Tag Archives: Tuesday Teasers

Teaser Tuesdays: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

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On Teaser Tuesdays readers are asked to:

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between 7 and 12 lines.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given.

If this was something I planned to submit to directories of book reviews, I’d have to confess that my “current read” really isn’t a book, but a 23-page long short story. But it’s a famous short story, and one most of us never read any more, learning the legend only from movies. Nothing against Johnny Depp’s performance – I own Sleepy Holloy on BluRay, after all, the original is better, moodier, darker, and, well, authentic.

So, for this Teaser Tuesday, which comes during the Halloween week, I offer this excerpt from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war; and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper, having been buried in the church-yard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head; and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the church-yard before daybreak.

I should add: this is the piece I gave the young man I tutor in English for his assignment this week. He loved it. And you will too, I’m sure.

Teaser Tuesday: The Wedding Gift

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On Teaser Tuesdays readers are asked to:

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between 7 and 12 lines.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given.

Between the books on the Kindle I got for my birthday, and the physical books stacked on the headboard of my bed, my to-be-read list is so big that I’m beginning to think weight loss products might be useful for it.

In any case, my teaser this week comes from The Wedding Gift by Kathleen McKenna, page 55:

The Piggly was about the only place in Dalton where you could talk to anyone right in town without a fear of being disturbed. See, Sandy Jacobs, who is our friend Britney’s dad, he ran the Piggly Wiggly store in town, and he had got into a terrible fight a year previously with Lurton Smits, the local garbage man. And because of that heated disagreement, now Lurton would not pick up garbage from the dumpsters from behind the store. And Mr. Jacobs, he didn’t get around to doing it more than once a month, so the place stunk like the bowels of hell. And, in addition, the rats started coming around, so while it was real disgusting back there, it was also real private, and privacy was not something that came easy in Dalton.

Teaser Tuesday: Twelve Rooms with a View

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On Teaser Tuesdays readers are asked to:

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between 7 and 12 lines.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given.

To be honest, when I first began reading Twelve Rooms with a View, the new novel by Theresa Rebeck, I thought the lead character, Tina, was a bit dense. This is a woman who doesn’t know the difference between a prevera review and Prometheus Unbound, I thought. But it turned out that Tina had her own form of intelligence, and I ended up really liking the book. A lot.

Eyeing Mrs. White’s gorgeous pink outfit, I felt a sincere moment of sympathy for those teenage girls learning a broader system of values. I mean, their mother was running all over New York City in designer suits, and they had to throw on the same ugly pleated skirts every morning before heading uptown to hang out with a bunch of nuns. It seemed like a pretty nasty fate, especially considering that they lived in Manhattan, where I would have thought that nobody, and I mean nobody, went to Catholic school to learn values.

— from Twelve Rooms with a View, by Theresa Rebeck (page 94)

Tuesday Teasers: The Barbary Pirates

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On Teaser Tuesdays readers are asked to:

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between 7 and 12 lines.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given.

I love a rollicking ocean-going adventure as much as the next girl, and I also love period mysteries, so when I was offered the opportunity to review William Dietrich’s latest novel, The Barbary Pirates, I took a break from packing for a trip and writing about online life insurance to respond with a heartfelt “Yes! Please!.”

The book (an uncorrected proof of the novel) arrived while I was away, and I’m on a few pages into it, but I had to share. Remember, this text is quoted from an ARC and may differ from the final copy, on sale on March 30th.

The tunnel kept getting narrower, however, squeezing down toward my head. I scraped several times, and could feel the trickle of blood from my crown. It was getting hard to breathe, the air stale, and finally my shoulders wedged and I could go no farther. Utterly dark, no hope ahead, and as I patted with my hands I could feel nothing but enclosing rock. I probed with my rifle, which only confirmed the passage constricted still more, far too small to wriggle through. Cuvier bumped up against the soles of my boots, and grunted.

“What’s wrong, Ethan?”

“I’m stuck!” I couldn’t get the room to even go backward. “This isn’t the way out, there’s no air. We have to go back to that little chasm we crawled over and go down.”

“Go down? Merde, I’m longing to go up!”

Tuesday Teaser: The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove.

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On Teaser Tuesdays readers are asked to:

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between 7 and 12 lines.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given.

As much as I’d rather be looking at different options for redecorating my kitchen, weighing the virtues of Kohler vs. Grohe, and such, I can’t afford to do more than fantasize right now, which is why I’m in another reading mood. (Note to COMMANDER PANTS: Look for the review of your book later this week. Really.) One of my favorite authors is Christopher Moore, and I’m about to start a novel of his that I bought last summer – or the summer before – and never got around to reading.

So here’s my teaser, from The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, by Christopher Moore, page 102:

To distract herself from the dragon next door, Molly had put on her sweats and started to clean her trailer. She got as far as filling three black trash bags with junk food jetsam and was getting ready to vacuum up the collection of sow bug corpses that dotted her carpet when she made the mistake of Windexing the television. Outland Steel: Kendra’s Revenge was playing on the VCR and when the droplets of Windex hit the screen, they magnified the phospphorescent dots, making the picture look like an impressionist painting: Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Warrior Babe, perhaps.