A peak into Some Like it Hawk and The Pluto Files

 Happy Spring - I hope you are getting less snow than we are!

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader.

This week I am reading Some Like it Hawk by Donna Andrews (the 14th book in the Meg Langslow series). These books are cozy mysteries with more emphasis on characters and silly situations than deep, serious mysteries, but they are fun and relaxing to read. Here are the opening lines ...

"Welcome to the town that mortgaged its own jail!" 
The amplified voice blaring over the nearby tour bus loudspeaker startled me so much I almost smashed my own thumb. 


And from The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet by Neil deGrasse Tyson we have ...

At about four in the afternoon on February 18, 1930, 24-year old Clyde W. Tombaugh , a farm boy from Illinois, discovered on [sic] the sky what would shortly be named for the Roman god of the underworld. Tombaugh had been hired by Arizona's Lowell Observatory to search for the mysterious and distant Planet X.

 (I have to confess that first sentence put me off rather badly, but I enjoyed what I was reading up to the point my son ran away with the book.) 

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For The Friday 56 hosted at Freda's Voice here is something from page 56 of Some Like it Hawk ...

"Meg, what's going on out there?" he asked. The connection was faint and fragmented. 
"Out there? Are you still in the cellar?" 
Randell glanced up.
"Is that Phinny?"
"No," I said. "It's my brother, Rob." 
"We heard something out there," Rob said. The signal was weak and I turned on the speaker to hear better. "Sounded like fireworks or gunshots. Phinny was worried that the guards were trying to storm the barrier." 

And from page 56 of The Pluto Files we have ... 

Clyde Tombaugh was still alive in the early 1990s. He saw the Kuiper belt omens, but fought them tooth and nail with cane in hand, using his cane not only as a walking aid but also as punctuation for the aggressive arguments he would make. Tombaugh had the most to lose if Pluto were classified as anything other than a full, red-blooded planet.

Source: http://www.gocomics.com/mattdavies/2006/08/18#.UyuQOF6SAhk