One Last Lunch: A Final Meal with Those Who Meant So Much to Us, edited by Erica Heller: Book Beginning

Another Friday is here and another opportunity to share the first sentence (or so) of the books we are reading.

What book has captured your attention this week? Please share the opening lines on your own blog or social media. Add a link to your post below. If there is no link, leave a comment to let others know where to find your post.

Of course, you can simply leave your Book Beginning in a comment below. Please include the title and author.

Please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so we can find each other on social media.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

To imagine lunch now with my father, Joe Heller, it would have to be in spring.

-- One Last Lunch: A Final Meal with Those Who Meant So Much to Us, edited by Erica Heller. This wonderful collection of essays is available now from Abrams Books.

Erica Heller, a writer and the daughter of Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22, gathered essays from 49 people all imagining a final meal with a loved one who has passed away. Contributors include children, friends, acquaintances, professional colleagues of writers, actors, and other well known personalities, such as Julia Child, Paul Newman, Prince, and Nora Ephron.

You can read my recent interview with Erica Heller about One Last Lunch here.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

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FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts The Friday 56, a perfect tie in with Book Beginnings. Join her to share a two-sentence teaser from the book you are featuring this week.

MY FRIDAY 56

We lolled on the divans like pashas, while George brought us coffee on a brass tray and sat down to fill us in on our lunch. It turned out that Burroughs was withdrawing from a heavy heroin habit and was being looked after by his friends, among them Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, all of whom were living in a nearby ratbag hotel on rue Git-le-Coeur.

From the essay by Aviva Layton imagining a last lunch with William Burroughs. That is a serendipitous Friday 56 for me because I just this morning finished reading Burroughs' magnum opus, Naked Lunch. I read Naked Lunch as one of my picks for my 2020 Reading Classic Books Challenge -- my LGBT pick since June is Pride Month.

Sometimes you just find Storyline Serendipity!

Storyline Serendipity: Dame Julian of Norwich

MEDIEVAL MYSTIC SERENDIPITY

IN TWO RECENTLY READ NOVELS

 

Dame Julian of Norwich came up in Larry's Party by Carol Shields and Scandalous Risks by Susan Howatch, two books I was reading at the same time this month.

Julian of Norwich (1342 - 1416) was a Christian mystic and theologian, known for her book Revelations of Divine Love, which is considered to be the first book written in English by a woman.

In Larry's Party, Larry's second wife is a woman's studies professor specializing in the lives of female saints. She breezily mentions one day that she is off to St. Julian's Church in Norwich to study Dame Julian. 

Scandalous Risks is part of Howatch's Starbridge Series of novels about the Church of England in the 20th Century, set in the fictional diocese of Starbridge. Dame Julian's name is dropped during pre-dinner cocktail banter among the cloister set.

WHAT IS STORYLINE SERENDIPITY?

A ONCE-IN-A-WHILE BLOG EVENT

Have you had the experience of something coming up in a book -- an event, place, idea, historical character, or even an unusual word -- and then shortly after, the same thing comes up in a different book completely by coincidence? I call this Storyline Serendipity.

I don't mean like when you take a class in Russian history and read two books about the Tsar. Or when you read two mysteries and there are dead bodies in each.

I mean random coincidence between two books. I like it when this happens because it makes me slow down and pay more attention to how the event or idea, place or character was treated in each book. I get a little more out of each book than I would have if the universe hadn't paired them on my reading list.

If you experience Storyline Serendipity, feel free to grab the button and play along. If you want to, please leave the link to your post in a comment. Or leave the link to your post on the Rose City Reader facebook page. If you want to participate but don't have a blog or don't feel like posting, please share your serendipity in a comment.

This is a once-in-a-while blog event that I'll post as I come across Storyline Serendipity. If you want to participate, post whenever you want and leave a comment back here on my latest Storyline Serendipity post. If it ever catches on, we can make it a monthly event.

Storyline Serendipity: The National Gallery in London

NATIONAL GALLERY SERENDIPITY

IN TWO NOVELS I RECENTLY READ

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2000; Booker Prize winner)
The Bell by Iris Murdoch (1958; her fourth novel)

Both these novels have sat on my TBR shelf for years and only by happenstance did I read them at the same time this month -- when I took a break from the hardback Atwood chunkster to read the short and lively Murdoch on a plane trip.

