The first week at August’s was a consolation, a pure relief. The world will give you that once in a while, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.

– Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees, page 82

Version:
Paperback, 336 pages
Published January 28th 2003 by Penguin Books

First Lines Fridays: August 24, 2018

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!

First Lines:

The woman bore a scorch mark from her chin to her brow. The vision in her left eye was still blurry, as though she were looking through a scratched pane. She had been walking away from the burning for a few weeks by now and so supposed the eye would never heal, even if she lived long enough to give it time.

Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

 

Teaser Tuesday: August 21, 2018

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”

– Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees, page 107

Version:
Paperback, 336 pages
Published January 28th 2003 by Penguin Books


Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker, the weekly Meme that wants you to add books to your TBR, or just share what you are currently reading. It is very easy to play along:

  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! Everyone loves Teaser Tuesday.

Mini-Review: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

I bought this book because I liked the movie and I had put off reading it because I was worried I’d be disappointed in it, but I really wasn’t.

The writing style and the rhythm of the text really suited me; and the subject matter was a good combination of light and heavy.

If you liked the movie, it was fairly faithful to the book so you’re likely to enjoy the book too. I definitely recommend The Secret Life of Bees to those who like general fiction. The main character may be a teen, but the book reads as general fiction, not YA. Although, I think if you are a YA reader looking to branch out into general fiction like me, this may be a good book to try. Just be aware of the subject matter: there are a lot of racial tensions due to being set in the South in 1964 (including some characters using the n-word), the main character is abused by her father, and there is a suicide.

The light that came through the picture window was daylight, real golden late-afternoon daylight, not a white mist light. The sky was a robin’s-egg blue, and Coraline could see trees and, beyond the trees, green hills, which faded on the horizon into purples and grays. The sky had never seemed so sky, the world had never seemed so world.

– Neil Gaiman, Coraline, page 137

Version:
Hardcover, 176 pages
Published July 1st 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers