Book Beginnings and Friday 56 – The Martian Chronicles (April 20)

I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that quite a few bloggers combine these two memes or use the same book for bothe of them, so I’m going to try that this week. I’m new to Book Beginnings, but I’ve been offering a 56 most Fridays for a few months now.

My choice of book this week is The Martian Chronciles by Ray Bradbury. It is on one of my reading challenges for this year, but I would probably have got around to reading it some time as I really enjoy reading Ray Bradbury’s stuff. I guess it could almost be called a classic now, having first surfaced in the 1940’s. I don’t know that much about it other than what many people have written about it over the years. I’m away this weekend watching our daughter swim in a competition and the edition I have will fit nicely in my pocket for reading between races.

The jacket of the edition I have says the following: “Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Martian Chronicles’ is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time’s passage. In connected, chronological stories, a true grandmaster once again enthralls, delights, and challenges us with his vision and his heart – starkly and stunningly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, our weakness, our folly, and our pignant humanity on a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.’

So, onto the excerpts!

Book Beginnings is hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader, who invites anyone to join in, saying: ‘Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.  Please remember to include the title of the book and the author. Leave a link to your post.  If you don’t have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.’

My first Book Beginning, from the previously mentioned The Martian Chronicles is:

One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.

And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open.

The Friday 56 is a book meme hosted by Freda’s Voice and the rules are as follows:

*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post below in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url.

It’s that simple.

Here’s mine, from The Martian Chronicles:

“Oh yes.” Lustig nodded. “They’ve been dead thirty years.”

“And you sit there calmly!” shouted the captain.

That’s it for this week and I look forward to combining these two memes from now on.