Teaser Tuesday

It's Tuesday and that means a it's time for the teaser meme - hosted by Mizb17 at Should Be Reading

Guidelines:

1. Grab your current read

2. Let the book fall open to a random page

3. Share with us two “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

4. 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!

5. Do not share any spoilers!

This week's teaser is from a book that I'm reading for Barnes & Noble's First Look Book Club - Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan:

"As the drizzle thickened into rain, they hustled past moldering huts and ramshackle tenements, past temples of abandoned gods and hotels tenanted by transient midnight souls. Eyes without bodies traked them from the depths of shadows, howling, laughing at every turn of the wind."

p.267

Review to come later this week!

Giveaway: The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos

Giveaway - CLOSED

Thanks to Valerie at Hachette, I have 5 copies of The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos to give away.

Synopsis from Hachette:

Gus Ramone is "good police," a former Internal Affairs investigator now working homicide for the city's Violent Crime branch. His new case involves the death of a local teenager named Asa, whose body has been found in a local community garden.

The murder unearths intense memories of a case Ramone worked as a patrol cop twenty years earlier, when he and his partner, Dan "Doc" Holiday, assisted a legendary detective named T. C. Cook. The series of murders, all involving local teenage victims, was never solved. In the years since, Holiday has left the force under a cloud of morals charges, and now finds work as a bodyguard and driver. Cook has retired, but he has never stopped agonizing about the "Night Gardener" killings.

The new case draws the three men together on a grim mission to finish the work that has haunted them for years. All the love, regret, and anger that once burned between them comes rushing back, and old ghosts walk once more as the men try to lay to rest the monster who has stalked their dreams. Bigger and even more unstoppable than his previous thrillers, George Pelecanos achieves in The Night Gardener what his brilliant career has been building toward: a novel that is a perfect union of suspense, character, and unstoppable fate.

I'll be reviewing it soon but, until then, let's get the contest started!

5 copies available

Contest ends at 11:59 pm EDT on 6/23/09

Winners must live in the U.S. or Canada

P.O. boxes won't be accepted for a mailing address

How to Enter:

Comment here on the original post.

For Extra Entries:

1. Blog about the giveaway.

2. Tweet about the contest and be sure to mention my handle (@jax1204) somewhere in the tweet so that I can keep track.

3. Become a follower of the blog. If you're already one, just mention that for an entry.

I'll be choosing the winners using Random.org

For each entry, leave a separate comment here so that I can easily keep track. Don't forget to include your email.

I will contact winners by email as well as post their names on the blog.

Review: College Girl by Patricia Weitz

College Girl by Patricia Weitz

General Fiction

Riverhead (December 26, 2008)

336 pages

From Amazon:

College senior Natalie Bloom is beautiful and ambitious, but also incredibly insecure and painfully uncomfortable with the subject of sex —let alone the act. She’s awkward at developing friendships with girls, but it’s sexual attention from boys that really makes her lose her cool. At age twenty, she’s a virgin—never having had a boyfriend. Avoiding her peers, Natalie hides out most weekends in the library. That is, until she meets Patrick, her fantasy (she thinks) of a cultured, intellectual Prince Charming—and everything changes. But the more time they spend together, the more Patrick brings out her worst insecurities. Natalie loses her virginity before she’s ready, and as their sexual activity escalates, Natalie’s emotional responses become dangerously self-destructive. Ultimately, she must take extreme measures to reclaim her sense of self, her confidence, and her ambition.

As someone currently finishing up their college experience, I think that I can speak with authority when I say that this is one of the most true-to-life stories about a post-adolescent woman that I've ever read. I identified with a lot of what Natalie felt and experienced throughout this novel. While her many of her experiences or decisions were different from my own, they definitely mirrored those of some friends and acquaintances of mine.

Weitz gives an excellent and accurate account of what is reality for many young, college-age women.

Natalie can be aggravating, endearing, sad and naive - everything that a reader could hate in a more simple character in a more shallow story. But here, it works. Just when your ready to give up on her, thinking that she'll never learn, she changes - grows.

The story itself is simple. There is no traditional plot. No, it's all about Natalie and her progression, regression and subsequent redemption. And it's satisfying all the same.

Grade: A-