Thursday, January 30, 2014

A peak into The Golem and the Jinni plus The Disappearing Spoon


I am very slowing managing to read a few pages of The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker each night before falling asleep.  This was the first week of classes and I have been coming home completely wiped out so forward progress has been a little lacking. As a bonus, I am also including The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean in this weeks snippets. 

For Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader here is the first sentence of each. Bet you can't tell which is which :) 


"The Golem's life began in the hold of a steamship."

"When most people think of the periodic table, they remember a chart hanging on the front wall of their high school chemistry class, an asymmetric expanse of columns and rows looming over one of the teacher's shoulders."


(For the record, I love period tables and my high school chemistry teacher was awesome cool and liked to blow things up in class.) 


And for The Friday 56 hosted at Freda's Voice here are some things from page 56 

"Far across the Atlantic, the city of Konin in the German Empire bustled on as usual, barely altered by the departure of Otto Rotfeld. The only real change came when the old furniture shop was leased by a Lithuanian and turned into a fashionable café; all agreed that it improved the neighborhood immensely."

and the 56% mark ...

"Some literary scholars think that L. Frank Baum's 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz– whose Dorthy wore silver, not ruby, slippers and traveled on a gold-colored brick road to a cash-green city –was really an allegory about the relative merits of the silver versus the gold standard." 


7 comments:

  1. Wow! Neat excerpts from books I wouldn't usually read. I'm definitely intrigued by both. Happy Friday.

    http://www.thebusymomsdaily.com/2014/01/the-friday-56-week-163.html

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  2. These books are outside the genres I usually read, but I'm intrigued by both of them! Lately I've been expanding my reading interests, so these books are going on my TBR list.
    Here's the link to my Friday post: QUILT TRIP.

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  3. I actually read The Disappearing Spoon. You must have a love for science to enjoy that one....

    Happy weekend!

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    1. Yep! I am a working scientist, so totally my thing. I think the author does a great job of making things accessible though.

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  4. I'd probably enjoy The Disappearing Spoon more.

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    Replies
    1. It is quite a fun read, though it makes me want to do unsafe experiments in my kitchen.

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