Teaser Tuesdays: Magic Roots and a Visit to the Crypt

This week, I'm reading a couple of books I got through the Early Reviewer program at Library Thing. My last two "snags" never arrived, and I was beginning to get a little paranoid. Then, naturally, I got two at once. These first teasers come from page 286 of The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery, by Enrique Joven:

The roots of the mandrake vaguely resemble a human being, like a doll or a fetish. For it to become a real man, the plant had to be collected before dawn on a Friday morning – by a black dog, to be precise – and then washed, infused with milk and honey, even with blood in some recipes. The miniature being that resulted would protect its owner with absolute fidelity, just the same as a golem.

OK, I know that's actually three lines. So I cheated improvised a little this time.

The other book I'll be starting this week is Elaine Dundy's The Old Man and Me, so I'm throwing in a little snippet from that one, too. And I'm afraid I'm cheating again because these are just the opening lines from the book:

There is a sort of coal hole in the heart of Soho that is open every afternoon: a dark, dank, dead-ended subterranean tunnel. It is a drinking club called the Crypt and the only light to penetrate it is the shaft of golden sunlight slipping through the doorway from time to time glancing off someone's nose or hair or glass of gin, all the more poignant for its sudden revelations, in an atmosphere almost solid with failure, of pure wind-swept nostalgia, of clean airy summer houses, of the beach, of windy reefs; of the sun radiating through the clouds the instant before the clouds race back over it again – leaving the day as sad and desperate as before. [p. 5]

Sorry about that – and I'm usually such a rule-follower, too!


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or participate yourself, head on over to her blog. And these are the rules: Grab your current read; Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two (2) "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. You also need to share the title of the book that you're getting your "teaser" from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given! Please avoid spoilers!