Happy reading.
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This is an enchanted place. Others don't see it but I doFirst Sentences:
I see every cinder block, every hallway and doorway. I see the doorways that lead to the secret stairs and the stairs that take you into stone towers and the towers that take you to windows and the windows that open to wide, clear air. I see the chamber where the cloudy medical vines snake across the floor, empty and waiting for the warden's finger to press the red buttons. I see the secret basement warrens where rusted cans hide the urns of the dead and the urns spill their ashes across the floor untiled floods come off the river to wash the ashed outside to feed the soil under the grasses, which wave to the sky.
Description:
What at first sounds like a castle of fairy tales in these first sentences soon takes on an ominous air with the realization that the "enchanted place" is a prison where the author writes from his death row cell. This is a fictionalized tale of the lives of people who have no names and are without hope, punished for their actions. Yet for the narrator, there may be a possible future through a woman and a priest who work with these men and have their cases re-examined and possibly change their sentencing. But not every prisoner, as we find out, wants to stay his execution.
Beautifully written, compelling, and shocking, the book still offers hope and love despite the darkness.
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It was because of a yellow dress.First Sentences:
She was wearing a yellow dress and her arms were bare. It was slightly tart, the colour of lemon curd. He couldn't remember seeing a dress in that shade before.
Description:
On a whim, Wilfred Price, the mortician/narrator of this 1924 tale, proposes to the woman who is wearing the yellow dress, thus making a binding promise that he almost immediately regrets. He must think of how to break this promise of marriage to her and especially to the girl's stern father. It doesn't help that he also meets another girl who he feels real attraction to. And one of them turns up pregnant. A story of customs, social norms, love, honor, and duty ... all wonderfully wrapped together to present a picture of life in the early 1920s by ordinary people trying to do the right thing and yet searching for someone to be with forever.
A must read. This is a keeper for all lovers and readers, for people who understand what it means to love "like its possible to love when your heart hasn't been broken."
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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 is 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 for strong writing, historical details, and great characters.
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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 and then row and float 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 performances 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, Robinson works astonishing magic he has designed himself to audiences who soon become 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 peek into 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. One of the side stories involve native tribesmen who jump from small boats onto the backs of giant manta rays to ride them upright until they can harpoon them, just as they did with whales many years ago, including, they say, one white one.
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 also found next to the animal's body. This is 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 wildly in demand. 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 exotic after-death options that she explores.
Fascinating, thought-provoking, and most of all, strangely fun.
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