Teaser Tuesday (December 14): On Boarding School

Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly bookish meme.

My modified rules are as follows:

Grab your current read. Pick two or three (or four or five!) “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.)

It’s been an age since I’ve posted a TT post, and this one is actually my sister Brogan’s teaser:

“In the evenings the other girls would lie around the dormitory in their underwear, in groups like bored, basking seals. They would paint their toenails from small vials of blood-red lacquer. They would conduct inexpert conversations that tended inevitably towards cruelty. A subject would enter their midst, like a forest creature stepping into a clearing, and they would surround it, at first playful, then taunting, until with increasing savagery they would bring it down among them. I wanted to go home.” (p. 70)

This is from The Lucky Ones by Rachel Cusk.

Teaser Tuesdays (January 12)

Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly bookish meme.

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 trying something a bit different today; I hope you enjoy it. I should have my review of this one posted by the end of the day.

My teaser:

Click on image to enlarge

This is from The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg.

Teaser Tuesday (January 5)

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 haven’t been posting teasers lately, but I just couldn’t resist this one!

My teaser:


“‘There now, Charlotte. There it is in black and white. Overthinking and novel-reading causes, at the very least, fretting, nightmares and a bad complexion’” (p. 39).

This is from The Birth House by Ami McKay.

Books Bought + Teaser Tuesday (November 3)

As unbelievable as this may sound, in between my two book fairs last week, I actually went into a secondhand book store and bought two more books: Probability Moon by Nancy Kress and The Evolution of Jane by Cathleen Schine. As if I needed more books!

The Books Bought meme is hosted by Cindy at Cindy’s Love of Books.

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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.)

My teaser:

“She didn’t feel sober enough for O’Connor, so she continued beyond Park Town, walking the things that Mark had told her like dogs on a leash. Walking and walking and wishing that she could bend down and loosen the collars of her thoughts and slip free of them. But she couldn’t; they stayed with her, walking obediently at her heel” (pp. 282-283).

This is from Bloodless Shadow by Victoria Blake.

Teaser Tuesday (October 27): The first rush of an airplane ride

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.)

This is actually my sister Brogan’s teaser:

“Once in a while, however, my parents bought takeout from a Mexican restaurant a few miles from our home. . . . I don’t remember any of the other food. The reason I don’t remember the other food is that their salads were so damned good . . . The dressing was tart and puckery—my mouth always bunched around each bite after I took it in. The oil base beneath it was rich and slithery, like nothing I had ever experienced. And there were layers of taste after the vivid sharpness of the first bite. It tasted like the first rush of an airplane ride, when the wheels lift off the ground” (p. 34).

This is from Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back and How You Can Too by Shauna James Ahern.

Brogan’s comment to me regarding this excerpt was: “It made me think a lot of things are like the first rush of an airplane ride, as in, that moment when you lift and feel half-elated, half-heartbroken, like you might burst into tears at the sheer miracle of being alive.”

(I love her statement at least as much as I love the excerpt she chose.) What is like the first rush of an airplane ride for you?

Teaser Tuesday (September 8)

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 don’t usually post more than one teaser per book I read, but I couldn’t resist sharing this one!

My teaser:

“These spiritual experiences, it seems to me, have the air of high-priced interior decorators on reality television shows: they arrive (unbidden), and immediately begin punching through walls and removing countertops. They haul away most of the furniture, including your favorite red leather chair, and what they deign to leave, they put in the basement” (p. 40).

This is from Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality by Barbara Bradley Hagerty.

Teaser Tuesday (August 25)

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.)

My teaser:

“My mother had always insisted it was bad manners to talk about politics—unless you were a politician, and even then she didn’t much like it. Opinions were not things to be aired, shared or modified, but things to be kept hidden away like a piece of expensive jewellery which is always shut up in a box and never worn in case it gets damaged” (p. 250).

This is from Learning to Swim by Clare Chambers.

Teaser Tuesday (August 11)

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.)

My teaser:

“As a Christian Scientist, I had come to believe in the power of prayer to alter my experience, whether that be my wracking cough or my employment status, my mood or my love life. In that time, I had witnessed several healings” (p. 2).

This is from Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality by Barbara Bradley Hagerty.

Teaser Tuesdays (August 4)

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.)

My teaser:

“The boat was equipped with a powerful battery-operated spotlight, which when turned on dazzled bats and huge, brightly colored butterflies—also the piranhas, which in their terror would leap right into the boat. To throw them back in the river, we picked them up very gingerly by the tail, because one bite from their terrible jaws can take off a finger” (pp. 182-183).

This is from “Alligators and Piranhas” by Isabel Allende in Her Fork in the Road: Women Celebrate Food and Travel edited by Lisa Bach.

Teaser Tuesday (July 28)

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.)

