This post is a part of the Book Beginings and Friday 56 blog memes. And I always add a little extra, a quote from page 100. Visit more of my All About Books posts.
Fiction
Book Beginnings - In 1945 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals. We were living on a street in London called Ruvigny Gardens, and one morning either our mother or our father suggested that after breakfast the family have a talk, and they told us that they would be leaving us and going to Singapore for a year.
Friday 56 - Around us were untranslatable sounds, something in flight, a series of footfalls. I could hear Rachel’s breath but there was no sound from Olive Lawrence. Then in the dark she began to talk, to distinguish the barely heard noises for us.
100 - Every ten seconds, as we passed each floor, I could see them watching me. One was the man who had followed Agnes and me onto the bus weeks earlier. He swung his stick, shattering the bulb while the other pulled the emergency lever. An alarm went off. The brakes jammed. Suddenly we were hanging in midair, bouncing on the balls of our feet, trying to keep our balance within that dark hanging cage.
Nonfiction
Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)
Book Beginnings - I am ten years old and I know every crack, bone and crevice in the crumbling sidewalk running up and down Randolph Street, my street. Here, on passing afternoons I am Hannibal crossing the Alps, GIs locked in viscious mountain combat and countless cowboy heroes traversing rocky trails of the Sierra Nevada.
Friday 56 - I had a ridiculous assortment of gyrations copped and exaggerated from dances of the day. The Monkey, the Twist, the Swim, the Jerk, the Pony, the Mashed Potato--I mixed them all upinto a stew of my own that occasionally got me on the floor with some of thefinest women in town. This shocked my classmates, who'd only known me as the poor soul at the rear corner desk in class.
100 - Now a full-time musician, I went about my business, playing gigs and bringing home what money I could. One fall morning, I popped the medal lid of our mailbox and saw a letter addressed to me. I opened it. It read, "Congratulations, you have been chosen to serve your country in the United States Armed Forces." Please report for your physical on such-and-such a dateto the draft board in Asbury Park. Here it was--the reckoning. I felt cold in my stomach. Not shocked, bu momentarily gut-punched by the readl world hitting hard.
