Once Upon A Time VII

Spring is here again! How I love being able to say that! And one of the nicest things about spring is the reappearance of Carl V’s Once Upon a Time Reading Challenge -- just like the annual return of Persephone in Greek myth. And even though I’m just signing up at the “Journey” level...

and only committing to ONE book, I definitely hope to read more than that -- especially since I’ve got a long list of possibilities left over from last year! Now I just need to decide which one to start with -- these are a few of the books I’m considering:

The Bell at Sealey Head. Patricia A. McKillip

The Crystal Cave. Mary Stewart

Neverwhere. Neil Gaiman

The Well-Wishers. Edward Eager

To read all about the challenge and sign up, see the challenge announcement page, HERE. There’s also a “Quest on Screen” category that I might try out this year -- although I tend to prefer reading fantasy to watching it, so we’ll see how that goes. During the year, I’ll be tracking my progress on my challenge blog, here.

A Bit of an Apology

I know I haven't been posting much lately, and I'm sorry about that.  (Hmmmm -- maybe that's actually a good thing, now that I think about it.)  Anyway, I also wanted to say a little "sorry" to all the bloggers who've left comments for me -- I haven't been doing much blog visiting lately, either. 

My excuse is that my mother-in-law has been in hospice care for the last few weeks, and finally passed away last Saturday -- so I've been spending a lot of time with family, and not doing much reading or computer-ing.  I will return soon.  Thanks for staying with me.

Teaser Tuesdays: The Flamethrowers

This week my teaser lines come The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner, coming next month from Scribner.  I just started reading this one last night, and I'm not very far along, but so far it's holding my interest pretty well.  This snippet comes from page 5 of the advance reader's edition -- so please remember that it might be different in the final published copy. And it's a bit more than two lines -- sorry, but I didn't know what to cut.

Bobby was my mother's brother. Growing up, we'd all lived together. My mother worked nights, and Bobby was what we had as a parent. Done driving his dump truck, he sat inexplicably nude watching TV and made us operate the dial for him, so he wouldn't have to get up. 

Well now, that's a warm and fuzzy family portrait, is it not?  As I said, I haven't read very much of this yet -- but I have a sort of feeling that sitting around in the buff and turning the kiddies into your personal servants isn't terribly unusual behavior in this protagonist's family.

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

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.

Teaser Tuesdays: Happy Hollisters

I've been a little absent from the blogging world lately.  (Did ya miss me?)  Nothing much really going on, but I've been a little too busy with LIFE to do a lot of reading.  Actually, that should be Project Life -- I was bitten by the scrapbooking bug a few weeks ago, and I've been playing with photos and photo albums and little scraps of paper for days now.  But that's material for another blog post...someday, maybe.  For now, I'm just really happy to slip back into the world of books and reading.

This week, my teaser lines come from one of the books I'm thinking of reading for the Pre-1960 Classic Children's Books Reading Challenge.  As a child I read several of the Happy Hollister books and really liked them; but somehow I managed to ignore the first book in the series (The Happy Hollisters, published in 1953), so I thought I might do something about that this year.  This snippet comes from page 24, and has Pete and Pam, the two oldest Hollister siblings, looking over their new home:

"This is it," Pete shouted. "A trap door on springs."
Pete opened it quickly and flashed his light below. A narrow flight of steps led downward.
"A secret stairway!" Pete gasped. "Our new house has a secret stairway!"

Trap doors.  Secret stairways.  That's the kind of stuff I would have loved as a kid.  And also the sort of thing that was always happening to the Hollisters.  No wonder they were so Happy!

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

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.