You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion

I closed the other thread because it was having issues. It had over 800 comments, so a new thread doesn't hurt.

Link to the title of the book you are reading and type the first line of the book.

Is it a tease, a taunt, or an enticement to add the book to our wishlists?

I'm reading Blood & Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
"The fog hung thick and low over the Thames. It rolled in off the water and along the quays, filling the squalid courts and dockside alleys of lower Deptford. The local name for a fog like this was the Devil's Breath. It stank of the river's foul miasma."

Interesting start! My library has that one so if you give it a good review I will reserve. Do you enjoy being my proof-reader? LOLOL

Margo wrote: "Interesting start! My library has that one so if you give it a good review I will reserve. Do you enjoy being my proof-reader? LOLOL"

😂 No, I don't mind being your proof-reader. Although, maybe I should start charging for my services...😉😜😂

No no, you do it for the honour - obviously hehehe

I will start The Glass Woman today.



"The day the earth shifts, a body emerges from the belly of the ice-crusted sea. Bone white fingers waving, as if alive."

I like the sounds of your book, Lisa. I've added it to my wishlist.

"Before I tell you about Hannah Schneider's death, I'll tell you about my mother's.

At 3:30 -P.M. on September 17, 1992, two days before she was to pick up the new blue Volvo station wagon from Dean King's Volvo and Infiniti dealership in Oxford, my mother, Natasha Alicia Bridges van Meer, driving her white Plymouth Horizon (the car Dad nicknamed Certain Death) crashed through a guardrail along Mississippi State Highway 7 and hit a wall of trees." ~ Special Topics In Calamity Physics

Margo wrote: "No no, you do it for the honour - obviously hehehe"

Of course! Of course! Lol.

Janice wrote: "I will start The Glass Woman today.



"The day the earth shifts, a body emerges from the belly of the ice-crusted sea. Bone white fingers waving..."

I love the opening of this. I read a few lines before I purchased it a few weeks ago and it really helped sell this to me.

Janice wrote: "I will start The Glass Woman today.



"The day the earth shifts, a body emerges from the belly of the ice-crusted sea. Bone white fingers waving..."
Sounds different. I'm going to try it.

Janice wrote: "I will start The Glass Woman today.



"The day the earth shifts, a body emerges from the belly of the ice-crusted sea. Bone white fingers waving..."

That is chilling image image Janice. Keep reading !

Almeta, yours was a looooong sentence which I usually don't like at the start of a book but it really works in this case.

The Glass Woman contains evocative images throughout the book. Descriptive writing and an intriguing story earned 5 stars from me.

I will start The Winter of the Witch today.


"Dusk at the end of winter, and two men crossed the dooryard of a palace scarred by fire."

Interesting! It sounds very much like the opening of a play. Very visual.

From Without Merit by Colleen Hoover:
“I have an impressive collection of trophies that I did not win.”

This is from my 2017 Romance book that I’m reading for the toppler. I’ve already laughed twice.

Haha, nice opening 😆

I'm reading I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer.


"Before the Golden State Killer, there was the girl."

I'm reading Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
"It's a weirdly subtle conversation. I almost don't notice I'm being blackmailed."

I am reading The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh


"That Cheri Stoddard was found at all was the thing that set people on edge, even more so than the condition of her body."

That sounds rather creepy, Sandra!

Yes, it is creepy. And it says so much in only one line.

I've had it on my wishlist since 2014. I'll be interested in your comments when you finish it.

I didn't realize there was a new thread. Interesting first lines! I added The Glass Woman. We'll actually be staying in Stykkisholmur when we visit Iceland this summer. It's not a remote town anymore. Or well, it's still a bit remote and still a town, but not very small and remote for modern-day Iceland.


From No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison:
"Two trucks carry scared and restless passengers down a winding, rocky labyrinth. They speed along a road surrounded by jungle, their exhausts emitting frightening roars. Black cloth is wrapped around the vehicles, so we can only see the stars above. Women and men sit beside each other, their children on their laps.... we look up at a sky the colour of intense anxiety."

The Passage

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere - the One Who Walked in, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years - she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy

Peggy wrote: "I didn't realize there was a new thread. Interesting first lines! I added The Glass Woman. We'll actually be staying in Stykkisholmur when we visit Iceland this summer. It's not a remote town anymo..."

I closed the old one and started this one. The old one was misbehaving and the easiest fix was to just start a new one.

Jess wrote: "The Passage

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere - the One Who Walked in, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years - she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy"

Enjoy! This is a series I want to reread some day.