My teaser:

“More than the prospect of icy water, Maddy shrank at the thought of getting naked. With a backward glance to check for voyeurs, she quickly shucked her plaid Ship’n Shore blouse and stern unnecessary bra; stepped, tripping out of her pedal pushers. She was slim-chested and hairy and bony-kneed, she would die of mortification” (p. 38).

This is from Conscience Point by Erica Abeel.

Teaser Tuesday (July 21)

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.)

My teaser:

“When the pigs discovered, at the bottom of the trough, the lopsided cake we had dredged from the Yummy House Bakery, they let out peals of delight louder than the squealing brakes of a municipal bus. They bit each other’s ears in order to get a bigger share of the cake” (p. 196).

This is from Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter.

Teaser Tuesday (July 14)

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.)

My teaser:


“Paulette blinked. She was often blindsided by how acerbic her sister could be, how in the middle of a pleasant conversation Martine could deliver a zinger that stopped her cold: the backhanded compliment, the ripe apple with the razor inside” (p. 5).

This is from The Condition by Jennifer Haigh.

Teaser Tuesdays (July 7)

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.)

My teaser:

“Shame. Stigma. Disgrace. How often those words closed a conversation about Annie and mental illness, how quickly they came to the surface when I mentioned to friends or strangers that I was trying to understand why my mother had made her sister’s existence into a secret, and why she had not only kept that secret, but guarded it, nurtured it” (p. 62).

This is from Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg.

Teaser Tuesdays (June 30)

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.)

My teaser:


“The truth is I’ve never leaned to ride a bicycle, because, among other reasons, it is something you can never forget. This is who I am: someone who simultaneously longs for and fears the commitment of remembering” (p. 3).

This is from The Opposite of Love by Julie Buxbaum.

Teaser Tuesdays (June 16)

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.)

My teaser:


“Figuring things out was an essential property of Dev the way impenetrability is an essential property of matter or oddness is an essential property of the number three. Nothing unusual about the figuring out part” (p. 60).

This is from Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos.

Teaser Tuesdays (June 9)

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.)

Way back in April, Gayle at Everyday I Write the Book announced that The Local News by Miriam Gershow was the June EDIWTB book club pick. I’ve never participated in an online book club, but since I have the book, I signed up to join in the discussion. However, I just realized that the book club “meeting” is next Monday (June 15) so I guess I’d better start reading the book!

My teaser:

“I was drawn to it [driving] in the same nagging way I was drawn to anything I wasn’t good at, like when I’d spent the summer before taking algebra, learning polynomial and quadratic equations, or when I’d spent weeks memorizing every strait in the world after losing the eighth-grade geography bee (Joshua Belson had beaten me, knowing that the Naruto Strait connected Awaji Island and Shikoku in Japan” (p. 8).*

This is from The Local News by Miriam Gershow.

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

Teaser Tuesdays (June 2)

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.)

My first teaser:

“With this in mind, he returned reluctantly to the chase; a particular sentence had gotten all coiled up on him, and he spent an uneasy half hour trying to untangle the wiring and making a valiant effort not to dwell on her increasingly gaping absence, while several academic points he was trying to clarify got bored and wandered off into the middle distance. ” (p. 4).*

This is from Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel.

My second teaser:

“Allen thought he had somehow managed to get the red object into his hands and propel it in the general direction of the beach umbrella; he thought he remembered the child's steady gaze, her look of considered appreciation, as if they had for a moment shared some secret acknowledgment of the important things in the universe, but he could never be sure. That uncertainty troubled him, out of all proportion” (p. 109).

This is from Keeping Watch by Laurie R. King.

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

Teaser Tuesdays (May 26)

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.)

My teaser:

“People tried on Miriam’s pain in that way, modeled it for her, almost as if they expected her to be flattered by their interest. But they never had any trouble shedding it when the time came. They plucked it off and handed it back to her, continuing with their blessedly uneventful lives” (p. 151).

This is from What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman.

Teaser Tuesdays (May 12)

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.)

My teaser:

“A cross between a goblin and a tadpole, the monkfish has a broad shovel-shaped head that appears to taper into its tail without bothering to pass through the intermediary of a body. With its beady eyes, warty skin, and scowling froglike mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, the monkfish resembles the flattened Halloween mask of some Texas chainsaw psycho” (p. 15).

This is from Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe.

Teaser Tuesdays (May 5)

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.)

My first teaser:

“Katie was a merciless interrogator, and she had an uncanny way of reading Ida’s most secret thoughts. Katie always had to know all, down to the most intimate and embarrassing details, which she picked over with relish, like a carnivorous bird” (p. 75).

This is from Katherine’s Wish by Linda Lappin.


My second teaser:


“She was always getting lost or losing people only to find them again, to her great surprise, round the next tree or the next corner. ‘Oh, there you are after all’” (p. 27).

This is from “Prelude” in Bliss and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield.