Strange Pictures

Uketsu. Strange Pictures. New York : HarperCollins 2022. Print.

 

First Sentences:

All right, everyone, now I'm going to show you a picture.


Description:

What a compelling opening sentence. Who could not read at least a few more lines to have a peek into that picture and why this person wants to talk about it? The simple, perfect hook for readers. 

 

I absolutely cherish any book that when, after reading the very last line, all I can think about is going back to the beginning and re-reading the whole story again. 

This time, I think, I will catch the subtle hints about the characters, what's about to come, and the significance of overlooked actions and words as the story slowly unravels anew before me. 

It's like watching a great movie that you re-watch again and again for the plot, the characters, the foreshadowing, and the still-surprising actions (like in Jaws when you can never really expect nor avoid jumping when the dead man's skull drops down in the hole in the sunken boat hull).

 

In Strange Pictures by Uketsu (Note: please click here to read about this mysterious Japanese YouTuber/Author sensation whose identity is unknown as he always wears a masks and black body suit when pictured), we are presented with four seemingly unrelated stories as well as nine drawings. All seem distinctly separate from each other, including the art work. 

 

But after coming across an obscure blog called Oh, No, Not Raku, two college students in Japan are captivated by the drawings in this blog and the diary entries from its author. Raku's daily postings center around his family but contain drawings by his wife. These are quick sketches which seem somehow related, but pose many puzzling questions to the college students, especially after Raku posts that his artistic wife died during childbirth of their daughter

When faced with true sorrow, people lose even the strength to shed tears.

Next we jump to a story centering on an unusual picture drawn by a pre-schooler for his mother. It depicts the boy and mother standing in front of a six-story building. The strange part of the picture is that the apartment room where they live is smudged out. Why would that be? If someone could explain this "intentional" blurring in the drawing, they might therefore understand the boy and his mama, and possibly the history of each.

 

The two other stories also involve drawings, but their plots focus on character studies, broken relationships, crimes and mysteries where the drawings might contain a valuable key. 

 

But best of all, somehow all these stories, people, and situations have a connection to each other. Slowly, ever so slowly, readers begin to unravel confusing clues, clarify relationships, and uncover overlapping timelines in this seemingly simple, yet wildly entertaining book.

 

It's one of the most unusual, gripping, and puzzling books I have ever read. Cannot wait to start it all over again in the very near future, maybe next week. Uketsu has another book out now as well, Strange Houses, so I'm definitely checking that one out as well. Highly recommended.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

Hallett, Janice. The Twyford Code.

Probably the most complex, yet completely engrossing mystery I've ever read involving the search for a children's book which might contain in its text the secret to a lost stash of money. Highest recommendation. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Daikon

Hawley, Samuel. Daikon. New York : Avid Reader 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

Major Edward T. Houseman left his barracks tent at 8th Avenue and 125th Street -- the Columbia University district -- and headed down the crushed coral roadway in the direction of Times Square. It was eleven o"clock at night and a half-moon was rising, painting the island bluish gray. He passed a row of Quonset huts on his left, backed by miles of runways for the B-29s.


Description:

It's rare for me to find a book that completely satisfies all my criteria for a great book: strong characters, captivating plot, challenging setting, and wonderful writing. Daikon by Samuel Hawley is my most recent find. I'm so happy to share it with you.

 

Each of these four elements in Daikon (plot, characters, writing, setting) force you to keep going, paragraph after paragraph. You simply must find out what's going to happen next, what choices will the characters make, what obstacles, frustrations, triumphs, and dangers will they next face, what the outcomes will be, and how wil they and their world be affected. It's kind of like forcing yourself to watch a thriller movie from behind your fingers placed over your eyes. You have to find out, but you fear what you might see/read. In Daicon, it not a bloody scene you anticipate; it's the on-the-edge-of-your-chair outcome, whatever it might be, to every situation on every page.

 

Here's the scenario and a very brief intro to whet your interest. In the waning days of World War II, Japan's cities and population have been devastated by continual American and Allied bombings. Many in the Japanese government as well as among the people, are ready to surrender. Others, however, feel giving in would be the ultimate in humiliation and are prepared to rally a pro-Japan resurgence with similarly-minded people, including some military, even if it means overthrowing the Emperor and his government.

