HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Have a fun and safe Halloween! It is a beautiful day here in Portland. My neighborhood is geared up and ready to celebrate. It looks like most houses have some kind of decorations up, more than usual. I think last year was so grim, people want to make up for it. We expect we will have a lot of trick-or-treaters!
BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
Boo! It is almost Halloween! Are you ready for the trick-or-treaters? Are you reading anything particular for this Halloween week?
It's time for Book beginnings on Fridays! Whether you have a Halloween book or not, please share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading -- or just a book you want to highlight.
My book has nothing to do with Halloween and is not a scary book. It isn't even a mystery. BUtterfield 8 is just one of those books that has been sitting on my TBR shelf for decades and I finally decided to read it.
MY BOOK BEGINNING
On this Sunday morning in May, this girl who later was to be the cause of a sensation in New York, awoke much too early for her night before.
-- BUtterfield 8 by John O'Hara. Yes, it is spelled with a capital B and U because BUtterfield 8 is an old fashioned telephone number.
BUtterfield 8 was a bestseller when it was published in 1935. I can see why! It is till racy close to 90 years later. It's all sex and day drinking so far.
YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS
It was useless to try to think of the names of speakeasies. His personal experience with speakeasies was slight, as he never drank; but he knew from going to them with Gloria that a place would be known familiarly as Jack’s or Giuseppe’s – and then when the proprietor gave you a card to the place (which you threw away the moment you were safe outside), it would be called Club Aristocrat or something of the sort.
BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
It's raining and raining all week here in Portland! This sunny cookbook of Greek recipes is exactly what I need to lift the grey clouds.
What is your week looking like?
Please join us here on Book Beginnings on Fridays to share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. Or share a book you want to highlight. Leave the link to your Book Beginnings post in the linky box below.
MY BOOK BEGINNING
It is impossible for me to think of Greece without thinking of the colours, sites, aromas, and, above all, the flavours of Greek cooking.
-- from the Foreword to Flavours of Greece by Rosemary Barron (2021, Grub Street).
Those who know Greece, even if only from a brief acquaintance, are aware that there is a vigorous culinary tradition in the country, with a distinct identity and character.
-- from the Introduction.
For modern Greeks olives and bread are the basic necessities of life, as they have been for centuries. The olive groves of modern Greece -- still, mysterious, and peaceful places -- date back to around 450 BC when olive oil was first recognized as a valuable export commodity and the land was given over to olive cultivation.
-- from part one, The Greek Kitchen, chapter one, Ingredients.
Rosemary Barron started a cooking school in Greece in the 1980s and has been championing Greek food ever since. This redo of her best selling cookbook, The Flavours of Greece, is a must-have for any lover of Greek food who wants to cook at home.
The book is as lush and gorgeous as the dishes it promises. Barron starts with an inventory of a Greek pantry, including instructions on how to make such staples as yogurt and preserved lemons. She then moves through recipes from mezzes (appetizers) to desserts and miscellany. The recipes are as simple as a mezze of aromatic figs made by layering dried figs with bay leaves and cracked black pepper tightly in a jar for several days (intriguing!) to the more complicated, like Duckling Thessalia-Style, which involves roasting a duckling with lemons and pine nuts and things. None of the recipes are difficult and all look delicious!
With over 250 national and regional recipes, dozens of color photos, fresh green and orange accent colors, and easy-to-follow instructions, Flavours of Greece will be your go-to Greek cookbook.
These little pastries, filled with a creamy nutmeg-spiced spinach mixture, are perfect picnic food. You can make them with either pastry dough or with filo and they freeze beautifully (freeze before cooking).
BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
I'm continuing my celebration of Victober with another Victorian novel, The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot.
What are you reading this week? Please share the first sentence (or so) here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. Add the link to your post in the linky box below.
MY BOOK BEGINNING
A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace.
Tom was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another fluttering heart besides Maggie’s when it was late enough for the sound of the gig-wheels to be expected; for if Mrs. Tulliver had a strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound came—that quick light bowling of the gig-wheels—and in spite of the wind, which was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect Mrs. Tulliver’s curls and cap-strings, she came outside the door, and even held her hand on Maggie’s offending head, forgetting all the griefs of the morning.
BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
Happy Victober!
One of my favorite things about Instagram is Victober, the annual bookstagrammer tradition of reading Victorian literature in the month of October. I look forward to it all year. There is something so cozy about reading Victorian novels in the fall.
Do you participate in Victober? What books are you reading this year? I'm reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, and maybe one other one if I get the time.
I plan to share some of the opening sentences here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading (or just want to highlight). Add the link to your Book Beginning post in the linky box below.
MY BOOK BEGINNING
I address these lines—written in India—to my relatives in England.
My object is to explain the motive which has induced me to refuse the right hand of friendship to my cousin, John Herncastle.
The Diamond takes us back to Mr. Franklin, who was the innocent means of bringing that unlucky jewel into the house.
Our nice boy didn’t forget us after he went abroad.
BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
My apologies for not getting this week's Book Beginnings post up last evening. My computer was in computer hospital. Ugh! Fortunately, it was an easy repair -- it just needed a (way) bigger hard drive. Let's just say my phone had twice as much brain power as my two-year old lap top. What was I thinking?
So I am here now and ready to share opening sentences (or so) of the books we are reading this week -- or just the books we feel like highlighting. What book captured your fancy this first week October?
MY BOOK BEGINNING
From Between Two Kings:
Toward the middle of May in the year 1660, at nine o’clock in the morning, when the already hot sun was drying the dew on the ramparts of the Château de Bois, a little cavalcade, composed of three men and two junior pages, was returning into the city across the Loire bridge.
As he was passing out of the gate, leading his horse by the bridle, a soft voice called from the gloom of a shaded path, “Monsieur Raoul!”
The young man turned in surprise and saw a brown-haired young woman who was pressing a finger to her lips and holding out her other hand.