All have my big three requirements for a quality read: great story, involved interesting characters, and of course extremely good writing. Trust me that each will not disappoint you.
Happy reading.
First, a stone landed a metre from Viktor's foot.First Sentences:
He glanced back. Two louts stood grinning, one of whom stopped, picked up another from a section of broken cobble, and bowled it at him skittler-fashion. Viktor made off at something approaching a racing walk and rounded the corner, telling himself the main thing was not to run.
Description:
This is an offbeat, oddly humorous story, translated from the original Russian, about a man living in modern Kiev who is hired by a newspaper to write obituaries for living people. Not so unusual until his obits begin to appear in print as these people coincidentally turn up dead. Everything happening is masked in secrecy, with his newspaper Chief saying, "When you do know what's what, it will mean there no longer is any real point to your work or to your continuing existence."
Oh, and a few oddities: the obit writer owns a penguin adopted from a bankrupt zoo that lives in his apartment; a little girl is dropped off to live with him by her father who then disappears; someone is regularly entering Viktor's locked apartment at night, unseen, leaving gifts and notes including a pile of money and a gun; and much more highly unusual occurrences and people that keep the writer in a constant state of puzzlement.
Keeps you guessing to the very last sentence.
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"Linda Franklin had not been to bed with every boy in the junior college of Wattsville, but at nineteen she had known physical intimacy with a high percentage of those boys who knew enough to appreciate her amply endowed body."First Sentences:
As first sentences go, it is not a bad one. It treats Linda Franklin's promiscuity like a familiar subject, it shows a touch of wit in its sober contradiction of a preposterous assertion ("had not been to bed with every boy in the junior college,") and its categorical precision ("a high percentage of those boys who ...") tells us we are in the hands of an author with a working mind.
Description:
Author David Carkeet, while reading sleazy novel, realizes that his small town and its citizens were the basis for this sexy book which was written by a former English teacher who skipped town. Carkeet recalls his own coming-of-age story and compares it to the narration of the activities of the people in his town. Very funny.
[Side note: I accidentally left my copy of this book behind at a conference where I spoke, so had to go through the unusual experience of contacting organizers and facilitators to ask whether they had seen my Campus Sexpot book laying around. Took more than a few calls, each a bit more embarrassing than the last. Probably lost a bit of my image (or fortified it) among my colleagues.]
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He began to die when he was twenty-one, but tuberculosis is slow and sly and subtle.First Sentences:
The disease took fifteen years to hollow out his lungs so completely they could no longer keep him alive, In all that time he was allowed a single season of something like happiness.
Description:
Dr. John Henry (Doc) Holiday, a Southern aristocrat, moves to Texas for his health and opens one of the first dentistry offices in Dodge City. After becoming a gambler to survive when business was bad (always), he befriends Wyatt Earp in this rich, compelling historical fiction of the people and environment of the Old West.
Highly recommended in every way.
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First Sentences:
The first inhabitants of Green River Station, Wyoming Territory, gather at the riverfront to cheer off a rowdy bunch of adventurers...
Their plan could hardly be simpler. They will follow the Green River downstream until it merges with the Grand to become the Colorado, and then they will stay with the Colorado wherever it takes them
Description:
Here is a real life adventure. Ten men, including their one-armed leader, in 1869 set out in wooden boats to follow the Green River to the Colorado River through the entire Grand Canyon. Uncharted and unseen water faces them, with rapids, cold, and starvation a daily trial. Hold-your-breath fascinating and gripping on every page.
One of the best adventure books I have ever read.
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All the World's a stage.First Sentences:
Inscribed in the plaster and finished in gold leaf, those five famous words appeared over the proscenium at the World Green Empire in north London, in the smooth white halo that formed the focal point of the theater, and surrounded the blood red, gold-tassled curtain.
Description:
Here is probably one of the most fascinating (and true) accounts of the world of magic, revealing the life of William Robinson, an ordinary magician in the early 1900s who tries to find a gimmick to make his performance stand out. He hits on the idea of pretending to be a silent Chinese conjurer, Chung Ling Soo. In his foreign make-up and Asian robes, he works astonishing magic he has designed himself to audiences fascinated by his mysterious nature as much as his tricks, including catching bullets fired from a gun.
The book shows the inner working of his illusions, his constant dedication to his craft, and the imagination and technical skill behind each performance. It is a great book that provides a peak at the world of magic, illusion, and performance.
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First Sentences:
The Essex was not going to founder immediately. That soon became clear to the men of the three whaleboats.
Description:
Did the Great White Whale of Herman Melville's Moby Dick actually exist? Author Severin travels the world to record fascinating stories and eye-witness accounts of white whales and their behavior in today's world and in past history, leading credence to the idea that Moby Dick actually existed and was just as ornery as Melville portrayed him.
I really loved this book, the riveting accounts from eye-witnesses, and the travel to exotic locations around the world that have reported sightings of a white whale.
First Sentences:
The helicopter flew low over the landscape as barren as any to be found on planet Earth.
This was Nunavut. It wasn't a province and hardly a territory though they called it that. As far a Warburton was concerned they could give it all back to the Eskimos.
Description:
When examining a rare find of a Mammoth elephant in the ice fields of Canada, a carefully-preserved man in animal skins is found next to the animal's body. An astonishingly historic find. But there is something else. Strapped to the ancient man's wrist is a gleaming stainless steel briefcase, not exactly something a cave man would have in prehistoric times.
A lovely, clever page-turner of a novel.
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Mortality - Christopher Hitchens
First Sentences:
I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death
But nothing prepared me for the early morning in June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement.
Description:
Christopher Hitchens is a remarkably clever, intellectual, and funny writer. In Mortality, he details his battle with esophageal cancer and his entrance into the "land of malady." While a depressing topic, Hitchens retains his caustic wit and piercing observations, beautifully writing about his own sickness, fears, treatment, friends, and life facing this disease.
As a cancer combatant, this book resonates with me as few other do on this topic.
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First Sentences:
Stuck to the cracked dashboard was a decal of the Dutch soccer team PVS Eindhoven.
A PVS Eindhoven fan in Ouagadougou? I tapped on the team's red and white logo and asked the driver if he was an admirer of Dutch soccer. He had no idea what I was talking about. He'd never heard of PVS, didn't give a damn about soccer. He didn't even know where the Netherlands was.
Description:
The delightful, witty true adventures of the author who hits on a scheme to sell a very old Mercedes automobile to people in a Third World country where these cars are very popular. The only catch is that to make any profit at all, he has to drive the wreck himself to the destination; that is, from his home in The Netherlands to Africa, including a section across the Sahara desert.
Desert, people, travel, and culture come into contact in adventurous and humorous situations, revealing aspects of each at their best (and worst).
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First Sentences:Rebecca Love met Tommy Odom ten years ago at a Renaissance fair.
She had her booth selling clay sculptures of women's bodies; he ran the fool's maze.
Description:
Different cultures and people choose a wide variety of ways to deal with the bodies of loved ones claimed by death. The author explores these many methods with quiet fascination and respect, no matter how unusual the practices are. She talks with the people who offer these services and learns that bodies can be: 1) cremated and dropped from a crop-dusting plane; 2) mixed with cement that is shaped into a sculpture and tossed into the ocean as a habitat for fish; 3) buried in a natural cemetery without coffin or embalming; 4) turned into diamonds using the carbon found in their ashes. Of course, there are examples of even more wildly-interesting after-death options that she explores.
Fascinating, thought-provoking, and most of all, strangely fun.
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