First Chapter First Paragraph - Tuesday Intros: Blonde

Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph - Tuesday Intros, a meme that I like but that I don't often do.  I've been reading long books lately, so not too many opportunities to blog about finished books these days, so I thought I would share the intro to the book currently consuming my reading time.

I'm reading Blonde, by Joyce Carol Oates, a fictionalized account of the life of Marilyn Monroe.  It's good, it's sad, and not only because we all know the ending.  Interestingly, the novel begins at the end.

There came Death hurtling along the Boulevard in waning sepia light. 

There came Death flying as in a children’s cartoon on a heavy unadorned messenger’s bicycle.

There came Death unerring. Death not to be dissuaded. Death-in-a-hurry. Death furiously peddling. Death carrying a package marked *Special Delivery Handle with Care* in a sturdy wire basket behind his seat.

There came Death expertly threading his graceless bicycle through traffic at the intersection of Wiltshire and La Brea where, because of street repair, two westbound Wiltshire lanes were funnelled into one.

This is a pretty typical quote from the book, which is told from Norma Jeane's perspective.  I'm only 200 pages into this >700 page novel, and she is still 18, but Oates does a good job of maturing the language and the thought processes as the character develops.

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Ghostly

Every Tuesday Diana from Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros wherein bloggers share the first paragraph from a current book.

I haven't done this meme in awhile, but I'm so excited to start Ghostly, a collection of ghost stories collected by Audrey Niffenegger, that I thought I would share the opening paragraph of her contribution to the collection, "Secret Life, With Cats."

I don't know why Ruth left me her house, with all its attendant complications.  Perhaps she sensed that I longed for change, for an adventure.  Perhaps she pitied me. Maybe she knew what I would do with such a gift, though I did not know myself.

How's that for an intriguing beginning? Just knowing that it will be a ghost story involving cats makes the opening all the more delicious to me.

First Chapter/First Paragraph: The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee was one of my Christmas gifts this year.  I'm eager to get started on it, especially after reading the opening for today's First Chapter First Paragraph - Tuesday Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea.  I encourage to stop by to see what other bloggers are diving into this week.

Here's the First Paragraph of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop:

When I walk into a bookstore, any bookstore, first thing in the morning, I'm flooded with a sense of hushed excitement.  I shouldn't feel this way.  I've spent most of my adult life working in bookstores, either as a bookseller or a publisher's sales rep, and even though I no longer work in the business, as an incurable reader I find myself in a bookstore at least five times a week.  Shouldn't I be blasé about it all by now?  In the quiet of such a morning, however, the store's displays stacked squarely and its shelves tidy and promising, I know that this is no mere shop.  When a bookstore opens its doors, the rest of the world enters, too, the day's weather and the day's news, the streams of customers, and of course the boxes of books and the many other worlds they contain--books of facts and truths, books newly written and those first read centuries before, books of great relevance and books of absolute banality.  Standing in the middle of this confluence, I can't help but feel the possibility of the universe unfolding a little, once upon a time.

I think this book and I are going to get along just fine.  How about you?

First Chapter First Paragraph ~ Tuesday Intros - The Secret History

Every Tuesday, Bibliophile By the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph- Tuesday Intros and invites readers to post the beginning of books they are reading or about to read or would like to read.

I'm currently more than half way through The Secret History, by Donna Tartt.  It's one of those books with a cultish following, and I can see why.  It takes place in a small liberal arts college in Vermont and the first-person narrator is a 20-year old student from California who enrolls in a classics program that has only five other students.  They take the study of Greek, history, language, culture and ethics very seriously.

Here's the opening of the Prologue:

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.  He'd been dead for ten days before they found him, you know.  It was one of the biggest manhunts in Vermont history--state troopers, the FBI, even an army helicopter; the college closed, the dye factory in Hampden shut down, people coming from New Hampshire, upstate New York, as far away as Boston.

It is difficult to believe that Henry's modest plan could have worked so well despite these unforeseen events.  We hadn't intended to hide the body where it couldn't be found.  In fact, we hadn't hidden it at all but had simply left it where it fell in hopes that some luckless passer-by would stumble over it before anyone even noticed he was missing.

I'm hard pressed to think of another novel that starts by giving away the plot so completely at the outset, but then this story is not about whether the college kids kill their irksome friend, but whether they get away with it.  And that I don't know.

I'm enjoying the book though thankfully I'm having a hard time relating to either the main character or his fellow students.  Tartt, however, is a marvelous writer and Richard, her first-person narrator reminds me a lot of Nick Carraway from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Anybody else read this?  Does this opening intrigue you?  Can you think of any other novels that seemingly give away the story before it even begins as this one does?

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros: Katherine, by Anya Seton

Every Tuesday, Diane (the Bibliophile by the Sea) hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where she and those of us who join her share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book that will be read soon or is currently being read. Stop by and seeing what everyone else is reading.

Here's what I've got on deck...

Katherine, by Anya Seton, described on the cover as the classic love story of medieval England, is the story of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

In the tender green time of April, Katherine set forth at last upon her journey with the two nuns and the royal messenger.
     The invisible sun had scarcely risen as they quitted the little convent of Sheppey, and guiding the horses westward towards the Kentish mainland, rode gingerly down the steep hill.  Dripping dun clouds obscured the minster tower behind them and thick mists blew in from the North Sea.
     The bell began tolling for Prime and Katherine heard, through its familiar clangor, the bang of the priory's gate, and the faint voice of the little wicket nun calling again through the mist, "Adieu, dear Katherine, adieu."
     "Farewell, Dame Barbara, God be with you," Katherine answered, hoping that her tone was not too gay.  She had tried to make herself feel the requisite doleful pang at parting from this convent where she had spent over five years, but her heart would not obey.  It bubbled, instead, with excited anticipation.

I'll be reading this book in September as part of my TBR Pile Challenge--it comes recommended by so many book friends, and now that I am engulfed in the War of the Roses, I'm very excited to read about John of Gaunt's Katherine.  The opening is evocative of time and place and promises a wonderful heroine.

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros: 1876 by Gore Vidal

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter-First Paragraph in which she, and those of us who join her,  posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she is reading or planning to read.  

On my TBR Pile Challenge list as an alternate selection is Gore Vidal's 1876: A Novel.  This is the time of the robber barons, the gilded age, post Civil War and pre-WWI.  Scandal and big business characterize the East, while the West is still wild and the frontier hasn't become a metaphor yet.  I've had this book on my shelf for years--ever since I read Vidal's Lincoln, which I loved--but never read it.  

Here's how it starts...

"That is New York," I pointed to the waterfront just ahead as if the city were mine. Ships, barges, ferry boats, four-masted schooners were shoved like a child's toys against a confused jumble of buildings quite unfamiliar to me, a mingling of red brick and brownstone, of painted wood and dull granite, of church towers that I had never seen before and odd bulbous-domed creations of--cement? More suitable for the adornment of the Golden Horn than for my native city.

Now that I've read the opening, I can't wait to get to it in earnest!

Here's the Amazon blurb:

Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers.

The centennial of the United States was celebrated with great fanfare--fireworks, exhibitions, pious calls to patriotism, and perhaps the most underhanded political machination in the country's history: the theft of the presidency from Samuel Tilden in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes. This was the Gilded Age, when robber barons held the purse strings of the nation, and the party in power was determined to stay in power. Gore Vidal's 1876 gives us the news of the day through the eyes of Charlie Schuyler, who has returned from exile to regain a lost fortune and arrange a marriage into New York society for his widowed daughter. And although Tammany Hall has faltered and Boss Tweed has fled, the effects of corruption reach deep, even into Schuyler's own family.

First Chapter - First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Jane, Actually

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter-First Paragraph in which she, and those of us who join her,  posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she is reading or planning to read.  

Next week our family is headed to Disneyland for a last hurrah before the last chicks leave the nest for college in August.  I plan to read Jane, Actually: or Jane Austen's Book Tour  by Jennifer Petkus on the plane ride.  

A woman writer, especially one long dead, should think seriously before turning down any offer from a publisher, even if it be for completing a book that one had long ago abandoned. After all, the passage of time, circumstances and not least the loss of one's body, affords a new perspective.

While this opening is delightful and full of promise, I feel that I have to provide you with the Amazon blurb because this is one of those genre-defying novels that you just can't make any assumptions about.

With the invention of the AfterNet, death isn’t quite the end to a literary career it once was, and Jane Austen, the grande dame of English literature, is poised for a comeback with the publication of Sanditon, the book she was writing upon her death in 1817. But how does a disembodied author sign autographs and appear on talk shows? With the aid of Mary Crawford, a struggling acting student who plays the role of the Regency author who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Emma and Sense and Sensibility. But Austen discovers her second chance at a literary career also gives her a second chance at happiness and possibly even … love.

I read and enjoyed Petkus's other Austen-inspired work, My Particular Friend, and I know that I will love this romp through Austenmania and sci-fi with some beloved Colorado landmarks thrown in for good measure.  Maybe I won't even wait until next week.  I want to read it now?  How about you?