Book Beginning: The Glorious Heresies

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

He left the boy outside its own front door.

The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney. Winner of the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. So far, I am loving this rollicking story about Irish street life, although drugs, prostitution, and murder are not my usual cup of tea.

I'm probably feeling feisty because I just today settled a huge sex abuse case in Montana against the Boy Scouts involving girls abused in Explorer Scouts in the 1970s.

So apologies for the  somewhat late post -- my team has been out celebrating!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Book Beginning: The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

EARLY BIRDS: I am experimenting with getting this post up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. We'll try it this way for a couple of months to see if people like the option of early posting. If you have feelings one way or the other, please comment.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I am trying to follow all Book Beginning participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Subsidizing public transport had long been associated in the minds of both government and the majority of its public with the denial of individual liberty. The various services collapsed twice a day at rush hour and was quicker, Stephen found, to walk from his flat to Whitehall and then to take a taxi.

-- The Child in Time by Ian McEwan. That is not the kind of beginning you would expect for a book about a couple whose life is shattered when their toddler is snatched from them.

The Child in Time won the 1987 Costa Book of the Year Award. The subject is horrifying, but McEwan is such a master storyteller that reading it is bearable. It is really a beautiful story.

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

Marie at Burton Book Review is hosting in June.  Please stop by her beautiful blog where she is "Leafing through history one page at a time."

Thanks to Rachelle at my favorite Second Glance Books, I got a stack of books last week, several that I have been looking for for a long time. 



Death at the Chateau Bremont by M. L. Longworth (this was an impulse -- I couldn't resist the cover)



Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (on the Erica Jong list)



Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (Orange Prize winner)



Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald (one of my favorite authors)



English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (Costa Book of the Year winner)



Saint Joan of Arc by V. Sackville-West (on my French Connections list)



Hole in the Sky: A Memoir by William Kittredge (on the list of 20 Greatest Oregon Books)

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at A girl and her books (fka The Printed Page), who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here).

Serena at Savvy Verse & Wit is hosting in October.  Please go by and visit her wonderful blog. 

Many books came into my house last week from a variety of sources:

First, I had lunch with Larry Dennis to discuss his company, Turbo Leadership Systems doing some work with my law firm.  Larry gave me a copy of his book InFormation: How To Gain The 71% Advantage.  I don't read a lot of business books, but I'll read this one.



Second, Bob Sanchez, author and nonfiction editor at the Internet Review of Books, sent me a copy of his mystery, Little Mountain. I don't have a Kindle, so Bob was nice enough to send a paperback, but the Kindle edition is a steal at only $2.99! It looks great -- a Cambodian refugee now homicide cop in Lowell, Massachusetts.



Third, because I completed the Vintage Mystery Challenge, hostess Bev from My Reader's Block sent me a prize -- A PRIZE! For reading books. Does it get any better than that?  I chose An Oxford Tragedy by J. C. Masterman because this challenge has me hooked for good on vintage mysteries.



Finally, showing an uncharacteristic willingness to relinquish control, I gave a copy of my "Books to Buy and Read" list to Rachelle at my favorite Second Glance bookstore.  She found several nice copies for me, so I have a stack of new (to me) books, most of them on one or another of my book lists:

The Once and Future King by T. H. White (on the Burgess list)



One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (on the College Board's Top 101 List and the MLA's 30 Books Every Adult Should Read Before They Die list)



What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg (in a nice Modern Library edition; on the BOMC's Well-Stocked Bookcase list)



An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (winner of the Costa Book of the Year award)



Old Bones: A Gideon Oliver Mystery by Aaron Elkins (an Edgar Award winner)



A Case of Need by Michael Crichton (another Edgar winner)



The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (in a nice Everyman's Library reissue; on my own French Connections list)



The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award)



The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling (on the Easton Top 100 list)

Mailbox Labor Day

I went on a little holiday weekend excursion to Second Glance Books, where I can always find books on my list and have a nice chat with Rachelle, my favorite book seller. As always, she sent me a way with a nice stack of books for Mailbox Monday, hosted this month by the prolific Bermuda Onion:



The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers (because I started the Lord Peter Wimsey series and now want to read them all).



Spies by Michael Frayn (because I read about it in Nick Hornby's Housekeeping vs. The Dirt and it sounds great).



Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald (because I am working on her bibliography).



Felicia's Journey by William Trevor (because it won the Costa Book of the Year award in 1994).



Seek My Face by John Updike (because he's a favorite).



Bech at Bay by John Updike (because Updike is a favorite and I have the other two in this trilogy already, Bech and Bech is Back).



Then and Now by Somerset Maugham (because I'm on a Mauagham jag, having just finished The Razor's Edge and working my way through the short stories).



The Girl at the Lion d'Or by Sebastian Faulks (which I got at my neighbors' garage sale because I really enjoyed his newest book, A Week in December).

Review of the Day: Small Island

In Small Island, Andrea Levy examines what happened when volunteers from Jamaica came to England to fight for the British military during World War II and then stayed. She tells the story from the points of view of Queenie, the English wife of Bernard, her Jamaican tenant Gilbert, his new wife Hortense, and Bernard. The narrative moves back and forth in time from before the war to after, and from Jamaica to England to India, where Bernard was stationed.

