Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly featurefor book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?Here are the rules:
Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!
First lines:
“My parents didn’t seem the sort of people who would end up killing someone. Everyone would say that – except the boy who died, who isn’t saying anything. He carried his story with him off the edges of the earth, like the others who died along the way. This story, my story, belongs to them too.”
Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?
From the bestselling author of The Lost City of Z, soon to be a major film starring Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller and Robert Pattison, comes a true-life murder story which became one of the newly-created FBI’s first major homicide investigations. In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And this was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.
As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled it. In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. Together with the Osage he and his undercover team began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
“Today our hearts are divided between two worlds. We are strong and courageous, learning to walk in these two worlds, hanging on to the threads of our culture and traditions as we live in a predominantly non-Indian society. Our history, our culture, our heart, and our home will always be stretching our legs across the plains, singing songs in the morning light, and placing our feet down with the ever beating heart of the drum. We walk in two worlds.”
I’ve said it countless times before but I’ll say it again: I’m not usually a nonfiction reader. I always have trouble getting hooked into the flow and most of the time I lose interest after 35-50% or it takes me forever (read: months or years) to finish a book. BUT that wasn’t the case with this one.
This book sucked me in from the start – big props to David Grann and his writing! I don’t know what to say about this book though. It’s… appalling and fascinating? It is a chilling and despondent portrayal of a very dark side of humanity. Reading the history of the prejudices carried out against the Indians left me feeling incredulous. I know it’s not an isolated history and it still goes on today, but I guess reading about the full extent of the injustices done and the perpetrators’ attitude of absolute right and entitlement to do so… Really brings back the time age-old question: who really are the savages here?
That said, this book is also a testament to the strength and perseverance of a peoples – to come through that Reign of Terror, although even generations after the time, not unscathed. I can’t even begin to imagine how it would be like to know that justice will never be seen for the family that was lost in such sickening and brutal ways.
Although I’m not in any way connected to America or this American history, it’s still sad to know that this dark period is not something that’s taught to younger generations – “lest we forget”. It’s so important to not forget this history.
Have you read Killers of the Flower Moon or is it on your TBR?
We all knew this day was coming right? Animal Crossing New Horizons has… Taken my life and turned it upside down in the most addictively soothing and relaxing way 🤣 We know I’ve been obsessed with it ever since it came out and I’ve not read nearly half as much because I’ve basically spent all those free hours playing 🐼
By the way, if you wanna visit, just add me! Friend code: SW-4593-0344-8127
But anyway, back to the tag at hand… I stumbled across it on Beth’s blog and we know that nobody has to tag me to do this one! This tag was created by Angharad and Becky at Two Book Thieves. Now without further ado, let’s get to it 😍
Past Villager:
Who is a character you found when you were younger that still has a place in your heart?
This was actually a tough prompt to answer because my mind was blanking hard, but after a while I thought of Elizabeth Wakefield of the Sweet Valley Twins — the shy, smart, and bookish sister. I admired her a lot growing up and I think she was the first character that made me feel it was okay to be smart and bookish, and that being ‘popular’ isn’t the end all of your young life 😂 Sounds lame but it’s true!
Blather’s blatherings:
RECOMMEND A HISTORICAL FICTION BOOK THAT YOU THINK EVERYBODY SHOULD READ
I’ve mentioned this book over and over, time and again on here but I feel like The Shadow of the Windis still such an underrated read. We all know I’m not big on magical realism either but everything in this book was just… *chefs kiss!* It was nothing like I expected but I loved every minute of it!
Celeste’s wish:
what is a future book release you wish you could read now?
Right now I’m super keen to read Unravel the Dusk, the final book in The Blood of Stars duology 😍 I read Spin the Dawn in January and absolutely loved it. I signed up for the blog tour with The FFBC for the sequel convinced that I wouldn’t get in on it but… I did and I’m so freaking excited!!!
TIMMY & TOMMY:
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SIBLING RELATIONSHIP IN A BOOK?
The first one that came to mind was the sister-ship between Nishat and Priti in The Henna Wars. I loved it — it wasn’t perfect but it was so real and relatable! Their sibling banter was on point and it reminded me a lot of my own interactions with my sister 😊 Their support and love for each other was so clear to see and it was really heartwarming.
THE EASTER BUNNY:
A POPULAR BOOK CHARACTER THAT YOU’RE NOT A BIG FAN OF
Unpopular opinion time! Please don’t hate me… But the first character that came to mind was Alex from Red, White and Royal Blue. I’m truly sorry that I didn’t love him… He just really grated on my nerves and in the end I only wanted more Henry time! He really should’ve had a POV…
NOOK’S LOANS:
AN AUTHOR YOU’D GIVE ALL YOUR MONEY TO
I can really only choose one? Because I can’t. I’m going to choose two (whatcha gonna do about it): Jay Kristoff and V.E. Schwab. This answer will surprise no one LOL I think they’re the only authors whose books I have special (and multiple) editions of! I love their stories and their characters always worm their way into my heart, plus they just do morally grey characters so well.
THE SISTERS ABLE:
what is your favourite fictional family (found or otherwise)?
Oh man, I think we know by now that I’m a total sucker for a great fictional family, found or otherwise. But I have to shout one of my favourite fictional families is the Knightley family (especially the brothers!) from Meghan Quinn’s Getting Lucky series. They’re all hilarious and I love their love and support for each other! Honestly, just give me all the great family dynamics because I’m all for it 😍
It’s a C+:
what is a trope you don’t like that keeps popping up?
There are only a few tropes that I really dislike but the love triangle trope is really just not my jam and I think people need to stop writing about it. Kidding! But no, I really don’t like that trope. No matter how well it’s handled, I feel like someone always gets hurt. Plus, I usually can’t take the angsty feels! 🙈
the wandering camel:
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE BOOK SET IN A LAND FAR AWAY FROM YOURS?
I can’t not go for The Simple Wild for this one! I mean, first of all, I couldn’t pick a further real life location from Bali than Alaska, which I have a slightly low-key obsession with. With the already beautiful landscape and majestic setting, we have fabulous character growth and an absolutely delicious enemies-to-lovers romance that had me swooning for days 😍
what would dodos do?:
a fiction land you wish you could fly away to at any moment
I’m going to choose the great wide galaxy of Saga. I mean, it’s crazy messed up but also immensely cool. Most importantly though, I don’t think I’d die within the first five minutes of setting foot anywhere in this galaxy, which is obviously always very important to consider!
And that was the Animal Crossing New Horizons tag, friends. I’m not tagging anyone specific for this but if you’re keen to give it a go, then go ahead and have fun! 😉
Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighbourhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her – feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.
Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up. When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?
If Vietnamese pho’s healing powers, physical and psychic, make traditional chicken noodle soup seem like dishwater—and they do—then this spicy soup, in turn, dishwatered pho. It was an elixir. The sandwich was spicier still, thin-sliced vegetables slathered with a fluorescent red sauce, the burn buffered by thick slabs of bread artfully toasted.
I really enjoyed this book! Sourdough is full of quirky and endearing characters and situations that make you laugh and fill your mind with wonder. It also made me insanely hungry(2020 edit: reading that quote above already has me salivating!) and brought to life a craving for sourdough – although I’m sure the loaf that I dug into is nothing like the legendary Mazg one (unfortunately). What I liked about this book is that you can take it as lightly as you want to, but if you want to give it a bit more thought, there’s also some meat for you to chew on. It doesn’t go into very fine details, which I didn’t mind because in a book like this, you can easily over-describe situations, events and processes until you bore your reader to death. Robin Sloan definitely doesn’t do that!
I have come to believe that food is history of the deepest kind. Everything we eat tells a tale of ingenuity and creation, domination and injustice—and does so more vividly than any other artifact, any other medium.
Lois, the main character, is so full of life and energy. I could really relate to her thoughts in terms of wondering at being a part of something more; something significant and important. I think that’s what we all go through in our 20s, 30s (and well, some even longer), especially as we finish university and start looking for a job and try to find more meaning in our lives. To find that purpose and to chase after what makes us tick – what gives us life. Lois is so passionate and just dives into situations that come at her – which is the complete opposite of me and probably why I find people who can do that so admirable.That energy of hers was palpable and as I read the book, I happily soaked up her enthusiasm for everything that she was doing. It made me think about what I’m currently doing and whether I am just living in my own version of “General Dexterity”? It’s a big Maybe.
Here’s a thing I believe about people my age: we are the children of Hogwarts, and more than anything, we just want to be sorted.
Of course, there’s also some magical realism sprinkled throughout the book, especially as you come towards the end when you’re kind of doused in it all at once. As someone who is very picky when it comes to magical realism, I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy it but I absolutely loved it! It’s another element of Robin Sloan’s writing that I loved because it’s not entirely out of place or unbelievable in stories where the characters and events are so full of quirkyness.
I read someone’s comment about his books that summarised them in a really simple but accurate way – just as Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore was about a secret society for book lovers, Sourdough is about a secret society for food lovers. And who doesn’t love food (and books and secret societies)?! After reading this, it’s pretty safe to say that I thoroughly enjoy the way Robin Sloan writes and he has got a fan in me! Can’t wait to read more from him 🙂
Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of WWW Wednesday, a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words, which means I’ll be answering these questions:
What did you read last?
What are you currently reading?
What will you read next?
