Hello beautiful people! I sat down to type this post up last night and almost fell asleep at the computer. It was nine o’clock. I’m usually up until, at the very least, eleven. It was a crazy, but awesome, day yesterday.

But enough about yesterday. Today is First Lines Friday! First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words, or, as her blog is going by now, Emma IRL. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author, or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

The Lines:

The pig was young and wary, a yearling boar timidly testing the wind for strange sents as it ventured out into the honey-colored light of the fast-fading day. Bran ap Bryanchan, Prince of the Elfael, had spent the entire day stalking the greenwood for a suitable prize, and he meant to have this one.

Intrigued?

The Book:

Hood by Stephen Lawhead

For centuries, the legend of Robin Hood and his band of thieves has captivated the imagination. Now the familiar tale takes on new life, fresh meaning, and an unexpected setting.

Hunted like an animal by Norman invaders, Bran ap Brychan, heir to the throne of Elfael, has abandoned his father’s kingdom and fled to the greenwood. There, in a primeval forest of the Welsh borders, danger surrounds him–for this woodland is a living, breathing entity with mysterious powers and secrets, and Bran must find a way to make it his own if he is to survive.

I’m not going to lie, the tale of Robin Hood has enchanted me since I was little, after having seen Disney’s Robin Hood. I mean, who doesn’t love the tale of Robin Hood narrated by a singing rooster?

Love that guy.

Which version of Robin Hood is your favorite?

Well hello, beautiful people! How are you doing today? It’s a tough time in the world right now, so make sure you are taking care of yourself. Turn off the news if it gets to be too much. Read something light-hearted and fun, or an old favorite. You know, something you already know the outcome for so it’s not as stressful a read. And don’t forget to drink lots of water and take your meds.

It’s First Lines Friday today. First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author, or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

Today’s lines are from a book I’m hoping to get to before the month is out. So I had better get to it soon, shouldn’t I!

The Lines:

On vacation, you can be anyone you want.

Like a good book or an incredible outfit, being on vacation transports you into another version of yourself.

Intrigued?

The Book:

People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
 
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
 
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
 
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

A friend of mine had a good time reading this one, so I picked it up. I haven’t read Beach Read, so I have no idea what to expect from the author. Here is hoping I’ll be able to get to it before the end of the month so I can complete my TBR this month! I’m so close!

Well hello beautiful people! We’ve made it to the end of the week! And I saw Moonfall. It’s a disaster movie about the moon falling to Earth. I called every single thing that happened in that film, it was terrible, and I loved every minute of it. I’m a sucker for disaster movies when they come from space. Not Armageddon. I didn’t really love that one.

But it’s First Lines Friday!

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author, or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

The Lines:

So start with the voices, then.

When did he first hear them? When he was still little? Benny was always a small boy and slow to develop, as though his cells were reluctant to multiply and take up space in the world.

Intrigued?

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn’t understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.
 
At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.
 
And he meets his very own Book—a talking thing—who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

A book about books! When I bought it, I found it in literary fiction, I think it’s more magical realism. But it sounds very interesting. It also was a total cover buy during the giant 50% hardcovers sale Barnes & Noble was having right after Christmas.

Anyone else find a magical realism book in the literary fiction section?

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author, or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

Hello beautiful peoples! Yesterday was an exciting day in my house! We got a new TV! This is only because the old one died. It made a popping sound, then the screen went dark, then nothing. The remote wouldn’t even turn it off. Alas poor TV, we knew ye well. The new one is now safely mounted on the wall and has a very nice picture. The Hubs spent quite a lot of time setting it up. My TV is smarter than I am.

Speaking of things that are smarter than me, I picked a book for First Lines Friday that has been on my TBR for a while. I bought it in an indie bookshop years ago and just never picked it up. A friend of mine told me it a was great read, so I’m hoping to get to it soon.

The Lines

Much later, Nora would learn magic for dissolving glue or killing vermin swiftly and painlessly or barring mice from the house altogether, but that morning-the last normal morning, she later thought of it-as she padded into the kitchen in search of coffee, she was horribly at a loss when she saw the small brown mouse wriggling on the glue trap in front of the sink.

Intrigued?

The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker

Nora Fischer’s dissertation is stalled and her boyfriend is about to marry another woman.  During a miserable weekend at a friend’s wedding, Nora wanders off and walks through a portal into a different world where she’s transformed from a drab grad student into a stunning beauty.  Before long, she has a set of glamorous new friends and her romance with gorgeous, masterful Raclin is heating up. It’s almost too good to be true.

Then the elegant veneer shatters. Nora’s new fantasy world turns darker, a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. Making it here will take skills Nora never learned in graduate school. Her only real ally—and a reluctant one at that—is the magician Aruendiel, a grim, reclusive figure with a biting tongue and a shrouded past. And it will take her becoming Aruendiel’s student—and learning magic herself—to survive. When a passage home finally opens, Nora must weigh her “real life” against the dangerous power of love and magic.

Of course, if you know anything about me, you know I picked this book up because it was blurbed by Deborah Harkness. When I saw that on the cover, I grabbed it. Does this mean it was a total cover buy for me, or a blurb buy? Is there such thing as a blurb buy? Why am I asking such deep questions on a Friday y’all?

Well, I’m off to have a cup of tea and watch something fun on that new TV. I still have to finish setting some of it up!