Recent Reading: Jan-Feb 2010

[extrajoker]

JANUARY

• The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale (304 pp.)
  first line (of the introduction): "This is the story of a murder committed in an English country house in 1860, perhaps the most disturbing murder of its time."
  first line (of the prologue): "Paddington Railway Station, 15 July 1860 / On Sunday, 15 July 1860, Detective-Inspector Jonathan Whicher of Scotland Yard paid two shillings for a hansom cab to take him from Millbank, just west of Westminster, to Paddington station, the London terminus of the Great Western Railway."
  first line (of the first chapter): "29-30 June / In the early hours of Friday, 29 June 1860 Samuel and Mary Kent were asleep on the first floor of their detached three-storey Georgian house above the village of Road, five miles from Trowbridge."
  
  
• The Candy Shop War by Brandon Mull (404 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "The airport shuttle squeaked to a stop in the parking lot of Leslie's Diner."
  first line (of the first chapter): "Nate sat at the end of a sheetless mattress, bouncing a small rubber ball off the bare wall, keeping count of how many consecutive times he caught it."
  
  
• The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen (276 pp.)
  first line: "When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled."
  
  
• The Printer's Devil by Paul Bajoria (377 pp.)
  first line: "He was the ugliest, most evil-looking man I'd ever seen."

FEBRUARY

• Birdwing by Rafe Martin (358 pp.)
  first line: "Rain pelted heavily against the narrow, glazed window."
  
  
• Are All the Giants Dead? by Mary Norton (123 pp.)
  first line: "When he awoke, the room looked different somehow: there was a window where the door used to be."
  
  
• Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence by Nick Bantock
  first line: "Griffin Moss / It's good to get in touch with you at last."
  
  
• Sabine's Notebook: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Continues by Nick Bantock
  first line: "JAN 29 / Sabine / If you are reading this,then you exist."
  
  
• Twisted: Tales from the Wacky Side of Life by Bob Fenster (290 pp.)
  first line (of the introduction): "'Never make people laugh,' Congressman Thomas Corwin advised. 'If you would succeed in life, you must be solemn, solemn as an ass. All the great monuments are built over solemn asses.'"
  first line (of the first chapter): "'Never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own,' mystery writer Ross Macdonald suggested."
  
  
• Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (182 pp.)
  first line: "My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes and I came back with a dog."