Teaser Tuesday 380: A Wrinkle in Time

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current book or recent read.
* Share a few "teaser" sentences from somewhere in the book.
* 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 and author so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!


This week's teaser is from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I first read this book as a child, and did not recall it having such religious overtones, which did not appeal to me and kept pulling me out of the story. The things that go over our head as a child -- or that we forget about as an adult. Still a good read, but perhaps not as great as I remembered it. This book has been challenged/banned for a number of reasons:

* Challenged at the Polk City, Fla. Elementary School under allegations that the story promotes witchcraft, crystal balls, and demons. (1985)
* Challenged in the Anniston Ala. schools under objection to the book’s use of the name of Jesus Christ in relations to other artists, philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders (1990)
*Frequently challenged for “undermining religious beliefs.”
* Ranked no. 22 in the ALA’s 100 most banned books for 1990-2000.

"Don't hope it was a dream. I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don’t have to understand things for them to be."

(Chapter 2)

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Series: Time Quintet #1

It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.

"Wild nights are my glory," the unearthly stranger told them. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of way, by the way, there is a such thing as a tesseract."

A tesseract (in case the reader doesn't know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Miss L'Engle's unusual book.

Thursday Thirteen 328: Recently Read

Here's the latest addition of what I've read in recent weeks. As always, click on any cover to find out more about a particular book.














BOOK NOTES:

ROW 1: The Mark of Athena is book three in The Heroes of Olympus YA fantasy series by Rick Riordan. Another YA book, Peter Pan, was the March classic group read. I followed it up by watching both the Disney animated and Universal Studios live action movie versions. The Cat, The Mill and The Murder is book five in Leann Sweeney's Cats in Trouble cozy mystery series.

ROW 2: I caught up a bit in the Aunt Dimity series by Nancy Atherton with books eight and nine -- out of nineteen -- and also caught up on the Flower Shop series by Kate Collins with Throw in the Trowel. And now I have to wait an entire year for book sixteen.

ROW 3: The first two books in this row were novellas that were free for both Nook and Kindle a couple weeks ago. I liked Savage Echoes by RT Wolfe and would be interested in reading book one of that series, while Sugar & Spice by Tawny Weber was merely okay. Night Broken is book eight of Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series.

ROW 4: Beyond Control by Bronwyn Jameson was a book fished out of Mount TBR to fit a mini-challenge to read a book by an Australian author or set in Australia -- this book met both criteria. Two more romances read were both third books in their respective trilogies, Three Sisters Island and Inn BoonsBoro, by Nora Roberts. I recommend reading both series in order.

ROW 5: I received The Widow's Walk by Robert Barclay from the publisher through Goodreads' giveaway program. This was the first book I'd won from GR in three years and was a pretty good one -- aside from the author's annoying "just then" problem. You don't want to get me started on that.


YOUR TURN: What have you been reading lately? Any here you might like to pick up?



LINKING TO: Thursday Thirteen
(even though I can no longer access the hub)

Teaser Tuesday 208: Dark Passage

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 book or recent read.
* Share a few "teaser" sentences from somewhere in the book.
* 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 and author so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!


This weekend, I started Dark Passage by Ridley Pearson, the sixth installment in his YA fantasy series, The Kingdom Keepers. Here's a few lines from early in the book.

Awash in disbelief and not trusting his own powers of observation, he briefly wondered if he’d imagined everything.

Or had he lived it?

Where did the potency of possibility give way to the power of persuasion?

(End of Chapter 1)

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Kingdom Keepers #6

The five Kingdom Keepers and their core friends have uncovered a startling truth: Maleficent and the Overtakers (Disney villains) are plotting a catastrophic event that could have repercussions far beyond the world of Disney.

Aboard the Disney Cruise Line’s inaugural passage through the new Panama Canal, the Keepers and their holograms uncover a puzzle hidden within the pages of a stolen journal. The point of that puzzle will reveal itself in the caves of Aruba, the zip lines of Costa Rica, and the jungles of Mexico. A destructive force, dormant for decades, is about to be unleashed. The five Kingdom Keepers are to be its first victims.

Teaser Tuesday 186: City of Bones

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 book or recent read.
* Share a few "teaser" sentences from somewhere in the book.
* 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 and author so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!

I spent the majority of the past weekend reading, finishing both City of Bones and City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare, the first two books in her "Mortal Instruments" series. I enjoyed them both and look forward to getting my hands on book three, and seeing the movie out this week. Here's a teaser or two from City of Bones.

She stepped out from behind the pillar. "Stop!" she cried. "You can't do this."

(Chapter 1)

~*~*~*~*~

The edge of the roof was coming up fast, so fast, and Clary wanted to shut her eyes but something held them wide open as the motorcycle hurtled over the parapet and plummeted like a rock toward the ground, ten stories down.

(Chapter 15)

ABOUT THE BOOK:
City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments #1)

When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder—much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing—not even a smear of blood—to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know. . . .

Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wild ride that they will never want to end.

Teaser Tuesday 152: The Hobbit

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 book or recent read.
* Share a few "teaser" sentences from somewhere in the book.
* 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 and author so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!


I am about to begin a reread of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien as a TNBBC November group read, and in anticipation of the upcoming movie (the first of three) opening December 14. It's been ages since I read this, so I am looking forward to reliving the adventure. Here is the opening paragraph.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

 




ABOUT THE BOOK

Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit who wanted to be left alone in quiet comfort. But the wizard Gandalf came along with a band of homeless dwarves. Soon Bilbo was drawn into their quest, facing evil orcs, savage wolves, giant spiders, and worse unknown dangers. Finally, it was Bilbo-alone and unaided-who had to confront the great dragon Smaug, the terror of an entire countryside . . .

This stirring adventure fantasy begins the tale of the hobbits that was continued by J.R.R. Tolkien in his bestselling epic The Lord of the Rings.

Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent.