Book Beginning and Flashbacks

This is the first time I've ever participated in "Book Beginnings on Friday" hosted by Becky at Page Turners.

 I'm excited because I've never thought about how a "first line" can really pull you into a book. That is not always the case, as some books with not so great first lines (or first chapters) can be really great books, but if you have a line that hooks you at first...well, what a great bonus. It's fun to check them all out.



Anyone can play participate, just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading. If you like, share with everyone why do you, or do not, like the sentence.

"I clasp the flask between my hands, even tho the warmth from the tea has long since leached into the frozen air."

Catching Fire, the second book of the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

In my humble opinion....it's not as catchy as it could be, but the book is GREAT. It's the second book in the series, so it's almost like the beginning of a new paragraph, because you already know the back-story, so maybe sequels are the best example of how great an opening line can be.

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Flashback Friday hosted by Lovely Little Shelf

Flashback Friday is a chance to showcase books that you loved as a kid or teenager.

Every Friday we’ll post about the books that we loved. Do this however you want. You can outline the plot as you remember it, tell why you remember this particular book, talk about how it is still affecting you, whatever you want. This part is totally up to you.


The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant and illustrated by Stephen Gammell, is my "flashback" of the week. The book tells of an old-fashioned family reunion where relatives came from far across the mountains. They pile into and around the house with love and exuberance. Gammell's illustrations are so full of humor and distinctive characters that it's hard to get around to reading the delightful text.


Why did I choose it? Because of all my little grandchildren. There is one line in there, that goes something like this: when all the relatives came there was hugging and kissing all around (or something like that) and I just can see all my grandchildren either getting excited, confused, obliging, or suspicious (depending on their age ) of all the hugging and kissing,  when we see them. We have 9 grandchildren ranging in age from 10months to 13 years.

I just think it's funny... I love this book. I loved it when I was an elementary school library"aide". Who knew that once I had grandchildren of my own that I would "flashback" to it. I remind myself of this book...kind of. With all the excitement of seeing those children whom I love more than anything in the world. There is just something so comforting about knowing that all your weird relatives love you and are there for you, time after time after time. What a great thing to learn thru a book, while you sit on your grandma's lap.


I just ordered the book, to have at my house so we can all read it together.
The Relatives Came is a Caldecott Honor Book, an ALA Notable Children's Book and on Booklist Best of 80's list. I think all things considered, a person should have this book in their library.


Tomorrow I will have a food post. FOOD, FOOD, FOOD. I have a couple good things in mind.

Bourbon Kissed Baked Beans and Flashback Friday

It was one of our first warm spring evenings! Yay! It snowed last week, and this week it is practically summer.



I wanted to take it easy so the Handyman grilled up some Italian sausages and I made a potato salad and some baked beans.
I found this recipe for baked beans with "a kiss of bourbon" on this website "amazingribs.com" and thought I would give it a try. I adapted it quite a bit...actually I just added bourbon/whiskey to my own recipe.
It was really easy and it was really good. I thought it funny that the author put in a side note to Texans, an alert to them, if you will.


He said if you are from Texas you might not like these beans because they are sweet. That's the way the rest of the nation likes it's beans. Sorry.
(kind of like cornbread....the rest of the nation likes it a bit sweet)




We also had a funny moment in front of our liquor cabinet (pantry--like we would have a liquor cabient!)...the recipe calls for 1/4 cup Kentucky Bourbon or Tennessee Whiskey.
We had Kentucky Whiskey, so the Handyman didn't want me to use it.
We did and he loved these!


I made them in the oven, but you could slow cook them on top of your grill or smoker, or even on top of the stove, if you'd like.




Bourbon Kissed Barbecue Baked Beans


1/2 pound bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled
1/2 onion, chopped fine.
1/2 green pepper, chopped fine
3 cans (15oz) of your favorite beans --you can mix and match. I use kidney beans and pinto beans.
1/4 cup of your favorite bbq sauce
3 T. Molasses
1/4 cup brown sugar
4 T. Kentucky Bourbon or Tennessee Whiskey


Mix everything together and put in a Dutch oven or bean pot and bake in a hot oven 375 degrees, uncovered for 1 hour.


The Handyman, loved, Loved, LOVED the beans this way...with the addition of the bourbon.
The taste was very subtle.


