I’ve been waiting all week to post this quote from Rebecca for my Teaser Tuesdays entry! True, this is not a quote from a random page, but it’s so striking and haunting an image that I’m posting it anyway! Think of it this way: it’s hand-selected, just for you!

A refresh of the Teaser Tuesday guidelines:

* Grab your current read.
* Let the book fall open to a random page.
* Share with us two (or more) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on the page.
* 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.
* Please avoid spoilers!

“There might linger there still a certain atmosphere of stress… That corner in the drive, too, where the trees encroach upon the gravel is not a place in which to pause, not after the sun has set. When the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly, and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the patter, patter, of a woman’s hurrying footstep, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled satin shoe.”

–Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier, (c) 1938
Chapter two, page 14

Chilling! I love it. I like to think Alfred Hitchcock was at home reading this book before a nice fire, and those lines convinced him to make this book into what would become his 1940 Oscar-winning film. I’m sure in reality some guy brought him the screenplay, but it’s a nice thought, right?

Another Teaser Tuesday entry! I’m posting this on Wednesday but I’m shameless enough to change the timestamp so it looks like it was done on Tuesday. But at least I’m honest enough to admit it here for posterity.

A refresh of the Teaser Tuesday guidelines:

* Grab your current read.
* Let the book fall open to a random page.
* Share with us two (or more) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on the page.
* 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.
* Please avoid spoilers!

And my quote:

“I stood in front of a photograph of Toddington leaving the Old Bailey, and said, ‘Oh, Toddy, we’re in such a mess!’ and then I cried, and then, in the odious way that these things intrude themselves, I began to dramatise the situation and to plan a story about it for The Rattler, and I wrote out the plot, crying all the time, and got into bed at three, and had no sleep till five o’clock.”

Frankly, I can’t believe I’ve lived my whole life without reading this book. It’s so whimsical and funny and creative and oddball that I know I would have gone all “kindred spirit” on it when I was younger. I feel like it’s the kind of novel that probably will change the way I write from now on, even if I don’t consciously think about it while writing. It’s deliciously clever. I’m about halfway through and basically I never want it to end.

It’s my second Teaser Tuesday entry! I have to confess that I’m still working my way through Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries, but I’m also reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens so I’ll use a quote from that one today. My parents have been visiting all week and while very little reading was accomplished, a lot of fun has been had.

A refresh of the Teaser Tuesday guidelines:

* Grab your current read.
* Let the book fall open to a random page.
* Share with us two (or more) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on the page.
* 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.
* Please avoid spoilers!

My Teaser (a very romantic one for Mr. Scrooge, I think):

“And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.”

- Ebenezer Scrooge to The Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I just learned about Teaser Tuesdays, hosted by Should Be Reading. It sounds like so much fun, and since it corresponds quite well with all the reading resolutions I’m making (which I’ll be posting soon) I thought I would join in. Here’s the rundown on how it works:

* Grab your current read.
* Let the book fall open to a random page.
* Share with us two (or more) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on the page.
* 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.
* Please avoid spoilers!

My Teaser:

“Nevertheless her fingers will always remember the feel of those tumblers, the pale raised bands on thin pink glass, but it is the sun she will chiefly remember - how yellow like corn meal it was, sifting through the fine summer curtains and filling up the whole of the room. These at least, were things she might believe in: the print of sunlight on her bare arm. The cold sweet drink sliding down her throat. The buttons on her father’s shirt, glittering there like a trail of tears.”

- page 77,  The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Carol Shields was so brilliant at creating images you can taste, feel, and smell.  Such beautiful, tactile writing.