I was struck by the serendipity that the heroines in both books visit the National Gallery in London alone, and that these visits are turning points in their personal development.

This coincidence made me realize that, although the stories are completely different, the heroines are cut from the same pattern. Both Dora in The Bell and Iris in The Blind Assassin are beautiful girls lacking formal education, with no ideas of how to support themselves as adults, so end up married too young to men too old for them. Their narcissistic husbands want to mold their new brides to their images of ideal wives, regardless of the women's own interests and desires.

In The Bell, Dora's visit to National Gallery is a break from ping ponging between her husband and her lover and the moment she starts to think for herself.

In The Blind Assassin, Iris spends most of her London honeymoon, while her husband is in business meetings, on sightseeing tours of monuments he arranged for her. Her visit to the National Gallery is her first act of independence and marital rebellion.

Iris's story is much longer and more complex than Dora's. But I wonder if Margaret Atwood read Iris Murdoch's book and it planted a seed?

WHAT IS STORYLINE SERENDIPITY?

A ONCE-IN-A-WHILE BLOG EVENT

Have you had the experience of something coming up in a book -- an event, place, idea, historical character, or even an unusual word -- and then shortly after, the same thing comes up in a different book completely by coincidence? I call this Storyline Serendipity.

I don't mean like when you take a class in Russian history and read two books about the Tsar. Or when you read two mysteries and there are dead bodies in each.

I mean random coincidence between two books. I like it when this happens because it makes me slow down and pay more attention to how the event or idea, place or character was treated in each book. I get a little more out of each book than I would have if the universe hadn't paired them on my reading list.

If you experience Storyline Serendipity, feel free to grab the button and play along. If you want to, please leave the link to your post in a comment. Or leave the link to your post on the Rose City Reader facebook page. If you want to participate but don't have a blog or don't feel like posting, please share your serendipity in a comment.

This is a once-in-a-while blog event that I'll post as I come across Storyline Serendipity. If you want to participate, post whenever you want and leave a comment back here on my latest Storyline Serendipity post. If it ever catches on, we can make it a monthly event.

Storyline Serendipity: Widdershins

COUNTERCLOCKWISE SERENDIPITY

IN TWO BOOK I RECENTLY READ

So the serendipity between these two books doesn't extend as far as the storyline -- that's an exaggeration. But I'm not going to change the name of this meme just because want to point out an extraordinary coincidence,

Never in my life (and my 50th birthday was this week) have I heard the word "widdershins" and I just now read it twice in books I was reading at the same time. How crazy is that?

First, in the second of Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford's mysteries, A New Lease of Death, one of the characters makes sure they turn to walk the correct direction because it is unlucky to walk widdershins around a church. I only figured out from the context that widdershins meant counterclockwise.

In Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess, there is a scene where the narrator describes a film festival in pre-war Nazi Germany, concluding with the sentence: "And everywhere swastikas seemed to spin widdershins." What a sentence!

Both examples show that widdershins doesn't simply mean counterclockwise, but "contrary" or "against sense."

This funny word caught my attention the first time and gave me pause. But it was the coincidence of seeing it twice in a lifetime in two books in one week that made me dig deeper.

WHAT IS STORYLINE SERENDIPITY?

A ONCE-IN-A-WHILE BLOG EVENT

Have you had the experience of something coming up in a book -- an event, place, idea, historical character, or even an unusual word -- and then shortly after, the same thing comes up in a different book completely by coincidence? I call this Storyline Serendipity.

I don't mean like when you take a class in Russian history and read two books about the Tsar. Or when you read two mysteries and there are dead bodies in each.

I mean random coincidence between two books. I like it when this happens because it makes me slow down and pay more attention to how the event or idea, place or character was treated in each book. I get a little more out of each book than I would have if the universe hadn't paired them on my reading list.

If you experience Storyline Serendipity, feel free to grab the button and play along. If you want to, please leave the link to your post in a comment. Or leave the link to your post on the Rose City Reader facebook page. If you want to participate but don't have a blog or don't feel like posting, please share your serendipity in a comment.

This is a once-in-a-while blog event that I'll post as I come across Storyline Serendipity. If you want to participate, post whenever you want and leave a comment back here on my latest Storyline Serendipity post. If it ever catches on, we can make it a monthly event.

Storyline Serendipity: 9/11

9/11 SERENDIPITY

IN TWO BOOKS I RECENTLY READ

I read these back-to-back, not realizing that the  Julia Glass book had anything to do with 9/11 until I got into it.

The Whole World Over by Julia Glass (2006)

Greenie Duquette owns a popular bakery in Greenwich Village but, with her marriage in the doldrums, she decides to shake things up by accepting a surprise offer to become the in-house chef for the Governor of New Mexico. She takes her young son west and leaves her grumpy husband in New York to sort himself out.

As with her earlier National Book Award winner, Three Junes, there are multiple, complicated plots, here eventually coalescing around 9/11. Glass bustles the reader along all these story paths, gently drawing attention back to the characters, their dilemmas, and their decisions, which are complex enough to keep you thinking even after the book wraps up.

It was interesting to me to read a literary book with 9/11 woven into the plot. Apparently, Glass started writing the book in the spring of 2001 and stopped when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. When she was ready to start writing again, she decided to incorporate the event into the story and write about how such an enormous public tragedy affected their personal choices.

Night Fall by Nelson DeMille (2004)

This is another 500+ page book that takes place partially in Manhattan and culminates with 9/11. And it is proof that two books addressing the same subject can be completely different. DeMille is the master of the page-turning thriller. Night Fall isn't as breathtaking as Cathedral -- it is more of a police procedural -- but it is still fast-paced, wise-cracking, and pure entertainment.

WHAT IS STORYLINE SERENDIPITY?

A ONCE-IN-A-WHILE BLOG EVENT

Have you had the experience of something coming up in a book -- an event, place, idea, historical character, or even an unusual word -- and then shortly after, the same thing comes up in a different book completely by coincidence? I call this Storyline Serendipity.

I don't mean like when you take a class in Russian history and read two books about the Tsar. Or when you read two mysteries and there are dead bodies in each.

I mean random coincidence between two books. I like it when this happens because it makes me slow down and pay more attention to how the event or idea, place or character was treated in each book. I get a little more out of each book than I would have if the universe hadn't paired them on my reading list.

If you experience Storyline Serendipity, feel free to grab the button and play along. If you want to, please leave the link to your post in a comment. Or leave the link to your post on the Rose City Reader facebook page. If you want to participate but don't have a blog or don't feel like posting, please share your serendipity in a comment.

This is a once-in-a-while blog event that I'll post as I come across Storyline Serendipity. If you want to participate, post whenever you want and leave a comment back here on my latest Storyline Serendipity post. If it ever catches on, we can make it a monthly event.

Storyline Serendipity: King Arthur

KING ARTHUR SERENDIPITY

IN TWO BOOK I RECENTLY READ

The Lyre of Orpheus by Roberson Davies  (1988 book by a Canadian author)

The Cornish Foundation embarks on an ambitious project -- to finance the completion of an opera about King Arthur left unfinished by the death, in 1822, of the original composer. The lives of the characters in the book start to parallel the opera's plot in this brainy conclusion to Davies's Cornish Trilogy.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (2015 book by a British author)

In days of yore, elderly Britons Axl and Beatriceres encounter ogres, imps, dragons, and deadly monks when they wander from their misty hamlet in search of their son. Along their journey, they are aided by a Saxon warrior and Sir Gawain, King Arthur's now stooped and rusty knight of the Round Table.

WHAT IS STORYLINE SERENDIPITY?

A ONCE-IN-A-WHILE BLOG EVENT

Have you had the experience of something coming up in a book -- an event, place, idea, historical character, or even an unusual word -- and then shortly after, the same thing comes up in a different book completely by coincidence? I call this Storyline Serendipity.

I don't mean like when you take a class in Russian history and read two books about the Tsar. Or when you read two mysteries and there are dead bodies in each.

I mean random coincidence between two books. I like it when this happens because it makes me slow down and pay more attention to how the event or idea, place or character was treated in each book. I get a little more out of each book than I would have if the universe hadn't paired them on my reading list.

If you experience Storyline Serendipity, feel free to grab the button and play along. If you want to, please leave the link to your post in a comment. Or leave the link to your post on the Rose City Reader facebook page. If you want to participate but don't have a blog or don't feel like posting, please share your serendipity in a comment.

This is a once-in-a-while blog event that I'll post as I come across Storyline Serendipity. If you want to participate, post whenever you want and leave a comment back here on my latest Storyline Serendipity post. If it ever catches on, we can make it a monthly event.