 

Through an accident, days before the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, an American plane crashes in Japan. It was on a mission to drop the first nuclear bomb on a Japanese city, the premier display of the bomb's power. After the American plane crash, this bomb falls into the hands of the Japanese. However, they are uncertain exactly what this odd-looking device actually is and what its use might be.

 

So how do the Japanese unwrap its secrets? Are there even any scientists left in their devastated country who might be able to decode this weapon? And ultimately what do the finders of this tool plan to do with it before Japan crumbles and surrenders?

 

The rest of the story focuses on the Japanese people involved with these challenges: a scientist, his wife, the army commander, and a lowly navy enlisted man. Together and separately, they embody Japan's dreams, skills, and dedication. What keeps you reading is trying to discover the outcome created by these people on the lost American bomb and possibly the War itself?

 

That's what will keep you up long into the night.

 

As you might sense, this is a special book, completely gripping on every level. You just cannot walk away from these fascinating, often ordinary, but committed characters as they face challenge after challenge.

 

Get it. Read it. And savor the storytelling skills of Samuel Hawley. Highest recommendation. 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Conaway, Janes. American Prometheus 

Highly-detailed history of the United States' Manhattan Project, which was tasked to secretly develop, test, and make available, in a very short time span, an atomic weapon before the Germans do.

 Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Cowboys Are My Weakness

Houston, Pam. Cowboys Are My Weakness. Berkeley, CA : Washington Square Press 1992. Print.

First Sentences:

When he says "Skins of blankets?" it will take you a moment to realize that he's asking which you want to sleep under. And in your hesitation he'll decide that he wants to see your skin wrapped in the big black moose hide. He carried it, he'll say, soaking wet and heavier than a dead man, across the tundra for two -- was it hours or days or weeks?


Description:

I admit I first picked up Pam Houston's Cowboys Are My Weakness, simply based on the title. But after only the first few sentences and paragraphs, I was deeply hooked by the relationship descriptions conveyed in her deft, personal writing style.

These are stories of love, each narrated by a woman who isn't afraid to take chances with questionable men and enter into challenging situations. Her writing is so packed with penetrating evaluations of her environment and the people she encounters, honest hesitations over choices to be made, questionable decisions settled on, and then unblinking acceptance of consequences that I felt author Houston was telling deeply-felt episodes from her own life to me, her confidential friend. 

Houston's stories include:

• Hunting with a boyfriend for six weeks as he leads paying customers to locate, shoot, and bring back trophy big horn sheep ... and she hates hunting, never having ever even shot a gun much less killed any animal. Not to mention the miles slogging on her belly to sneak up on unsuspecting sheep; 

• Deciding to winter camp in -30 degree weather to ward off the blues, despite never having camped in sub-zero weather, having poor equipment, and only two freezing dogs as companions;

• Rafting down an impossible river that the local park ranger said was too high to run, leaving at night and unable to see the killer rapids throughout their adventure, aware that only the day before on the same river a similar boat had capsized, killing one experienced rafter;

• Watching her best friend deal with repeated cancer diagnosis; hosting a mother who doesn't like her boyfriend's tattoos or lifestyle; tending a horse with a lame tendon (after hitting a gopher hole while she was riding and being thrown over his head and concussed); and working her way through cowboy after cowboy, each with great affection for her, wonderful physical attractiveness and attentiveness, but each carrying a warning sign of some aspect (previous girlfriend he can't leave, possible pregnancy decisions, and just plain old reluctance to stick around and change his lifestyle) that always threaten her deep feelings for each man.

It's her writing that is supurb: thoughtful, concise, emotional, and always honest to her inner most feelings. Whether describing her connections to her dogs, horses, men, or women friends, her stream-of-consciousness narration is always clear and open, revealing her deepest and sometimes not so deep feelings on every page.