*for the amazingribs.com recipe, they had raisins and jalapeño as well as some other seasonings such as mustard and a bay leaf. I did not use any of these. Mine was pretty basic.


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FLASHBACK FRIDAY



It is late Friday evening... and while the Handyman is watching a movie, I thought I'd take a few minutes to post about Flashback Friday, a meme hosted at Lovely Little Shelf.


Jacki says:
Every Friday we’ll post about the books that we loved. Do this however you want. You can outline the plot as you remember it, tell why you remember this particular book, talk about how it is still affecting you, whatever you want. This part is totally up to you. Feel free to nab the little guy up top and put him at the top of your blog post.
Come over to Lovely Little Shelf and comment (with a link to your blog) on my Flashback Friday post. Explore each other’s childhood book loves.
Don’t feel like you have to participate every week, although that would be fun! Anyone is welcome to join at any time.

I have a book shelf in my spare bedroom, that is full of children's books and while I was straightening it this morning I came across "Meet the Austins" by Madeleine L'Engle. The same L'Engle who wrote "A Wrinkle in Time."


I love Madeleine L'Engle. I loved A Wrinkle in Time, but I think that Meet the Austin's is my favorite L'Engle book of all time.


The Austins were the family I wanted to have...before I had a family.
They listened to Brahm's Second Piano Concerto, and made standing rib roasts and used phrases like "we all love him tremendously." They were noisy and chaotic and had a Great Dane named Mr. Rochester.


It was the kind of book that gave you a warm feeling inside. The Austins were a family with 4 children, whose lives are interrupted when their parents bring home an orphaned girl to stay with them for awhile. She makes life rather difficult for them, but as the story develops all five children grow and flourish in their relationships with each other. It's funny at times and sad at times, but basically just the story of a loving and likeable family.


I enjoyed the Austins in a number of  other books too, they have been characters who have stayed with me since my own childhood.
They feel like old friends.


These books by L'Engle all feature the Austin family:


Meet the Austins, 1960
The Moon By Night, 1963
The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas, 1964
The Young Unicorns, 1968
A Ring of Endless Light, 1980
The Anti-Muffins, 1980
Troubling a Star, 1994
Miracle on 10th Street, 1998
A Full House, 1999


Madeleine L'Engle writes both children's books and adult novels. One unique thing and what I especially love about L'Engle books, is that they are all connected. One of the recurring themes in L'Engle's fiction is the interconnectedness of all things. The books themselves reflect this idea; nearly all her fiction books can be linked.

I love the "Cross and Connect" theme. If you want to see how her characters are linked together  (and more) check out this site.
It says:
L'Engle's best-known works are divided between the "Chronos" and "Kairos" frameworks. The former is the framework in which the stories of the Austin family take place, and is presented in a primarily realistic setting, though occasionally with elements that might be regarded as science fiction. The latter is the framework in which the stories of the Murry and O'Keefe families take place, and is presented sometimes in a realistic setting and sometimes in a more fantastic or magical milieu.


Most of L'Engle's novels from A Wrinkle in Time onward are centered on a cast of recurring characters, who sometimes reappear decades older than when they were first introduced. The "Kairos" books are about the Murry and O'Keefe families, with Meg Murry and Calvin O'Keefe marrying and producing the next generation's protagonist, Polly O'Keefe. L'Engle wrote about both generations concurrently, with Polly (originally called Poly) first appearing in 1965, well before the second book about her parents as teenagers (A Wind in the Door, 1973). The "Chronos" books center on Vicky Austin and her siblings. Although Vicky's appearances all occur during her childhood and teenage years, her sister Suzy also appears as an adult in A Severed Wasp, with a husband and teenage children. In addition, two of L'Engle's early protagonists, Katherine Forrester and Camilla Dickinson, reappear as elderly women in later novels. Rounding out the cast are several characters "who cross and connect", Canon Tallis, Adam Eddington and Zachary Gray, who each appear in both the Kairos and Chronos books.

What's Outside My Kitchen Window, Cookbook Countdown and Flashback Friday

If you want to know more of what's outside my kitchen window, head over here to my Big Backyard Blog.



For now.... It's the Handyman enjoying the warm spring sun on Sunday.

Last night I finally settled on Linguine and red clam sauce.
(I knew you were all waiting on pins and needles to see what I had made)
 
I found a post I did about it in 2008... but no pics. Hey I was new to this.

