Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by Becky at Page Turners. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you’re reading. If you like, share with everyone why you do, or do not, like the sentence. (Thanks to Rose City Reader for inspiring this meme)
MISTY’S BOOK:
My line is from the book If You Live in a Small House (Mutual Publishing, 2010) by Sandra Park.
According to the neighbors, Father was a difficult man.
The story is centered around an extended Korean-American family living in small house on the windward side of Oahu in the early 1950’s. The book so far is very subtle and tender with its characterizations, reflecting everyone’s deepest desires and unhappiness in a round-about way. The war has just ended and father has come home from the front lines, the windward side is starting to grow and there are details in the narrative about the community that I find interesting. For example:
Everybody at Piggly Wiggly Market knew father and son, their cart filled to the brim with loaves of the local brand, Love’s Bread, in red gingham plastic, the same crackly plastic that snugly fit over Lucky Strike cigarette packs…Ezra looked for the checkout lane with his Auntie Gloria, hers was usually the long, slow line because she chatted with the customers.
Or this one:
Coconut Grove in Kailua was an up and coming town, over the Pali, the steep cliffs of the windward side of Oahu. There wasn’t much there yet, but a star pattern of streets radiated from the town’s old banyan tree
Coupled with real photos from the era, Sandra’s novella is a real experience of post-war Hawai’i. I can’t wait to read more of it.
ALEX’S BOOK:
Nuffin’! 🙂
What are you all reading this month? Leave us a message with your “book beginnings”.
