A new month means a new prompt! Although I am thinking of revamping my monthly themed reading for next year, I do like having a fresh stack of books (always my own from my shelves) to greet me every month. Reading is my escape and a happy place I can turn to. Fall is here and my books slant a bit toward the season as I choose a book for this month's theme "a month in the country". As always I am stretching the theme a little--books set in the countryside that may or may not have the air of holidaymaking about them.
I think this time around I will just give a little sentence or two from the opening pages as a tease.
A Few Green Leaves by Barbara Pym -- (picture of life in a village) "On the Sunday after Easter-Low Sunday, Emma believed it was called-the villagers were permitted to walk in the park and woods surrounding the manor."
Unexpected Night by Elizabeth Daly -- (Henry Gamadge #1-vacation on coastal Maine) "Pine trunks in a double row started out of the mist as headlights caught them, opened to receive the car, passed like an endless screen, and vanished. The girl on the back seat withdrew her head from the open window."
The Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev -- (Russian classic set in Germany) "...At two o'clock in the night he had gone back to his study. He had dismissed the servant after the candles were lighted, and throwing himself into a low chair by the hearth, he his his face in his hands."
Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White -- (remote country house setting) "Helen realized that she had walked too far just as daylight was beginning to fade. As she looked around her, she was struck by the desolation of the country. During her long walk, she had met no one, and had passed no cottage. The high-banked lanes, which blocked her view, were little better than steep mudslides. On either side of her rose the hills-barren sepia mounds, blurred by a fine spit of rain."
House of Glass by Susan Fletcher -- (set in a large stone house in rural Gloucestershire) "My structure is not quite right. By this, I mean my bones--the part on which the rest of me is stretched, stitched into place. I have marrow and cavities; I have the smooth, rounded ends which are cupped by other bones, and so no part is missing. But my skeleton is frail."
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley -- (an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands) "I see a man coming through the falling snow, Fromm a distance, through the curtain of white, he looks hardly human, like a shadow figure."
Any favorites on the list. So now part of the pleasure of a new book--thumbing through and reading bits to see which one pulls me in!