Monday, April 13, 2009

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!

11 comments:

  1. You are certainly a tease, with those two quotes! Enjoy the books!

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  2. Wow...you got me with both of these...The Book of God and Physics sounds especially intriguing to me...but, that's a good opener on the other, too, for sure!

    My wish list just keeps getting longer and longer....

    (LoL...Have a great week, filled with lots of good reading!)

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  3. What great teasers. the first book I'm off to investigate andthe secondos moving up my TBR!

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  4. Sometimes you just need an extra sentence to put the whole thing in context. (I posted three sentences today, too.) The second one is very intriguing.

    My teaser is here.

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  5. Sounds like just the place to drink your depression away...not!! Great teasers!!

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  6. Well, that certainly is an intriguing teaser! The Book of God and Physicks sounds really good. Did you get The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane? The mandrake root made me think of that book.

    My teaser is here

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  7. Haha, I "cheat" too :) If it sounds good, it sounds good - I've been tempted at times to just feature the whole page!

    Curious about The Book of God and Physics, though I knew about the root of the mandrake rituals already.

    And those are some great opening lines for The Old Man and Me!

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  8. That first one looks great. I wonder if that is a common folk tale, something really similar was in Pan's Labrynth.

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  9. The Book of God and Physics sounds like a winner to me. Anything that shouts out a golem gets extra credit points ;)

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  10. Ooh, both of those sound good! I have the black dog required to catch a mandrake...

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