Teaser Tuesday #49

One last Teaser Tuesday before the A to Z Challenge begins and then I'll figure out something to do with my book day after April is through. I like the idea of a slow meander through the works of Pratchett, so maybe I'll stick with that.

Source: Goodreads.

In the Unlikely Event, Judy Blume

She stuck a fork into the underside of her arm to see if the numbness was in her mind or in her body.

When Steve read about Kathy in the paper, when he read she was coming home to see a boy she'd met over the holdiays, a boy she really liked, he got into bed and stayed there for four days.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, once upon a time hosted by MizB from Should Be Reading (and now I just can't tell if it has a host at all. But why stop?). Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

Teaser Tuesday #48

Image source: Goodreads.

(I just started reading this book and it has me laughing so hard. Proud Gen Xer here.)

X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking, Jeff Gordinier


South Park, an emerald affixed to the ring of San Francisco's South of Market district, was the very nucleus of new media, the home of everything from Wired to Napster.

As a Gen Xer your more or less expected to get reamed, so maybe you figured that you, in your golden years, would wind up like a geriatric version of those clods in Clerks, muttering vulgarities and schlepping your way through the service sector until the grim reaper showed up at the video shop to rent Scarface.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, once upon a time hosted by MizB from Should Be Reading (and now I just can't tell if it has a host at all. But why stop?). Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

Teaser Tuesday #47

Image source: Goodreads.

What the Living Do, Marie Howe

In the dream I had when he came back not sick

but whole, and wearing his winter coat,

he looked at me as though he couldn't speak, as if 

there were a law against it, a membrane he couldn't break.

---

Soon I will die, he said, and then 

what everyone has been so afraid of for so long will have finally happened,

and then everyone can rest.

(Yes, I really turned to a random page. The whole book is like this.)

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, once upon a time hosted by MizB from Should Be Reading (and now I just can't tell if it has a host at all. But why stop?). Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

Teaser Tuesday #46

Source: Goodreads.
Also, I'd like to add that I borrowed
this book from the Marion Regional
Campus of Ohio State University via
OhioLINK and the Cincinnati library,
because Ohio libraries are incredible.

One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility, Zack Furness

Bicycles not only offer a logical and pragmatic solution to this problem of the "global everyday"; they are also beneficial to those groups traditionally ignored within the dominant paradigm of economic development theory--rural women and girls.

Transportation researchers like Julia Philpott and Karen Overton have been instrumental in bringing the relationships between gender, economics, and non-motorized transportation to the attention of international NGOs, and there are a number of organizations that actively engage with these issues in their daily work.



(I promise I really did open to a random page! It's just that when you read an entire book that's relevant to your interests and the world at large, well, relevant things tend to happen.)

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, once upon a time hosted by MizB from Should Be Reading (and now I just can't tell if it has a host at all. But why stop?). Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

Teaser Tuesday #45

My reading this month... erm... yeah. Not so much, which is bumming me out. So! This one is a bit of an unusual Teaser Tuesday, since it's a photo book and I can't share the usual teaser sentences.

New York Then and Now, Marcia Reiss and Evan Joseph

This was my Strand Bookstore purchase on my most recent New York visit. They didn't have the Much Ado About Nothing that I was hoping to get, so I decided to get something New York-y instead.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

Teaser Tuesday #44

Source: Goodreads.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Gregory Maguire

Madame Morrible, for all her upper-class diction and fabulous wardrobe, seemed just a tad--oh--dangerous.

"A life without words," Elphie said, looking in her coffee and not drinking it.

Unrelated: I am finally going to see Wicked in three weeks! I mentioned to my sister-in-law that we'll be up in the balcony and might not see the actors' faces clearly, and she answered, "I'll see them just fine when you drag me to the stage door afterwards." Indeed, she will.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

Teaser Tuesday #43

Source: Goodreads

The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, James Shapiro

The perception of Macbeth as a play defined by the supernatural--behind Middleton's early revisions and reinforced by the actors' myth of a curse--has shaped much of the play's modern stage history as well.

In his unrelenting assault on those who dared criticize the government's overreaction he unwittingly gives voice, otherwise lost, to what was being murmured at the time.




Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

Teaser Tuesday #42

Source: Goodreads.

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman

Had I not narrowly averted the punctuational catastrophe, they would have all cried, in chorus, "There's a superfluous apostrophe!"

He does not think me a lovable helpmeet when I wander past his computer screen and find my fingers, as if animated by an inner gremlin, inserting a second r in embarass.





Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

Teaser Tuesday #41

Wow, it's been a while since I've done one of these!

Source: Goodreads.

Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature, ed. Meredith Maran

"A novel will be a deep archaeological work."

"Anyone you'd ever want to be friends with has had a tremendous amount of wounding in their past."

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

Teaser Tuesday #40

Source: Goodreads

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, Natalie Angier

If you get into a cadence of swishing, however, you can instigate a smooth, sinuous, motivated wave, which would surely buoy a rubber duckie outward through all space, time, and divinity if not for the walls of the tub.

Astronomers are pure of heart and appealing puerile. They look into the midnight sky and ask big questions, just as we did when we were in college: Who are we? Where do we come from? And why are we standing around outside on the night before finals?

(Normally, I'd never do a Teaser Tuesday on a textbook, but this one is too good not to share. I love Ms. Angier's writing style & sense of humour, plus I get to learn things at the same time.)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Teaser Tuesday #39

Source.

Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen

"Why does he want to say that so badly?" I ask.
They turn in unison to stare at me.
"Fair question," says Otis finally, although it's clear he thinks I'm brain-damaged.

(Personal note: I read this book in one sitting yesterday evening. That's how engrossed I was.)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Teaser Tuesday #38

Source: Goodreads.

Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends On It, Mitch Joel

It wasn't too long ago that mobile carriers didn't care about data. Their major concerns used to be voice usage and churn. But Cisco is now predicting that mobile data use worldwide is poised to grow to more than twenty times the current usage by 2015.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Teaser Tuesday #37

Source: Goodreads.

Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

"Jean Valjean's visits were not abridged."



(Much like this unabridged version of the book that I'm reading.)

So, this is not a normal Teaser Tuesday, partly because I'm pretty sure I've done Les Miserables before, but mostly because I want to announce:

I am nearly done with this book!

Wow, can Victor Hugo ever write. And write, and write, and write some more. (Spoiler alert-- well, kinda. Just see the musical, okay?) Valjean escapes through the sewers with Marius? Cue four chapters on the history of the Paris sewers. That's what this book is like. Please don't misunderstand me: I love it. (Mostly. I could have lived without the Battle of Waterloo.) This book is fantastic, but wow, think of how many NaNoWriMos Victor Hugo would have had to taken on just one book if they'd had that sort of thing in his day.

And just for the record, the sewer scene was tense. As was the post-sewer scene. And then then three chapters leading up to Javert committing suicide? (What? I warned you! Watch the movie, for goodness' sakes.) Agonizing. I had to put it away for a couple of days to recover after that.

Anyway. My Kindle says I'm 96% done. Maybe after a couple of more weeks of reading it on the train on the way home (about 20 minutes every day) I'll have it finished.

Teaser Thursday #36

Run to Overcome, Meb Keflezighi


Who could ever have guessed that six years later we'd both be marathoners and that I would beat him on the way to a silver medal in the Athens Games?

A typical marathon buildup week starts on Monday--an easy day--with a single 10- to 12-mile run.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Teaser Tuesday #35

Source: Goodreads

Ten Miles Past Normal, Frances O'Roark Dowell

I decide I like being part of a group where nobody gets locked out, no matter how lame they are.

We're playing some old song, something by Radiohead, a song I've never heard before in my life and have no idea how to play, but after about thirty seconds I realize it doesn't matter, because no one can hear me.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Teaser Tuesday #34

Source: Goodreads.

Lost in a Good Book, Japer Fforde

"I got a card from London saying they were fit and well," she replied, "but they said they needed a jar of piccalilli and a torque wrench."

The mammoth ignored her, sucked up the entire contents of the ornamental pond in one go and clumsily trampled the garden furniture to matchwood.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Teaser Tuesday #33

Image source: Goodreads.

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

"Any man who has been a prisoner understands how to contract himself to fit the diameter of the escape."

"If you are sure of coming out of the coffin all right, I am sure of getting you out of the grave."




For some reason, I had this on my Goodreads list as Read. I don't know why; I can only presume I was having hallucinations the day when I added it to Goodreads. I've been chipping away at it slowly for the last several years, but it's not done yet.

I came back to it this time partly out of an acknowledgement that it is hard to claim to be a huge Les Mis fan and not have read the book. However, being as this is an old, well-known story that has spawned countless adaptations, I'm not at all in the club that says that you can't be a "real" fan of Les Mis unless you've read the book. I've been a "real" fan since I was about 10, I can promise you, and yet I'm still working my way through the book. If you want to be a fan of the movie/musical/soundtrack without ever fighting your way through Hugo's prose, go right ahead!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Teaser Tuesday #32

Source: Goodreads.

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, Michael Moss

Americans now eat as much as 33 pounds or more of cheese and pseudo-cheese products a year, triple the amount we consumed in the early 1970s.

This deployment of cheese as a food additive has proven to be a windfall for food companies, driving up sales of cheese as well as the products that now use it to increase their allure.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Teaser Tuesday #31

Image from Goodreads.

Good Omens, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

(Yep, I managed to read a fun book during grad school. Also, HOLY SMOKES, how did I not know about this book until now???)

Firstly, however, Newt had to do something about the flying saucer.

"Morning, sir or madam or neuter," the thing said. "This your planet, is it?"

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Teaser Tuesday #30

My resolution post will have to wait until I settle on some resolutions. Which may not be until closer to the new semester starting, alas.

Before my teaser, here's at least one book-related goal: I've set my 2013 Goodreads Challenge. One book per week this year, for a total of 52. This is less than the last two years (100 each), but I'm adding a new rule for myself: No re-reads this time; they have to be fresh books. However, I am still including textbooks if I read the entire thing. After all, textbooks are a big reason I don't do as much reading as I'd like.

Okay, now for the teaser:

Source.

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

The twins remain perfectly pleased with the arrangement, receiving irregular lessons on innumerable subjects and reading every book they can get their hands on, piles of them often ending up in the wrought-iron cradle they would not part with after it was outgrown.

At this late hour there are no patrons lingering in this particular tent, and it is unlikely that any other visitors to the circus will stumble upon it in the remaining hours before dawn.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!