There are multiple relationship decisions facing her protagonist in every story, such as:

• She said the wild ones were the only ones worth having and that I had to let me do whatever it took to keep him wild. She said I wouldn't love him if he ever gave in, and the harder I looked at my life, the more I saw a series of men--wild in their own way--who ...I tamed and made them dull as fence posts and left each one for someone wilder than the last;

• I thought about all the years I'd spent saying love and freedom were mutually exclusive and living my life as though they were exactly the same thing;

• There was something about the prairie--it wasn't where I had come from, but when I moved there it just took me in and I knew I couldn't even stop living under that big sky. When I was a little girl....I used to be scared of the flatness because I didn't know what was holding all the air in.

• After the first week in Alaska I began to realize that the object of sheep hunting was to intentionally deprive yourself of all the comforts of normal life.

• [On waking up after surviving a -30 night of winter camping] The morning sunshine was like a present from the gods. What really happened, of course, is that I remembered about joy.

I absolutely loved every story, character, setting, and writing style in each of these short stories. It's one of the few books that I could pick up immediately and re-read, certainly one title that will go into my Forever Library collection. 

I sincerely hope you pick it up and enjoy the trials and joys of relationships, whether with men, women, or animals, as I have and will continue to do in the future.

A relationship, you've decided, is not something you need like a drug, but a journey, a circumstance, a choice you might make on a particular day.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 

Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces.

Wonderfully powerful, personal, and highly descriptive essays of rural life on a sheep ranch and other very small town locales in Wyoming.

 Happy reading.

Fred

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Siegfried Sassoon. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer: The Memoirs of George Sherston. New York: Coward, McCann. 1930. Print.

First Sentences:

I have said that Spring arrived late in 1916, and that up in the trenches opposite Mametz it seemed as though Winter would last for ever. I also stated that as for me, I had more or less made up my mind to die because in the circumstances there didn't seem anything else to be done.


Description:

Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, has been considered the greatest book about World War I ever written. Sassoon, was a writer of dreamy poetic verse until the War came. Then, at age 28, he became an second lieutenant in the British cavalry and sent to the front lines in France where he soon became noted for his compassion for the men serving under him. 

 

Details abound as readers experience every aspect of war through the eyes of British Officer Georege Sherston, Sassoon's fictionalized version of himself. Sherston/Sassoon watch and enter into battles both with his men or alone, with bullets and bombs all around him. The barb wire he confronts is real in Sherston's depictions, as are the smell of chemicals, gun powder, sickness and death. Truly, readers are taken into the trenches to join Sherston and his men live hour by hour in the trenches.

Well, here I was, and my incomplete life might end any minute; for although the evening air was as quiet as a cathedral, a canister soon came over quite enough to shake my meditations with is unholy crash and cloud of black smoke. A rat scampered across the tin cans and burst sandbags, and trench atmosphere reasserted itself in a smell of chloride of lime.

After the death of a friend, however, Sherston turned into "Mad Jack," looking for vengeance against the Germans through carrying out reckless forays behind lines. He was eventually wounded and sent back to England. There, he contemplated the futility and fraud of war and wrote completely different anti-war poetry.

 

In real life, while recovering from his wounds, Sassoon refused to return to the War, publishing his statement in "A Soldier's Declaration." Here he protested the sanitized version of the war promoted by the government, and stating his personal reasons for "refusing to serve further in the army." That powerful anti-war letter is published in full here in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. Its opening lines are below:

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. ...I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest....

This is the second of three books in Sassoon's fictionalized autobiography series, centering on Sherston, a shy British country gentleman who only knows of horses, cricket, and golf, but finds himself in the trenches of Somme and other battles in the heart of World War I.

 

Powerful, yet beautifully written very penetrating eye witness account of what Sassoon experienced on the front lines, the confidence, the bravery, the horrid conditions, the disillusionment, and the eventual bitterness that led to Sassoon's future anti-war writings. 

 

For any history buff, you cannot go wrong with this realistic depiction of the men, battles, and conditions of World War I. Highest recommendation.

Next evening, just before stand-to, I was watching a smouldering sunset and thinking that the sky was one of the redeeming features of the war. 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage.   

The classic narrative novel of the dreams, fears, and disillusionment of a common soldier fighting in the United States Civil War.

 

Rogue Male

Household, Geoffrey. Rogue Male. New York: New York Review of Books 1939. Print.

