The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings (Oct. 14)

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
(If you have to improvise, that's ok.)
*Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it)
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post in the Linky here. Add the post url, not your blog url.
*It's that simple.




Book Beginning is hosted by Rose City Reader. All you have to do is share the opening line of the book you're reading and what you think about it. Check out the other posts here.

My book this week is The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.  One day, after over a century of use, a bridge breaks causing the death of five people.  Brother Juniper, who witnessed the incident, sets out to prove that there was divine design even in this by finding out all he can about the people who died on the bridge.

Book Beginnings:

On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.

I think this is a pretty good first sentence.  Because now I want to know who they were and why he's telling me this.  And isn't that the point?  To get people to want to read on.  

Friday 56:

What relationship is it in which few words are exchanged, and those only about the details of food, clothing, and occupation; in which the two persons have a curious reluctance even to glance at one another; and in which there is a tacit arrangement not to appear together in the city and to go on the same errand by different streets?  And yet side by side with this there existed a need of one another so terrible that it produces miracles as naturally as the charged air of a sultry day produces lighting.

This passage also makes me curious.  I want to know all about these people he's talking about.  I'm liking this one so far.  Each part is about a different person that was on the bridge when it broke.  So it kind of has a short story feel to it but all the stories end the same way.