Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Teaser Tuesdays: People of the Book

This week, my teaser lines come from People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. I'm about a third of the way into this one, and enjoying it so far. This excerpt is from the first section of the book, which sets up the framing story about Hannah, a professional book conservator from Australia, who's been called to Sarajevo and given a rare and beautiful ancient Hebrew manuscript to analyze and preserve. Here, Hannah is discussing the materials and routines used in conserving and restoring antique volumes:
In the bright snow light, my hands looked even worse than usual, all ruddy and peeling from scouring the fat off cow gut with a pumice stone. When you live in Sydney, it's not the simplest thing in the world to get a meter of calf's intestine. [p.5]
See, the calf's intestine is for using in the preparation of gold leaf - that is, if you're going to beat your own gold leaf the way a medieval bookbinder would have done it. Ah, well, conservation and archival work may not be the most glamorous undertaking I can think of, but I find it fascinating and always thought I'd missed my calling by not going into that field. But that bit about the cow gut is making me think I might not have been up to the task after all.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

17 comments:

  1. Sounds fascinating!

    Thanks for visiting my blog.

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  2. Absolutely fascinating. What an awesome teaser! Really makes me want to know more about the process.

    Here's the link to mine:
    http://tweezlereads.blogspot.com/2010/02/teaser-tuesday_16.html

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  3. Interesting...I guess my hands probably wouldn't look so hot either!

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  4. Great teaser. Have been meaning to add this book to my TBR. WordTrix

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  5. I have yet to read Geraldine Brooks, but she's on my list.

    Great teaser! :D

    Happy Teaser Tuesday!

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  6. A little gross but not totally off-putting....

    http://fredasvoice.blogspot.com/2010/02/teaser-tuesday_15.html

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  7. That's quite the teaser. I've got this book on my shelf. I look forward to your thoughts on it.

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  8. My hands don't look quite that bad - but close (I'm blaming the weather). I've wondered about this book. I read her book about the Plague and like that.

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  9. Looks like a good one for that reading challenge! Not sure that I wish to go there though!

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  10. Wow! Very interesting. I'll have to look into this book.

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  11. I always wanted to read "People of the Book"... here is my teaser...

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  12. Sounds like a hard life. Great teaser.

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  13. Very interesting teaser! I'll have to check this book out.

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  14. Great teaser and beautiful cover!

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  15. What an excellent teaser! Thanks for sharing the significance of the calf's intestine and gold leaf. Wow, fascinating stuff! I have this book on my bookshelf to read and I can't wait to dive into it.

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