Book Beginning: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

A YA novel that came out some years ago which I am just now reading, an ebook borrow from the library. This is one novel with magic that I don't mind reading.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, published 2011 b DoubleDay
Welcome to Le Cirque des Rêves. 
Beyond the smoke and mirrors, however, a fierce competition is under way--a contest between two young illusionists, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood to compete in a "game" to which they have been irrevocably bound by their mercurial masters (publisher)

The circus arrives without warning. 

No announcement precedes it, no paper notices on downtown posts or billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. 

Have you read this one?
Meme:
Visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader. 

Library Find: The Grand Tour by Adam O'Fallon Price

A road novel with two unlikely characters on a book tour by car....My lucky library find.....

The Grand Tour by Adam O'Fallon Price, published August 9, 2016 by Doubleday
A bitingly funny, smart and moving road novel about two hapless lost souls—an alcoholic Vietnam veteran turned bestselling author, and his awkward, shy college student superfan—who form an unlikely connection on the world's most disastrous book tour. (publisher)

Richard Lazar is advancing in years but regressing in life. After a career as a literary novelist that has ground to a halt and landed him in a trailer in Phoenix, Richard is surprised to find sudden success publishing a gritty memoir about his service in Vietnam. Sent on a book tour by his publishing house, Richard encounters his biggest (and really only) fan: an awkward, despondent student named Vance with issues of his own (an absentee father, a depressive mother, his own acute shyness). Soon Vance has volunteered to chauffeur Richard for the rest of the book tour, and the two embark on a disastrous but often hilarious cross-country trip. . (publisher)

I am half way through the book, a psychological study as much as a road trip that is only slightly predictable, about two people who help each other along the way.  I recommend it already though I don't know what the ending will be....

First Chapter: Adolfo KIaminsky, A Forger's Life by Sarah Kaminsky

Biography, memoir, history - the life of Adolfo Kaminsky

Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger's Life, by Sarah Kaminsky, DoppelHouse Press, 2016.

First paragraph:
Prologue

"Since you want to know everything, tell me what you think you know about my life. For example, when did you learn that I was in the Resistance?"

To be honest, I don't know. Even less about you being a forger. If we'd stayed in Algeria I might never have known about the Second World War. For me you were the Mujahid, as they say."

"But afterwards, in France, you knew?"

"Not right away. You didn't talk to us about it. I grew up thinking I was the daughter of a social caseworker who helped rehabilitate young delinquents, found work for them, taught them photography. But by keeping my ears open when the grown-ups were talking I got some hints, in bits and pieces...."

Book description: 
Best-selling author Sarah Kaminsky takes readers through her father Adolfo Kaminsky's perilous and clandestine career as a real-life forger for the French Resistance, the FLN, and numerous other freedom movements of the twentieth century. (publisher)

Based on the first paragraphs in the Prologue, would you keep reading?

Meme: Every Tuesday First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros are hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea. Share the first paragraph sometimes two, of a book you are reading or plan to read soon.

Sunday Salon: Herbs, Mystery, and a Healing Garden

My current read...

Murder in the Secret Garden is the third Book Retreat Mystery by Ellery Adams, published August 2, 2016, and I think I want to read the first two. So far, the book has given me interesting information on herbs and gardening and dishes. I have already gone and gathered handful of basil leaves from my giant pot of the herb and made a delicious salad instead of just admiring the basil's shiny green leaves. There is still a lot of the plant left and I'll miss it come winter. Another reason I wish I had a greenhouse!

Add in potions that can kill, gardeners, a poison and herb expert, a healing garden, and a conference that puts several people all together in the same house, and the mystery is intriguing. There is bound to be murder, and there is. I am enjoying this cozy. slowly, in between my necessary chores.

What are you reading these days?

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer.
Also visit It's Monday, What Are You Reading? hosted by Book Date. 

Reader, I Married HIm, edited by Tracy Chevalier: Book Beginning

Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre

Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre, edited by Tracy Chevalier, 2016 
Short story beginning:
To Hold by Joanna Briscoe, page 55

Reader, I married him because I had to. 

You see, we did in those days. There was no glimmer of a choice. 

My hand in marriage was requested by the boy with the triangular Adam's apple and a shuffling thirst for a girl. He was the lad who worked for his parents' motor garage on a yard beyond the village, and I hadn't expected his offer after a lifetime of nods, three conversations, one dance and no kiss with him. But he knocked on our door and asked my father, who postponed his answer, crimson-necked. Using half an excuse, he told Dougie Spreckley to wait. 

Twenty-one writers have contributed to this short story collection, with the same theme based on the Jane Eyre novel. I have read several and am slowly enjoying the rest! 

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

First Chapter: Digging Up the Dirt by Miranda James

Gardening and farming mystery novels.....I am in the mood, having been admiring birds and fading flowers in the backyard this morning.

Digging Up the Dirt by Miranda James, a Southern Ladies Mystery #3
Sleuthing Southern belles, the Ducote sisters..
An’gel and Dickce Ducote, busy with plans for the Athena Garden Club’s spring tour of grand old homes, confront the mystery of a body that is uncovered by a storm. 

First paragraph:

Dickce Ducote wanted a clear view of her sister An'gel's face when she broke the news. She wished there were a discrete way she could set up the video camera on her cell phone to record the moment. Then she could threaten to show it to the rest of the Athena Garden club to annoy her sister. An'gel needed to be wound up occasionally, Dickce thought. Older sisters could get to be a little too stuffy otherwise. 

Would you read on?
Meme: Every Tuesday First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros are hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea. Share the first paragraph sometimes two, of a book you are reading or plan to read soon.

The Fall of Heaven by Andrew Scott Cooper: Book Beginning

The Fall of Heaven:The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran by Andrew Scott Cooper, published August 2, 2016, Henry Holt
Genre: history, nonfiction
An immersive, gripping account of the rise and fall of Iran's glamorous Pahlavi dynasty, written with the cooperation of the late Shah's widow, Empress Farah, Iranian revolutionaries and US officials from the Carter administration (publisher)

Book beginning, 

Introduction: Back to Cairo 

On Sunday, February 15, 2015, under a low, grey canvas of threatening skies, two motorcades flanked by police escorts pulled up outside the Unknown Soldier Memorial in Cairo, Egypt. Bodyguards armed with automatic weapons quickly formed a protective cordon, and military officers in attendance smartly saluted, but the smiles on the faces of the two women at the center of the scrum showed they were more interested in each other than in the men fussing around them. Farah Pahlavi, Iran's last queen and empress, and Jehan Sadat, former first lady of Egypt, were old friends and had looked forward to their reunion....Forty years ago, Farah Pahlavi and Jehan Sadat were young women at the forefront of progressive change in the Middle East. Passionate advocates for the rights of women and children,  they lobbied for passage of laws to empower women in the workplace and in the family....

What intrigues me about this history is that the Shah's widow, the Iranian revolutionaries, and U.S. officials from Carter's time in office all contributed to or approved this account of events.

Meme: Visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.