First Sentences:

 

I cannot blame them. After all, one doesn't need a telescopic sight to shoot boar and bear; so that when they came on me watching the terrace at a range of five hundred and fifty yards, it was natural enough that they should jump to conclusions. And they behaved, I think, with discretion.

Description:

Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male came to my attention because it was repeatedly mentioned in another great book, The Ministry of Time. One of the men, slated to be killed in World War I, was snatched by this experimental Ministry to prove people could be relocated to the present from the past, and also study how these people would adapt to the modern age. And during his time in his new, unfamiliar world of the present, this time traveler was continually reading Rogue Male so many times that the cover fell off. 

 

Now that is a book I just had to explore.

 

Written in 1939, Rogue Male opens with an unnamed British gentleman sportsman lining up his high-powered rifle sights on an unnamed, vicious European foreign leader. As he narrates in this novel, he is unexpectedly apprehended and "questioned," all the while claiming he was just performing an intellectual challenge  just testing whether a skilled hunter could break through this leader's security. This internationally-known hunter escapes his enemies, only to begin months of pursuit and survival.

 

He is doggedly pursued by two men whom, as fellow huntsmen, he cannot shake. He faces confrontations and close escapes, sometimes even confronting them face to face, as he uses his ample wits to flee from one hiding place to another. He must use all his hunting skills avoid capture and, if caught, to insure there is no tie-in to the British government as responsible for his "assassination attempt," even though it was only a mental challenge for him.

And dawn, I think, is the hour when the pariah goes out....It is the hour of the outlawed, the persecuted, the damned, for no man was ever born who could not feel some shade of hope if he were in open country with the sun about to rise.

There is a strong sense of honor, of British dignity, loyalty to country, and general life in rural parts of Europe that provide the backbone of the novel. The narration by the sportsman is formal, clipped, and gripping, although always seeming in control. Heis words and thoughts reminded me a bit of a James Bond figure but without any weapons, gadgets, or exotic locations. Just clear, organized thoughts about his next steps and potential consequences.

 

It is a fairly short book, only 182 pages, but written with such beautiful language that it was a pleasure to spend time enveloped in the mind and words on a pre-WW II British gentleman on the run. Highly recommended for lovers of intrigue, thrillers, survival, and wondrous language.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Howarth, David. We Die Alone.   

Twelve men try to sabotage a German military post in northern Norway, but only one survives the mission. He swims through freezing water and is forced to elude enemy pursuers through icy Norway, without boots, gloves, shelter, or friends. Riveting true survival story (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Memory

Westlake, Donald. Memory. New York: Dorchester 2010. Print.

First Sentences:

 

After the show, they went back to the hotel room, and to bed, for the seventeenth time in three weeks. He had chosen her because, being on the road with him, she was handy; and additionally because she was married, had already clipped the winds of one male, and could therefore demand nothing more from hm than he was willing to give. Why she had chosen him he neither knew nor cared. 

Description:

It's always sad to realize that you have read the last new publication from a beloved author due to that person's death. Fortunately, in the case of one of my all-time favorite writers, Donald Westlake was a hugely prolific writer, producing detective novels, thrillers, humorous crime tales, and short stories in abundance under multiple pseudonyms. 

One of his final novels, Memory, originally written in 1963 and published posthumously in 2010, was recently reissued in coordination with the newly-released film The Actor. I had never heard of this book and eagerly swooped in to read it. And boy, what a ride. No crime, not much humor, just a character study of a man lost in the world of the 1950s, trying to regain his memory and former life.

Of course, it starts off with a bang. In the first two paragraphs, Paul Cole is discovered in bed with a woman by the woman's husband who raises a chair as if to hit Paul. Paragraph three has Paul awakening in a hospital, not knowing who he is or how he wound up in a hospital with only his clothes and wallet to give him any hints of his former life. He is diagnosed with temporary amnesia which he is assured will soon go away, and released into the world. Armed with a New York driver's license showing his presumed home address, Paul decides to try to travel there to see whether that city and possible people he once knew can jog his memory and help him resume his life.

But he only has enough money to get part way to New York. He decides to take a bus as far as he can, landing in Jeffords, Ohio, with no job, no money, no acquaintances, and no place to live. He frustratingly finds it difficult to explain to people his amnesia, remember appointments and people's names. Reminder notes soon plaster his rented room to help him manage his daily life.

All the while, he is trying, with mixed success and setbacks, to gather enough money to head to New York where he hopes to find answers.

While this description may sound mundane, it is the very ordinariness of Paul Cole and his fragmented memory coping with minor and major everyday challenges that gently, firmly pull readers into Paul's life and mind. You cannot help but turn pages to see whether he will succeed or fail in each situation, with each person, and whether his hopes of regaining his memory in Jeffords or New York will be realized.

Westlake is an incredibly gifted story-teller, and Memory is no exception. It is highly recommended by me for its unique plot, character development, challenging situations faced, and the repercussions Cole faces based on his decisions made. Westlake is at his best in this novel.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Elizabeth Moon. The Speed of Dark

Autistic tech workers with high skills in determining computer patters in programming are offered the chance to correct their autism symptoms and lead the lives without the challenges they face daily. But in this process, they might lose their pattern-recognition skills, and more importantly their former memories, personality, and possibly even friends. Thought-provoking and totally involving, this fascinating story follows one central character as he struggles with this decision. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 450 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

 

Beautiful Ugly

Feeney, Alice. Beautiful Ugly. New York: Flatiron. 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

 

If all we need is love, why do we always want more? I dial her number. Again. Finally she answers.

Description:

I think Alice Feeney is one of my favorite "soft" thriller writers. Author of the twisty, gripping books Sometimes I Lie and Rock, Paper, Scissors among others, she takes ordinary people, often couples, and explores their personalities, relationships, dreams, and foibles that lead them into very tense, maybe threatening situations. No ax murders here, just edge-of-your-seat, something-funny-is-going-on-here, don't-know-what's-behind-that-door-that-I'm-about-to-foolishly-open kind of situation found on every page.  

 

Feeney's newest thriller, Beautiful Ugly is another fantastic read, full of sudden surprises, quirky characters, unexpected plot twists, and slightly unnerving settings. It opens with an author, Grady Green, talking on the phone with his wife while she is driving home to see him. She suddenly says she sees a body in the road and tells Grady that she us going to stop to help. Grady warns her not to get out of the car, to stay safe, but she gets out anyways. That is the last she is heard from by Grady or anyone else.

One year later, Grady is struggling. He desperately misses his best friend, his wife. He cannot afford mortgage payments on their house, so has moved into a cheap hotel while trying to write the second novel he is contracted to produce (and, of course, has already spent the advance).

Fortunately, Grady's publishing agent has inherited a small "writing cabin" from a former writer/client on a remote island in Scotland. She feels Grady needs a quiet environment to produce his required novel, and the cabin might be just what he needs. She will sponsor him with her own money for a few months in hopes he can free himself from his block and produce a new book.

But once settled into the luxurious cabin, Grady makes a discovery that might change his fortune, despite the far-ranging risks involved. While considering which path to follow, he begins to notice strange things about the island and its people. With no phone coverage, no internet, and no way of communicating with the non-island world, Grady soon feels an unease that makes him question his sanity.

All this happens in the first few pages, so I am not giving away the plot twists that unfold from this point. Alice Feeney is the master of characters glimpsing things out of the corner of their eyes, reading questions into seemingly ordinary situations, and misinterpreting everyday conversations. 

All this leads to a very tense, unputdownable story. It only reveals its secrets in the final pages, and even then there are several completely unpredictable revelations.

I really enjoyed letting this plot, characters, and environment engulf me completely. Pick it up if you like to follow a lead character who experiences ambition, confidence, questions, suspicion, anger, love, and uncertainty in his life among an unusual village full of quirky townspeople (whom he cannot quite figure out if they are crazy or he). 

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Feeney, Alice. Sometimes I Lie.   

A woman wakes from a coma without any memory of how she got there or anything about her past few months. She cannot talk or move, so people visiting her do not know she can hear them. Slowly from their conversations and foggy memories, she begins to piece together the incidents that led to her hospitalization and current situation...and not everything she learns is positive. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 470 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).