 and as such is going to count for the Silver Age of Vintage Mystery challenge. Symons does not write series novels (which I generally prefer) and I've only just started, so I can't say much at this point. I've liked the other mysteries of his I've read, plus he's contributed mightily to the non-fiction history of the genre.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like. What? It's not book beginnings on Saturdays? Oh, well, better late than never...

Book Beginning: Italo Calvino's The Baron In The Trees

It was on the fifteenth of June, 1767, that Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, my brother, sat among us for the last time.

...is the beginning of Italo Calvino's The Baron In Trees. Young Cosimo is twelve and when he's served something at dinner he doesn't like and won't eat, he's told to leave the table. He climbs a tree outside the dining room window and vows never to come back, and he never does. (In his defense, it was snails for dinner.) He conducts love affairs and duels from the trees, is admired by Voltaire, corresponds with Diderot. Napoleon comes to look at him in the middle of conquering Italy.

I love, love, love this book. Sometimes, you just need a comfort read, ya know?

In poking around for a picture of the cover, I also found these images, which I think are pretty cool, and much more fun than the picture on the cover of my edition.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts if you like.

Book Beginning: The Odyssey (tr. Emily Wilson)

Tell me about a complicated man.

...is the beginning of The Odyssey by Homer in Emily Wilson's new translation.

I have to say, I love that opening and so far I think it's a superb translation. The introduction was a bit meandering, though, so I definitely want to think of the first line of the poem as the beginning. I've read the Odyssey before, but even still, there were a few points in this reading I was ready to tear up it was so affecting.

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a bookish meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. To play, quote the beginning of the book you're currently reading, give the author and title, and any thoughts (or tall tales or lies about being Cretan) you like.