The varying voices allowed Levy to pull in several different threads, but the central theme of the book is race relations in the 1940s in England. Until WWII, many English people in England had never seen or interacted with black people. Levy is a bit ham-fisted in her portrayal of American soldiers and their segregated ranks, but the contrast with the English is interesting. While the Americans were blatant with their discriminatory Jim Crow rules, the English prided themselves on how the British Empire supposedly led to racial tolerance.

Levy shows that this tolerance was more theory than fact. As black soldiers returned to England as black immigrants, they were treated as unwelcomed foreigners, despite being British citizens. Neighbors resent Queenie renting rooms to Gilbert and Hortense. Although Gilbert planned to go to law school, he is relegated to driving a truck. And college-educated Hortense is told that she will never be qualified to teach in London. Levy makes her point with subtly and humor as Gilbert and Hortense learn to find their way in England and in their marriage.

Levy skillfully weaves the small island theme throughout the novel. Geographically, Jamaica is a small island, but Levy makes it clear that limited ideas about culture, race, marriage, and opportunities made England just as small.

OTHER REVIEWS

(If you would liek your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link to your post and I will add it.)

NOTES

Small Island won both the Orange Prize and the Costa (Whitbread) Book of the Year Award. My book club read it and it was a enjoyed by all. It counts as my Orange Prize choice for the Book Award Challenge. It would also count for the Typically British Challenge if I had not already read more than my quota for that one. 

Review: The Tenderness of Wolves

In the late 1800s, the semi-frozen Canadian territory north of Sault Ste. Marie is no place to go wandering around with winter coming on.  Lakes and bogs are half frozen traps, snow storms obliterate trails and disorient travelers, and wolves are on the prowl.  But after a Scottish pioneer woman finds her trapper neighbor murdered in his cabin and her teen age son goes missing, she and a hodgepodge of others set of in various groups to solve – or cover up – the mystery.

There are several possible motives for the murder, everyone is a suspect, and side stories interweave themselves into the main tale.   But there are deeper levels to the book than simply solving a mystery.   As the characters track each other through the cold, bleak landscape, they ultimately find their own life paths.

 Stef Penney won the 2006 Costa Book of the Year Award for The Tenderness of Wolves. Part mystery, part adventure this is a smoothly written, complicated story that is sure to please readers looking for lots of plot but who want meat on the bones.

OTHER REVIEWS

Caribousmom

If you would like your review listed here, please leave a comment with a link to your post and I will add it.

Review of the Day: Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Kate Atkinson won the 1995 Whitbread (Costa) Book of the Year Award for her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, before going on to write seven more books, so far, including the popular Jackson Brodie mystery series.

In Museum, the precocious narrator Ruby Lenox takes us behind the scenes of the museum of her family history, starting with the very moment of her conception. Interleaved between the chapters of Ruby’s biography are lengthy “footnotes” that provide the story of earlier generations, back to Ruby’s great-grandmother.

This is a book about parents, children, sisters, love, marriage, infidelity, war, death, pets and the general hodgepodge of family life. Ruby is a beguilingly effervescent narrator, finding humor in the darkest cubbyholes of her family’s past and, eventually, finding her own place in the family gallery.

OTHER REVIEWS

if you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

List: The Costa Book of the Year Award

The Costa Book Awards seek to recognize "some of the most enjoyable books of the year by writers based in the UK and Ireland." The awards were formerly known as the the Whitbread Literary Awards from their start in 1971 until 1985 when the name changed to the Whitbread Book Awards. Costa Coffee took over over in 2006, changing the name, but not the purpose, of the awards.

Costa Awards are given in five categories: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry, and Children's Book. The Book of the Year Award debuted in 1985 and is chosen from any of the five categories.

I am not good about poetry and I do not care for sci-fi, so I do know know if I will ever get through all the books on this list. On the other hand, if they really won because they were "most enjoyable," then maybe reading these prize winners would be the easiest way for me to expand my reading horizons.

If anyone else is working through the books on this list, please leave a link in a comment and I will add it to this post.

The books I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore (2017)

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (2016)

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge (2015)

H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald (2014)

The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer (2013)

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (2012)

Pure by Andrew Miller (2011)

Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott (2010)

A Scattering by Christopher Reid (2009)

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (2008) (reviewed here)

Day by A.L. Kennedy (2007)

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney (2006) (reviewed here)

Matisse the Master by Hilary Spurling (2005)

Small Island by Andrea Levy (2004) (reviewed here)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2003)

Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin (2002)

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (2001)

English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (2000)

Beowulf by Seamus Heaney (1999)

Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes (1998)

Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes (1997)

The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney (1996)

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson (1995) (reviewed here)

Felicia's Journey by William Trevor (1994)

Theory of War by Joan Brady (1993)

Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington (1992)

A Life of Picasso by John Richardson (1991)

Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley (1990)

Coleridge: Early Visions by Richard Holmes (1989)

The Comforts of Madness by Paul Sayer (1988)

Under the Eye of the Clock by Christopher Nolan (1987)

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (1986)

Elegies by Douglas Dunn (1985)

NOTE

Last updated on October 24, 2018.

OTHERS READING THESE BOOKS

(Please leave a comment with links to your progress reports or reviews of these books and I will add them here.)

J.G.'s review of Birthday Letters on Hotch Pot Cafe

Sandra's comprehensive post on Fresh Ink Books