Friday56 - The Countess

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find any sentence that grabs you.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or if you do not have your own blog you can post on Freda's comment section.
* Post a link along with your post back to Freda's Voice

Closest Book: The Countess

Author: Rebecca Johns

Page 56: When we came in sight of the estate at last, it was near dark, and the driver and the horses were exhausted from making the last push across the countryside so that we would not have to stop for the night.

"Waiting On" Wednesday: Rip Tide

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

My pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Rip Tide (Dark Life #2) by Kat Falls
Expected publication: Aug 4th 2011

From Amazon:
Return to the subsea frontier with Ty and Gemma, where the mysteries of the deep are deadlier than ever. With time running out for his parents, Ty's desperation leads the two teenagers to the underwater underworld and into an alliance with the outlaws of the Seablite Gang. But one mystery soon leads to another. How has an entire township disappeared? Why is the local sea-life suddenly so aggressive? And can the Seablite Gang be trusted or are Ty and Gemma in deeper water than they realise?

Teaser Tuesdays: The Lying Game

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

~*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!

The Lying Game (The Lying Game #1) by Sara Shepard

"Guess someone didn't know she was a star on the Internet, huh?" Travis snatched the phone from her hands.
Clarice raked her hands through her hair. She kept glancing from the video screen to Emma's face. "Is this what you do for fun?", she asked Emma in a hoarse voice.

~* page 19

James Patterson's "The Gift" - Banned Materials

I deciphered the "Banned Materials" for James Patterson's book, "Witch & Wizard" on an earlier blog post HERE.

Here is a work-in-progress for the sequel, "The Gift".


Especially Offensive Books That Have Been Banned: As Dictated by The One Who Bans Books
The Brawlers - Warriors by Erin Hunter (see comments)
Gossip Ghost - Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar
The Interesting Crossover Of The Dog To The Shadowland – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The Thirst Tournament – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Unfortunate Stones –
Ultimate Armstrong – Maximum Ride series by James Patterson
(Armstrong number - also known as narcissistic numbers; Armstrong numbers are the sum of their own digits to the power of the number of digits.)

Some Particularly Reprehensible Noise Polluters Of The Former Age: As Defined by The One That Monitors Auditory Stimuli
Duchess Goo Goo - Lady GaGa
Dustin Beeper - Justin Bieber
The Red-Eyed Sleazes – The Black-Eyed Peas
Smiley Pyrus – Miley Cyrus
Swifty Tailor - Taylor Swift

Visual "Artists" Who Are No Longer Sullying The World: As Annotated by The One Who Assesses Visual Stimuli
Pierre Pondrain - Piet Mondrian
Paulo Cezonne - Paul Cézanne
Rancher Elfie – Shepard Fairey
Sandy Eyehole – Andy Warhol
Septembre Feynoir – Auguste Renoir
Thanksy - Banksy

"Waiting On" Wednesday: Dark Parties

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

My pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Dark Parties by Sara Grant
Published: April 2011 by Little, Brown

From Goodreads:

Dark Parties is a dystopian novel about a country that generations ago closed its borders to people and ideas. No one knows what exists outside their protected society. Neva and her best friend secretly plot to force the government to open its borders. Anyone who threatens the government seems to disappear mysteriously. Neva receives a message from her grandma who vanished without a trace 10 years ago, inviting her to escape to the outside. Now she has a choice–stay and save her country or leave and save herself.

Teaser Tuesdays: The End of the World

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading
Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

~*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!

The End of the World: Stories of the Apocalypse
Martin H. Greenberg (Editor), Robert Silverberg (Introduction)

For three years he had been searching for another man or woman down here in this world under the city. For three years he had prowled the seven hundred miles of storm drains that threaded their way under the skin Los Angeles like the veins in a giant's body-and he had found nothing. Nothing.
Even now, after all the days and night of search, he could not really accept the fact that he was alone, that he was the last man alive in a city of seven million...

~* page 83
edited to add: this is from William F. Nolan's short story, "The Underdweller".

Bound by Donna Jo Napoli

Bound by Donna Jo Napoli

Summary from Goodreads:
Bound to her late father's second wife and daughter. Bound to a life of servitude as a young girl in ancient China, where a woman is valued less than livestock. Bound to be alone, with no parents to arrange for a suitable husband. Xing Xing spends her days taking care of her half sister, Wei Ping, who cannot walk because of her foot bindings, the painful tradition for girls who are fit to be married. Even so, Xing Xing is content to practice her gift for poetry and calligraphy, and to dream of a life unbound by the laws of family and society.

But all of this is about to change as Stepmother, who has spent nearly all of the family's money, grows desperate to find a husband for Wei Ping. Xing Xing soon realizes that this greed and desperation may threaten not only her memories of the past, but also her dreams for the future.

A Chinese fairy tale based on the retelling of the oldest known version of Cinderella, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Xian

The story revolves around the lives and interactions of four women; Xing Xing, her dead mother, her stepmother and her dauther, Wei Ping.

After the death of her parents, Xing Xing becomes bound as a servant to her stepmother and for caring for her halfsister, Wei Ping.
In hopes of finding a good marriage for her daughter, her mother binds the girl's feet even though she is over the customary age of foot binding because their father did not believe in the practice.
It's up to Xing Xing to do the chores and care for her half-sister.

Surprising, the elegant clothes, jewels, and golden slippers Xing Xing finds hidden by her mother and later the prince who seeks out the true wearer of the slipper is only a small part of the story.