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!
For my first First Line Fridays I’m going to feature multiple books from my physical TBR. In the future I’ll cut it down to just 1-3 and it’ll probably usually be ebooks.
Many of these were sent to me by the publishers to review at my convenience and I feel really bad that I haven’t got to them yet!
Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means there is no additional cost to you if you shop using my links, but I will earn a small percentage in commission. A program-specific disclaimer is at the bottom of this post.
Dirty Birds
by Morgan Murray
Published 8 July 2020
Breakwater Books (Newfoundland!)
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Page Count: 432
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
In late 2008, as the world’s economy crumbles and Barack Obama ascends to the White House, the remarkably unremarkable Milton Ontario – not to be confused with Milton, Ontario – leaves his parents’ basement in Middle-of-Nowhere, Saskatchewan, and sets forth to find fame, fortune, and love in the Euro-lite electric sexuality of Montreal; to bask in the endless twenty-something Millennial adolescence of the Plateau; to escape the infinite flatness of Saskatchewan and find his messiah – Leonard Cohen. Hilariously ironic and irreverent, in Dirty Birds, Morgan Murray generates a quest novel for the twenty-first century–a coming-of-age, rom-com, crime-farce thriller–where a hero’s greatest foe is his own crippling mediocrity as he seeks purpose in art, money, power, crime, and sleeping in all day.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
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Milton Ontario -not to be confused with Milton, Ontario- sits on a bus as it grumbles across the frozen prairie.
Morgan Murray, DIRTY BIRDS page 1
It’s cold like winter, but technically still fall, late 2007. In just over a year, the world’s economy will collapse, a Junior Senator from Illinois will be elected America’s first Black president, Beverly Hills Chihuahua will be the highest grossing film in theatres, and Milton will be back on this same bus going the other direction.
(Grammarly is upset that there’s no hyphen for highest-grossing.) What a great way to introduce the character and set the scene! I’m looking forward to reading this one. Poor guy, too, to have that name. If your last name is a province (or State, or whatever is in your country) why on Earth would you name them after a city in that province? That’s kind of like how if your last name is a noun don’t name your kids adjectives like Misty or Rusty. That’s just cruel!
You Only Live Twice: Letters on Sex, Death and Transition
by Chase Joynt & Mike Hoolboom
Published 12 April 2016
Coach House Books (Ontario)
Genre: Memoire, LGBTQIA, Canadiana
Page Count: 140
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
You Only Live Twice is a double-barreled, non-fiction novel co-authored by young trans writer and media artist Chase Joynt and HIV-positive movie artist Mike Hoolboom. Together, and with an assist from the films of Chris Marker, they map out the particularities of what they call “second lives”: Chase’s transition from female-to-male, and Mike’s near-death from AIDS in the 1990s.
YOLT is true fiction, part of the auto-genre wave that includes the diary crypts of Knausgaard, the friendship recordings of Sheila Heti, and the theory-fiction of Maggie Nelson and Chris Kraus.
The unspoken promise was that in our second life we would become the question to every answer, jumping across borders until they finally dissolved. Man and woman. Queer and straight. Only we have two bodies now, the one that gathers sensations and the other one that archives the records. Is it too terrible to admit that we prefer the record, that we find it more reassuring, even more erotic?
Mike Hoolboom is an author and filmmaker based in Toronto. He has written four books, received more than thirty international film prizes, and enjoyed nine international retrospectives of his work.
Chase Joynt is a Toronto-based moving-image artist and writer who has exhibited his work internationally. He recently received a Mellon Fellowship in Arts Practice and Scholarship at the University of Chicago.
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Coach House Books
Chris Marker died today. Heart failure, the death of kings. People are already gathering at the jetty in the Orly airport, an impromptu memorial for the French filmmaker as renowned for his secrecy as his movies. Half a dozen people, give or take, leaving origami felines to keep a discreet watch over the waiting areas. How did they all know to bring black roses? The news of Marker’s death is not yet public…”
Chase Joynt & Mike Hoolboom, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, page 15
I understand that this is a memoire so the style and perspective makes sense, and the topic of death certainly fits in a book with this title, but this is not the opening I was expecting! It’s a super short book, chapter one starts on page 15 and the acknowledgements are on page 146, so it should be a very quick read when I get around to picking it up. I shall report back!
The Trials of Morrigan Crown
Nevermoor Book One
by Jessica Townsend
Published 31 October 2017
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy
Page Count: 465
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she’s blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks–and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday.
But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters on horseback, he whisks her away into the safety of a secret, magical city called Nevermoor.
It’s then that Morrigan discovers Jupiter has chosen her to contend for a place in the city’s most prestigious organization: the Wundrous Society. In order to join, she must compete in four difficult and dangerous trials against hundreds of other children, each boasting an extraordinary talent that sets them apart – an extraordinary talent that Morrigan insists she does not have. To stay in the safety of Nevermoor for good, Morrigan will need to find a way to pass the tests – or she’ll have to leave the city to confront her deadly fate.
Blurb copied from Goodreadsi.
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The journalists arrived before the coffin did. They gathered at the gate overnight and by dawn they were a crowd. By nine o’clock they were a swarm.
Jessica Townsend, THE TRIALS OF MORRIGAN CROW, page xi
Well that’s ominous! I love it though, can’t wait to read this one! This has been recommended to me by SO many people as a replacement middle grade series for Harry Potter, so I have high hopes.
Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays & Profiles
by Jeet Heer
Published 1 December 2014
Porcupine’s Quill (Ontario)
Genre: Non-Fiction, Criticism
Page Count: 240
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
“Sweet Lechery” is Jeet Heer’s wide-ranging collection of literary criticism, served with a twist of social commentary.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
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Books are work, essays are play. I realize that this is a generalization even the most incompetent hunter could shoot full of holes. The world, after all, is filled with playful books (everything from Tritam Shandy to Pale Fire) as well as somberly serious essays (written by the likes of Samuel Johnson and Susan Sontag). Yet if my adage fails as a universal law, it rings true as a personal credo.
Jeet Heer, SWEET LECHERY: REVIEWS, ESSAYS & PROFILES, page 9
I think I’m going to reall enjoy the way this man writes, and I might even learn a thing or two about what I do writing book reviews. I enjoy the fact that there is a large section of this book dedicated to Canadian culture and authors as well as a section purely for works science fiction. Bring it on!
Thoughts on Driving to Venus: Christopher Pratt’s Car Books
by Christopher Pratt
Published 31 August 2015
Porcupine’s Quill (Ontario)
Genre: Memoire
Page Count: 208
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Thoughts on Driving to Venus documents the thoughts, memories and impressions of Canadian artist Christopher Pratt as he drives across Newfoundland in search of inspiration.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Porcupine’s Quill
‘I just discovered that I can write more legibly by pressing my hand and the pen to the page even when the road ain’t perfect.’
This book, comprising several thousands of entries, was written in a car as it ‘winged’ across Newfoundland. The passenger, Canadian artist Christpoher Pratt, put down in words, in a series of notebooks, or ‘Car Books’, his impressions of the landscape in all season and at all times of day. His wife, Jeanette, steered him and his imagination safely through the barrens, forests, cities and town of their many car trips.
Tom Smart (Introduction), THOUGHTS ON DRIVING TO VENUS by Christopher Pratt, page 7
This book interests me because I live in Newfoundland and I love taking road trips around the island, but like the author, I’m also not originally from here. I’m looking forward to connecting with that unique perspective, even if these road trips took place nearly four decades before my arrival in the province. I do hope Mr. Smart there didn’t transcribe the whole thing because his horrendous use of comas is going to annoy the hell out of me!
Some People’s Children
by Bridget Canning
Published 9 March 2020
Breakwater Books (Newfoundland)
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Canadiana
Page Count: 256
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Imogene Tubbs has never met her father, and raised by her grandmother, she only sees her mother sporadically. But as she grows older, she learns that many people in her small, rural town believe her father is Cecil Jesso, the local drug dealer–a man both feared and ridiculed. Weaving through a maze of gossip, community, and the complications of family, Some People’s Children is a revealing and liberating novel about the way others look at us and the power of self-discovery.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
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Maggie wakes on the bed. The bedspread is itchy on her bare skin. Smells like cigarettes. She is alone. It is not her bed.
Bridget Cannin, SOME PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, page v
I hope this bit from the prologue is written so short and snippy because it’s POV setting the scene and meant to be dramatic. If the whole thing is written in tiny abrupt sentences that could be blended into longer ones, I’ll get frustrated and may DNF for that reason alone. I hope that’s not the case, because I really want to spotlight this local author!
Is “some people’s kids” a phrase used elsewhere? It’s what people say here in Newfoundland when hearing stories of people doing stupid things.
Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race
by Naben Ruthnum
Published 12 September 2017
Coach House Books (Ontario)
Genre: Non-Fiction, Essays, Canadiana
Page Count: 144
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s Heat, Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters. Following in the footsteps of Salman Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands, Curry cracks open anew the staid narrative of an authentically Indian diasporic experience.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Coach House Books
I’ve only visited Mauritius, my particular old country, once. It was 1991, I was nine, and the visit turned into a funeral. Not my own -even though I did feel like I was dying while I sweated against the polyester chafe of the new Bart Simpson pyjamas my aunt had bought me during our London stopover.
Naben Ruthnum, CURRY: EATING, READING AND RACE, page 7
It sounds like Naben Ruthnum has a sense of humour, and I look forward to reading his essays. South Asian culture and the immigrant family experience fascinates me, so I look forward to finding out what new experiences this book holds.
Cinder
The Lunar Chronicles Book One
by Marissa Meyer
Published 2012
Feiwell & Friends
Genre: YA Science Fiction, Dystopian
Page Count: 400
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless Lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl… Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg.
She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
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The screw through Cinder’s ankle had rusted, the engraved cross marks worn to a mangled circle. Her knuckles ached from forcing the screwdriver into the joint as she struggled to loosen the screw one gritting twist after another. By the time it was extracted far enough for her to wrench free with her prosthetic steel hand, the hairline threads had been stripped clean.
Marissa Meyer, CINDER, page 3
I absolutely cannot wait to finally read this one! I remember seeing it in the book stores with the original cover that reminded me of the Twilight aesthetic and considered buying it so many times. Now I’ve got a copy with the beautiful new pink illustrated cover! I love fairy tale retellings and I love cyborg steampunk stories, so this is right up my alley. Why haven’t I already read this?!
All right, I have four more books in the pile I pulled for this post, but I need to grab links and covers and make this thing live. The rest will have to wait for my next First Lines Friday post! I’ve featured all three publishers who recently sent me physical review copies, so at least there’s that.
Have you read any of these? Have I convinced you to check any out? Let’s chat!
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Sweet Lechery sounds interesting