Sunday, August 22, 2010

Opening Sentence of the Day: Venusberg



"Lushington collected the pieces of typewritten foolscap and shook them together so that the edges were level."

-- Venusberg by Anthony Powell.

I have been tearing through books here the past week. I'm on a reading roll.

Anthony Powell is a favorite author of mine. His magnum opus, A Dance to the Music of Time, is my "desert island" book and one I look forward to re- and re-reading.

Venusberg is an earlier novel, first published in 1932, almost two decades before the first volume of Dance.  It is the story of a British journalist sent to cover the unstable situation in an unnamed Baltic state.

My copy is a particularly cool little paperback edition put out by Green Integer Books. It is 4.25" wide by 6" tall -- an interesting, compact size.