The Friday 56 (March 15th)

Rules:

*Grab a book, any book.

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your ereader.

*Find any sentence (or a few) that grabs you.

*Post it.

*Link it to Freda's Voice.

*Add your (url) post to Linky on Freda’s post

This week my book is Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw.  Poor Jim was forcibly brought back to life after about 60 years of peaceful death and now all he wants is to get that peaceful death back.

 

"Aw, crap, Slippery John's spine is powderized," came a voice from somewhere around floor level, with the nonchalant tone of someone discovering a hangnail.

 

"Oh dear," I said, then felt pretty stupid about it,  "Do you need any help?"

 

 

And, yes, the first one talking there is Slippery John.

Into Thin Air Review

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer was on Mount Everest in May of 1996 when disaster struck his team and many others on the mountain that year.  This is his personal account of what happened on the mountain that year along with the research and interviews that he did in the time following the disaster.

Krakauer starts his story well before he gets on the mountain.  He gives you the background on the mountain: the people who have climbed it in the past, or failed to, the politics of who can climb and which side they could climb, a small background on all the people on the mountain with him.  I liked having a context to put his story into.  And it is easier to care about the people you are reading about if you know something about them.  Of course, in this case, that might not be a good thing.  You follow all these people as they climb and face all of the perils along the way.  There are some gut wrenching moments when you feel the dread of the moment.  When you feel the pull of the circumstances that they feel powerless to change.  In many ways it is a horrible story because you know it does not end well but it pulls you in and gets you involved and you can’t look away.  There are a lot of people on the mountain, all with different groups, and Krakauer can’t leave anyone out but it took me a while to sort everyone out and remember who was who.  And even though he talked to the other people after the fact you do get a feel that it is a one sided story, you don’t get the point of view of the other people involved but you also never feel that Krakauer is being untruthful or deceitful in any way to make himself look better or excuse decisions that were made.  I have never had any desire to climb a mountain myself but I kind of understand why someone would.  They were pitting themselves against nature, proving something, accomplishing something.  But after having heard this story, told so well it sometimes made me sick to my stomach, I really don’t have any idea why someone would put themselves in that position.  

The Scarlet Pimpernel Review

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

(from the back of the book)

It is 1792 and France is in the grip of a seething, bloody revolution.  Mobs roam the Paris streets hunting down royalists, barricades block any chance of escape, and every day hundreds die under the blade of Madame Guillotine.  But in the hearts of the condemned nobility there remains one last vestige of hope: rescue by the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel.  Renowned for both his unparalleled bravery and his clever disguises, the Pimpernel’s identity remains as much a mystery to his sworn enemy, the ruthless French agent Chauvelin, as to his devoted admirer, the beautiful Lady Marguerite Blakeney.

I am a fan of the masked hero type. Zorro and Batman and the like. So you might want to take what I say with a grain of salt because I think I was predisposed to like this novel. And I did like it. There are less of the heroic adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel here than you may expect. You hear about his breathless, selfless rescues more than you actually get to see them. A lot of the book is told from the point of view of Lady Blakeney so the reader stays in England with her instead of getting to go to France with the Scarlet Pimpernel. But you still get to hear how he fools the French and does all sorts of heroic things. I think the events hold more surprises for the characters than they do for the reader but I don't think that hurts the story. Sometimes the 'I just want to be able to die beside my beloved' emotion of Lady Blakeney gets to be a bit much. And I have to admit that I was getting tired of being told that she was ever so clever, even though at times she didn't act like it. Over all I really liked it. It is fun and exciting with some suspense and romance.

WWW Wednesday (March 6th)

To play along just answer the following three (3) questions...

*What are you currently reading?

*What did you recently finish reading?

*What do you think you’ll read next?

Leave a link to your post (or the answers themselves if you do not have a blog) in the comments of Should Be Reading.

What are you currently reading?

Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith

I just started this so I don’t have much to say about it yet.

What did you recently finish reading?

Death in the Long Grass by Peter Capstick

Death is right.  Everyone is getting chewed on, gored, and smashed to paste. 

What do you think you’ll read next?

Lavender-Green Magic by Andre Norton

I have had this on my shelf for a long time and since I have a color reading challenge going on I think it’s about time I got to it.

Teaser Tuesdays (March 5th)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I just barely kept myself from stomping across the room and herding Edward’s teeth from his face with my fist.  Not only did he have some sort of bet going as to my brother’s ignorance, he was kissing up to the old Englishman by cutting down Americans.

Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith