Tuesday Teaser, 22 of November

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) page. 
Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week my teaser comes from a book I am reading right now: Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Robertson family survived thirty-eight days at sea. Captain Bligh of the celebrated mutinous Bounty and his fellow castaways survived forty-seven days. Steven Callahan survived seventy-six. Owen Chase, whose account of the sinking of the whaling ship Essex by a whale inspired Herman Melville, survived eighty-three days at sea with two mates, interrupted by a one-week stay on an inhospitable island. The Bailey family survived 118 days. I have heard of a Korean merchant sailor named Poon, I believe, who survived the Pacific for 173 days in the 1950s. I survived 227 days. That's how long my trial lasted, over seven months.

Teaser Tuesday, 1 of November

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) page. 
Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week my teaser comes from a book I am reading right now: Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

"And with that they have spent the entire evening at Poison - with Mik, incidentally Zuzanna's "violin boy" and now official boyfriend - drinking apple tea and playing the game How much would your life have to suck to want the Apocalypse?

"It would have to suck so much that your bunny slippers are your only friends."

"It would have to suck so much that your dog wags its tail when you leave."

"That you know all Celine Dion's lyrics."

Teaser Tuesday, 12 of July

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) page. 
Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week my teaser comes from "A Spectacle of Corruption" by David Liss, which I dedicate to my romance-loving friends:

"But despite what the novelists will tell us, we live in a world more inclined to pragmatic action than romantical ideals. We might sit about with neat little volumes and imagine the blissful love in a cottage but such ideas are but phantasms. We cannot live them. Instead, we must eat and dress and comport ourselves with companions of our liking. And it is always preferable to live without fear of creditors."

Teaser Tuesday, 7 of June

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) page. 
Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week my teaser comes from "Magic Slays" by Ilona Andrews. It is sweet indeed:

"I tapped the paper with my pen. 'Rene, you want us to find you-don't know-who and to retrieve his you-don't-know-what for you-don't-tell-me-whom?'

Rene shrugged."


Here you can find my review of this one.

Teaser Tuesday, 17 May

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) page. 
Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 This week my teaser comes from "The Alienist" by Caleb Carr. 

The title posed some problem for me- I didn't quite understand it - but I found a very nice explanation here:

An "alienist" is "one who treats mental diseases; a mental pathologist; a 'mad doctor,'" according to The Oxford English Dictionary. The OED also defines "alienation" as in this sense as "mental alienation; withdrawal, loss, or derangement of mental faculties; insanity." The insane were thought estranged (alienated) from their normal faculties. The root of "alienist" is the Latin "alienare," to make strange. 

Now the teaser:

"Decent people have no use for your work, sir, for your abominable opinions of the American family, or for your obscene probing into the minds of Amer­ican children. Such matters are the province of parents and their spiritual advisors. If I were you, I should limit my work to the lunatic asylums, where it belongs. At any rate, no one associated with this administration has any use for such filth."

Teaser Tuesday, 3 May

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) page. 
Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 This week my teaser comes from the novel written by Jasper Fforde - yes, I managed to get the second part of the "Thursday Next" series, entitled "The Well of Lost Plots". Enjoy!


"Making one's home in an unpublished novel wasn't without its compensations. All the boring day-to-day mundanities that we conduct in the real world get in the way of narrative flow and are thus generally avoided. The car didn't need refuelling, there were never any wrong numbers, there was always enough hot water, and vacuum-cleaner bags came in only two sizes – upright and pull-along."

Teaser Tuesday, 15 March

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) page. 
Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 This week my teaser comes from the novel "Never Let Me Go" by  Kazuo Ishiguro. My review is coming soon!


"Your lives are set out for you. You’ll become adults, then before you’re old, before you’re even middle-aged, you’ll start to donate your vital organs. That’s what each of you was created to do. You’re not like the actors you watch on your videos, you’re not even like me. You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them, have been decided."

Cover of Never Let Me Go

Teaser Tuesday, 11 January

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) 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 Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I didn't intend to do it this week but as I happen to read something good I couldn't restrain myself from participating in this meme again. My teaser comes from "Uglies" by Scott Westerfeld. I got so excited because the book deals with the topic I featured in one of my "Thoughtful Thursdays" some time ago - beauty and its influence on us. Here is the quote (a bit long but really worth posting) :

The big eyes and lips said: I’m young and vulnerable, I can’t hurt you, and you want to protect me. And

the rest said: I’m healthy, I won’t make you sick. And no matter how you felt about a pretty, there was a

part of you that thought:If we had kids, they’d be healthy too. I want this pretty person….

It was biology, they said at school. Like your heart beating, you couldn’t help believing all these things,

not when you saw a face like this. A pretty face.

A face like Peris’s.

Cover of Uglies (Uglies Trilogy, Book 1)

Teaser Tuesday, 4 January

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) 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 Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser this week comes from "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - the review I am planning to write soon! Meanwhile enjoy this short excerpt:

They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads:
"So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming
sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life," and read:
25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming
sword which was given unto thee?
26 And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget
my own head next.
27 And the Lord did not ask him again.

Cover of Good Omens

Teaser Tuesday 14 of December

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) 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 Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7x10 to 18 th power joules of potential energy - enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point." 

 Bill Bryson A Short History

Cover of A Short History of Nearly Everything

of Nearly Everything

Teaser Tuesday 12 October

The Tuesday meme hosted by MizB at shouldbereading.wordpress.com

Finnaly I got the Alexia Tarabotti series by Gail Carriger. It seemed like ages but I decided to be very patient. I know, I know, back to vampires and werewolves but let's give the series a chance. I quote from the first part, "Souless", chapter one, which opens as follows:

"Miss Alexia Tarabotti was not enjoying her evening. Private balls were never more than middling amusements for spinsters and Miss Tarabotti was not the kind of spinster who could garner even that much pleasure from the event. To put the pudding in the puff: she had retreated to the library, her favourite sanctuary in any house, only to happen upon an unexpected vampire."

How can you not like her?

Teaser Tuesday 4 October

The Tuesday meme hosted by MizB at shouldbereading.wordpress.com

This week again I read about some epic battles fought by Kate Daniels in the futuristic Atlanta. They are awaiting you in "Magic Strikes" by Ilona Andrews - here is one fragment to make you feel the athmosphere ;): p.173. Our heroine has a logistical problem...

"They were our evidence. I would have to carry one. A seven-foot-tall scallen monstrosity, a green creature covered in foot-long needles or the guy missing most of his flesh from his ass and legs. Hmm, let me think..."

Cover of Magic Strikes (Kate Daniels, Book 3)

Teaser Tuesday, 21 September

The Tuesday meme hosted by MizB at shouldbereading.wordpress.com

This week feel free to explore the futuristic Atlanta full of supernatural and paranormal beings. The horrors are awaiting you in "Magic Bites" by Ilona Andrews - here is one fragment to tease you mercilessly ;):

"What kind of woman greets the Beast Lord with 'here kitty,kitty'?" he asked.
"One of a kind." I murmured the obvious reply. Eventually I had to look him in the eye.

Teaser Tuesday 14 September

The Tuesday meme hosted by MizB at shouldbereading.wordpress.com

This week feel the atmosphere dominating the criminal underworld of Chicago - a fragment from "Hard Time" by Sara Paretsky.

"While the officer undid the lock, she whispered that her mother was an upholsterer, that she'd bring her over in the morning and get her to repair my couch, no charge. I was too tired and  too angry to do anything but nod my sore neck."

Cover of Hard Time (V.I. Warshawski Novels)

Teaser Tuesday 31 August

The Tuesday meme hosted by MizB at shouldbereading.wordpress.com

Today it will be something special, dedicated to all blogers writting book reviews - a quote from "How I Became a Famous Novelist" by Steve Helly, p. 148. ENJOY! 

"Book reviewers are the most despicable, loathsome order of swine that ever rooted about the earth. They are snivelling, revolting creatures who feed their own appetites for bile by gnawing apart other people's work. They are human garbage. They all deserve to be struck down by awful diseases described in the most obscure dermatology journals."

Isn't the book lovely?

Cover of How I Became a Famous Novelist

Teasing Tuesday, 10 August

The Tuesday meme hosted by MizB at shouldbereading.wordpress.com

My teaser today will concern "A Blunt Instrument" by Georgette Heyer, p.47.

Cover of A Blunt Instrument

"Hemingway held the photograph at arm's length.'No, I'm pretty sure I don't connect her with the stage. No use asking you, Glass, I suppose?'

'I do not wish to look upon the face of a lewd woman,' Glass said harshly. 'Her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword'.

Asphodel Wormwood anyone? My review is coming soon!

Tuesday Teaser

The Tuesday meme hosted by MizB at shouldbereading.wordpress.com

This is from "Queen Camilla" by Sue Townsend; the review is coming soon!

Cover of Queen Camilla

The dog food that Grice's van delivered was labelled with government health warnings, saying: 'DOGS KILL.' 'DOGS SERIOUSLY ENDANGER YOUR HEALTH.' 'DOGS CAUSE BLINDNESS.' 'DOGS LICK THEIR GENITALS AND THEN THEY LICK YOU!' 'DON'T FEED A DOG, FEED A STARVING CHILD!' 'DOGS CARRY FLEAS.'

Tuesday Teaser

 

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should be Reading:

This week I would like to present a fragment from "The River King" by Alice Hoffman. I am reading it right now.

News traveled quickly at Haddan and by noon most people knew there had been a death. After the initial course of hearsay and gossip, people overloaded on rumours and simply shut down. All across campus there was silence in unexpected places.

Tuesday Teaser

 

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should be Reading:

I would like to quote from the Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud, p. 279, reviewed by me not so long ago:

" 'Nasty, ain't it?' The imp's voice dripped with satisfaction. 'Being at someone else's mercy. Now you know what it feels like. Face it, kid- you're on your own. You've got no one there to help you.'

Something tapped on the skylight window."

Teaser Tuesday today and I decided to quote a fragmet from "Lustrum" by R.Harris (p.3, the very beginning of the first chapter), reviewed by me not so long ago...;)

"Two days before the inauguration of Marcus Tullius Cicero as consul of Rome the body of a child was pulled from the River Tiber, close to the boat sheds of the republican war fleet. Such a discovery, though tragic, would not normally have warranted the attention of a consul-elect. But there was something so grotesque about this particular corpse, and so threatening to civic peace, that the magistrate responsible for keeping order in the city, Gaius Octavius, sent word to Cicero asking him to come at once."