Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Teaser Tuesdays (January 20)


Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly event.

My modified rules are as follows:

Grab your current read. Pick two or three “teaser” sentences more or less at random from the book, anywhere on the page. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your teaser from… that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given! (Please avoid spoilers!) (Read the official Teaser Tuesday rules.)

I’m between books right now (still reading The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch, but I like spacing these essays out with something else), so I thought I’d provide teasers from the two books I’m considering reading next. These are the opening lines from each of these books.

My first teaser:

“My dad died at an incredibly inconvenient time, and I have no doubt that he planned it that way on purpose. It was February 2006. His home on the Idaho side of the Tetons was buried under six feet of snow from a blizzard that had roared down from Canada and locked the whole region in its icy grip. There were no flights in or out of Driggs for a week, and once I finally arrived, I was prevented from carrying out his final wishes because the particular bend in the Teton River where I was to stand and scatter his ashes in reverence and mourning was frozen so solid that the idea of a trout jumping in spring seemed to be the stuff of myth” (pp. 1-2).*

This is from The Only True Genius in the Family by Jennie Nash.

My second teaser:

“Months later, wrestling the personal and historical demons my search had set free, I would look back on the first six weeks I lived in Krakow—lovely weeks spent strolling the square—and wonder if I had known something then, if a part of me had seen the future and divined the grief about to visit my family. I would look back on entire days devoted to ‘cultural reconnaissance’ and wonder if I wasn’t just savoring the last dance before an end to the party. It seemed easier at the time to attribute the delay in my search to something cosmic, to believe it served some purpose beyond the drag of my own fear” (p. 1).

This is from The Pages in Between: A Holocaust Legacy of Two Families, One Home by Erin Einhorn.

Both sound very promising to me (and I will probably wind up reading them back to back).

*Note that this quote comes from an ARC and therefore may have been changed for final printing.

13 comments:

  1. Wow! Each of your teasers has a mysterious, ominous tone. I'm intrigued as I haven't come across either of these books before.

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  2. Love the first sentence of A Genius in the Family. A lot of my family members sound like that dad lol.

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  3. Thanks for the great teasers - both are catchy and seem very serious!

    Here's my Teaser! ~ Wendi

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  4. Those are great teasers! I just got a copy of The Pages In Between in the mail today from a blogging buddy. I am looking forward to reading what you think of both of your current books.

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  5. Both sound promising to me too, particularly A Genius in the Family.

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  6. Well these both sound really good....Good luck choosing! Thanks for the teasers.

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  7. Those are both great teasers. It's fun to try and limit yourself to just 2 sentences, but sometimes you need just a little bit more.

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  8. Great teasers Avis. I'm just reading The Only True Genius in the Family and I've wanted to read The Pages in Between but don't have that one. I'll be watching for your reviews.

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  9. Completely off the subject (I hope that's okay), I wanted to tell you that your blog was in my dream last night. :-) I was taking a literature course at college and the professor had a list of blogs that she felt were worth our taking the time to visit and your blog was listed right at the top. I was so excited to see your name up there; not to mention that the professor was pleased that I'd heard of you before.

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  10. These both sound very good. I don't know these books, I'll have to check them out.

    Literary Feline - LOL!!

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  11. I've added *A Genius in the Family* to my wish list; you'll see it in my Friday Finds tomorrow.

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  12. hope you enjoy The Pages In Between. Definitely a favorite!

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  13. Oh dear, another whole bunch of comments from January that I never responded to! Thanks everyone for your comments!

    Literary Feline, I'm so glad I emailed you about your comment in the end, since I've let a month go by before replying to it publicly! Thanks for sharing that dream with me; I love it!

    I'm looking forward to your review, Dawn, especially now that I've posted mine.

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