You know how I was saying I was reading tons last week? Well, that was a bit of a false start! LOL but it’s okay… Right?! 🤣It’s definitely a quite post this week… Since last Wednesday I’ve only managed to read one book because work has been mental and I’ve been doing a lot of overtime even at the weekend and it’s draining!
The Plus One Pact by Portia Macintosh ★★★☆☆ Despite a funny and hopeful start, this one ended up being just an okay read for me. I did enjoy it — the heroine’s humour was great and as someone also in their 30s, I really related to the heroine’s experiences. However, the character development was really lacking and we were told a lot instead of shown, so I didn’t feel the chemistry as much as I’d expected to. It had a lot of potential but unfortunately it missed the mark. Still, not a bad read just not a favourite. My blog tour review is coming up next week!
Hello Mondays, welcome back to #5OnMyTBR, a meme created by the wonderful E @ The Local Bee Hunter’s Nook. This bookish meme gets us to dig even further into our TBRs by simply posting about five books on our TBR! You can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. You can find the full list of prompts (past and future) at the end of this post!
This week’s prompt is: Unconventional format (e.g. text messages, emails, verse, etc.)
We’re back with another Sundays in Bed With… meme! This meme dares to ask you what book has been in your bed this morning and is hosted by Midnight Book Girl. Come share what book you’ve been you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed with, or which book you wish you had time to read today!
This Sunday I spent part of the day in bed with The Die of Death which is book II of The Great Devil War by Kenneth B. Andersen. It’s nice to be back with Philip after book one — I feel in ways that he has grown a lot although time didn’t pass in the real world when he was in hell. I’m looking forward to learning more about Mortimer (Death) and seeing what happens next!
Philip’s adventures as the Devil’s apprentice have changed him—in a good way. Although he misses his friends in Hell, he has made new friends in life. But when the future of the underworld is threatened once again, Philip’s help is needed. Death’s Die has been stolen and immortality is spreading across the globe. Philip throws himself into the search—and discovers a horrible truth about his own life along the way.
The Die of Death is volume 2 in The Great Devil War-series and winner of the ORLA-Award.
The Great Devil War-series is a humorous and gripping tale about good and evil, filled with biblical and historical characters, such as Judas, Goliath, and Pontius Pilate, as well as modern figures such as Elvis Presley, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and many more.
The Great Devil War-series is a Danish bestseller, topping library and school reading lists among teens and young adults. The books have been published in more than ten countries and have won numerous awards.
We’re back with another Top 5 Saturday! Just in case you don’t know Top 5 Saturday is a weekly meme created by Mandy @ Devouring Books and it’s where we list the top five books (they can be books on your TBR, favourite books, books you loved/hated) based on the week’s topic. You can see the upcoming schedule at the end of my post 🙂 This week’s topic is: books by debut authors!
I’m always surprised by how many debut authors I have on my TBR because I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to that especially if it’s from a different genre than I normally read. For this list though I decided to keep it simple for myself and focus on the books being released by debut authors in 2020. I’m pretty sure that all of these are by debut authors but sorry if I get anything wrong!
Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly featurefor book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?Here are the rules:
Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!
First lines:
“You can’t put a price on finding love. If you could, it wouldn’t be £10.I’ve been playing the dating game for a while now but I just can’t seem to complete it — and I’m usually so good at games. No matter which level I try, there’s always a hole to fall down or a monster to eat me — metaphorically speaking, of course, although with dating apps you only ever feel a few bad decisions away from ending up in someone’s freezer.”
Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?
Hi, friends! I’m so excited to be back with another The Fantastic Flying Book Club tour post today for The Henna Wars by Adiba Jagirdar! I really can’t believe I got picked for this blog tour because it’s a hot one that’s on a lot of TBRs, so I died a little bit inside out of pure happiness because it’s such a privilege to be chosen 🥰 Huge thanks to the FFBC for organising these amazing tours and to the authors for making the eARCs available to us.
Be sure to click on the banner above to see the other bloggers on tour! 😊
The Henna Wars Publisher: Page Street Kids Release date: 12 May 2020 Genre: Young Adult Contemporary, LGBTQ+
Panda Rating:
When Dimple Met Rishi meets Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda in this rom com about two teen girls with rival henna businesses.When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants—as long as she isn’t herself. Because Muslim girls aren’t lesbians. Nishat doesn’t want to hide who she is, but she also doesn’t want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life.
Flávia is beautiful and charismatic and Nishat falls for her instantly. But when a school competition invites students to create their own businesses, both Flávia and Nishat choose to do henna, even though Flávia is appropriating Nishat’s culture. Amidst sabotage and school stress, their lives get more tangled—but Nishat can’t quite get rid of her crush on Flávia, and realizes there might be more to her than she realized.
dinipandareads 