Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by Becky at Page Turners. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you’re reading. If you like, share with everyone why you do, or do not, like the sentence. (Thanks to Rose City Reader for inspiring this meme)
MISTY’S BOOK:
Nuffin’!
ALEX’S BOOK:
If you remember my Book Beginnings from two weeks ago, I mentioned that I was re-reading A Game of Thrones in anticipation of the new HBO series coming in 2011 and in order to finish the series that I started but never finished. This week’s first line is from the second book of the “Song of Ice and Fire” series, A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin.
“The comet’s tail spread across the dawn, a red slash that bled above the crags of Dragonstone like a wound in the pink and purple sky.”
It picks up where the first book left off, with a large visible omen etched into the sky, interpreted differently by the many characters across this world. One interesting aspect is the mention of Dragonstone. Throughout the entire first book, Dragonstone is referenced but we never see the vantage point of those dwelling on the island fortress. Good way to jump back into the series after the exhausting twists and turns of the first book.
I’m not just reading fantasy, though! I started reading one of Mutual Publishing’s newest novels Tweakerville by Alexei Melnick. Subtitled Life and Death in Hawaii’s Ice World you already know this will be a gritty piece of fiction delving into the local addiction and subculture that is Hawaii’s crystal meth problem. The book begins:
Robby’s house jus look like any house in the neighbor hood, bags of cans and bottles, the hose wrapped up around the nozzle. The cinder block walls and high bushes make it hard to see in to the yard. I keep the drive way pretty clean, sweep up the Heineken caps, cigarette butts, sun flower seeds. Some times there would be a Q-tip, a strip of cloth or a paper clip straightened out, nothing the mail lady would prolly notice. But if you knew what to look for you would know.
I like the start. Already you can see there are significant differences in this narrator’s voice. Compound words are almost always separated, sentences are brief statements linked together in a chain, a bit of grammatical slang here and there. Most of all I like the notion that unless you know what you’re looking at, you don’t know. There is an attention to the smallest details that rings these characters authentic in this tweaker world. So far, so good!
What are you all reading this month? Leave us a message with your own “book beginnings”.
