Chapter 32: Teaser Tuesday 1.12.2009

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title and author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their to-be-read -lists if they like your teasers!

I've been alterating between 4-5 books lately. First I started with the Amnesty International short story collection Freedom. I really like the idea that each story is based on a different article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Also, the list of authors participating is pretty impressive: Ali Smith, Pettina Gappah, Nadine Gordimer, Henning Mankell, Rohinton Mistry, Paulo Coelho, Banana Yoshimoto, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie etc. etc. etc. But, these are hard stories to read, because of the subject matter. After five stories I needed a break. I turned to something much lighter and finished first The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig and then Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen. After those two fun reads I was ready for something more serious again, but did not want to go back to the short stories just yet. I got The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood from the library and started reading that. And then I also got Bluestockings by Jane Robinson, a nonfiction book about women's fight for university education in Britian that will be one of the books I'll read for the Women Unbound Challenge. I started reading Bluestockings in the metro on my way home from work and found it so interesting that I did not want to save it for until I had finished some of the other books I'm reading. And in addition to that I had been half way through The Elegance of the Hedhodge for some weeks already!

Well, I did finish The Elegance of the Hedgehog on Sunday evening. It's a lovely book, but I 'll talk more about it in a review later. After finishing it I was down to three books I was reading. That is a pretty usual number. As my library loot last week included so many wonderful choices I just had to throw one more novel into the mix: Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. Soon, however, Remarkable Creatures proved so captivating that I'm now 1/3 through and will consentrate on it alone for now.

My teaser is from page 97:

"I looked for a long time in silence, circling the table to inspect the skull from every angle. It was still entrapped in stone, and would need much attention from Mary's blades, needles and brushes - and a good bit of hammering too."

I will count Remarkable Creatures as one of my Women Unbound reads. Happy reading, everyone!