Janice wrote: "Peggy wrote: "I didn't realize there was a new thread. Interesting first lines! I added The Glass Woman. We'll actually be staying in Stykkisholmur when we visit Iceland this summer. It's not a rem..."

It still shows up in Unread topics with (1 new) in red, in the mobile app on my iPOD.

Janice wrote: "Jess wrote: "The Passage
Enjoy! This is a series I want to reread some day..."

I still need to finish the 3rd book. I started it once and put it down - never to get back to it.

Cherie wrote: "It still shows up in Unread topics with (1 new) in red, in the mobile app on my iPOD. "

Is there an option on the app to mark all as read like you can do on the website?

Janice wrote: "Cherie wrote: "It still shows up in Unread topics with (1 new) in red, in the mobile app on my iPOD. "

Is there an option on the app to mark all as read like you can do on the website?"

I will look. Normally, once I click on it and read it, it goes away.

I checked the app and there's no ability to clear your unread posts other than to click on them.

Does it show in your unread posts on the website? If so, try clicking "mark all as read" and see if it clears it off the app. I did it on the website and it doesn't show on the app.

From All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater: "You can hear a miracle a long way after dark."

All the Crooked Saints

Janice wrote: "I checked the app and there's no ability to clear your unread posts other than to click on them.

Does it show in your unread posts on the website? If so, try clicking "mark all as read" and see i..."

No - it does not show in the unread posts on the website. I was just checking.

The interesting thing about the unread posts on the website, is that they stay marked as unread (with a new comment in red) until I log off. If I log back in - I only see the new entries.

In the app, if I click on a discussion thread and go to the newest comment, as soon as I read it and go to a new thread, it is removed from the Unread Topics list - all except the old "reading first lines" thread - it still shows up with one new comment. Since I do not log off in the Apple app, because it is only available when I have an internet connection and open it, they automatically go away. I assume the Android mobil app acts the same way.

The only unread thread in the app that has no new comments is an old, old one that is always there, because - I think- there always has to be "something". I see it in the Unread topics in the website too.

Debra wrote: "From All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater: "You can hear a miracle a long way after dark.""

I like that Debra. It needs thinking about.

I'm currently reading Lanny by Max Porter
"Dead Papa Toothwort wakes from his standing nap an acre wide and scrapes off dream dregs of bitumen glistening thick with liquid globs of litter."

Quirky start!

Gross. :)

Sandra wrote: "Gross. :)"

Lol! It is a bit!

Hmmm.. I'm not sure I would read on. Good luck, Lisa.

Currently reading Baal
"Fury stung the sky".

Sound like a McCammon book alright.

Gavin wrote: "Currently reading Baal
"Fury stung the sky".

Sound like a McCammon book alright."

I read the book blurb and it sounds intense.

Almeta wrote: ""Before I tell you about Hannah Schneider's death, I'll tell you about my mother's.

At 3:30 -P.M. on September 17, 1992, two days before she was to pick up the new blue Volvo station wagon from De..."

I'm intrigued. I really liked her other book Night Film. Not read this one though.

Sandra wrote: "I am reading The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh


"That Cheri Stoddard was found at all was the thing that set people on e..."

Oooh I'd definitely read that from the first line!

Just starting Ancillary Sword:

"Considering the circumstances, you could use another lieutenant".

Also 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness:

"As I walked back through the forest that night in the summer of 2005, with twenty bats in cotton bags hanging around my neck and all manner of insect life dashing for the light of my head torch, I realised my ankles were itching."

Sarah wrote: "Just starting Ancillary Sword:

"Considering the circumstances, you could use another lieutenant".

Also 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happine..."

I still have Ancillary Justice to read. I'm looking forward to it.

The first sentence of your second book sounds like it might read like a novel, and an interesting one at that.

That's what I thought about the second one. I will let you know once I've read some more.

I agree. Very engaging. I like non fiction that read like that.

I'm going to start The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees today:



"Swarm season always arrives by telephone. The red rotary phone jangled to life every spring with frantic callers reporting honeybees in their walls, or in their chimneys, or in their trees."

I'm looking forward to this read. My friend is a beekeeper and I was with her during a swarm rescue last year. She and her husband rescued 5 swarms last year.

I'm just starting The Eagle of The Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
"From the Fosseway westward to Isca Dumnoniorum the road was simply a British trackway, broadened and roughly metalled, strengthened by corduroys of logs in the softest places, but otherwise unchanged from its old estate, as it wound among the hills, thrusting farther and farther into the wilderness."