Go here to see.

then, I found my very first food post ever
I had been doing just a personal blog before this....so I had NO IDEA what I was doing the day I decided to do a food post. LOL



BUT, this clam sauce is the easiest---semi homemade--and tastes great!


And....yep, I'm using this for my cookbook countdown. I use this cookbook all the time, Pasta with a Flair, by Katherine DeDomenico Reichert.

Reichert is the daughter of of the founder of the Golden Grain Company, which is well known for it's pasta, Rice-a-Roni and Noodle-Roni products. I love this little cookbook. I use it all the time. It has the best and easist pasta recipes I've ever made.

Everyone loves this red sauce...it's a bit different, as one usually sees clams in a white sauce.


For the recipe go here.
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I just found out about Flasback Fridays   from my daughter-in-law over at "So Many Books"    And even tho it is Saturday, I'm going to participate. I'll pretend I wrote this at 11:50pm last night.
Flashback Friday is a chance to showcase books that you loved as a kid or teenager.
 
   

Every Friday we’ll post about the books that we loved. Do this however you want. You can outline the plot as you remember it, tell why you remember this particular book, talk about how it is still affecting you, whatever you want. This part is totally up to you. Feel free to nab the little guy up top and put him at the top of your blog post.
Come over to Lovely Little Shelf and comment (with a link to your blog) on my Flashback Friday post. Explore each other’s childhood book loves.
Don’t feel like you have to participate every week, although that would be fun! Anyone is welcome to join at any time.

Seventeenth Summer.
I read it in the 8th grade.
It was old even then. (it was written in 1940).
I picked it up at a book fair in the Jr. High Library, where my friend Kathy and I meandered for what seemed like hours, to get the most books for our money. We would make sure that we picked up books we could share with each other, so in a sense we had doubled our buying power. I should have known back then in 1972, when I picked up Seventeenth Summer, that my life was sealed forever....



"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes" - Erasmus


.....Book Fairs, book sales, used book stores...have always been my downfall. Always. But at this particular book sale, I happened to grab Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly.


It holds a special place in my heart. I will admit, it's not great literature. In fact, when I was reading some reviews on Goodreads, most were written by young women who had read it recently and they just didn't "get it."


They didn't GET the love story of Angie Morrow and Jack Duluth!? They didn't love their summer of "cokes with the crowd," "rides in Jack's car," "movies?"


They didn't get young love from 75 years ago?!! Sheesh!
Seventeenth Summer is considered the first ever Young Adult novel, the first ever to anticipate an audience of between 12-18 (professor Amy Pattee)


It's not great literature, as I said, but it's a sweet and simple summer love story between two teenagers, in a more simple time, so you're not burdened with all the social issues that teenagers have to deal with today. I know it's not realistic, but I think it's okay to just have an escape book for young girls.


In the book, Angie didn't kiss Jack until the 3rd date! And then she was embarrassed that we, the readers might think badly of her. We might think she was "fast".


Maybe it's not the love story or the characters that have stuck with me all these years, but the descriptive writing.


"It was just after nine o'clock and I was in the garden picking small round radishes and new green onions for dinner at noon. I remember it was a warm day with a blue and white sky. The garden was still wet with last night's rain and the black earth was steaming in the sun, while between my toes the ground felt soft and squishy--I had taken off my shoes and left them on the garden path so they wouldn't get caked with mud--and I remember thinking how much fun it would be to go barefoot all the time. The little tomato plants were laid flat against the ground from last night's downfall and there were puddles like blue glass in the hollows. A breeze, soft with a damp fishy smell blew in from Lake Winnebago about three blocks away..."


The way Daly described  everything in the book, made me fall in love with it. The writing really did take me there, to the sweltering heat of lazy summer days, small towns and summer love. I loved the garden, the family dinner table, the lake, the town...everything.


Perhaps it was just that I was beginning to notice boys around the same time, and that combined with reading a "love-story", has just stuck with me after all these years. Knowing that I might have a romance just as Angie did.


I'm not sure what I think of the newer book jacket. It changes things up to look more contemporary. And the book is not.



Here is a link to an article on the changing of book jackets Cover Girls.
The article talks about rebranding books as their latest readers come of age. Could you imagine rebranding Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice as the latest readers come of age?

It's an interesting subject.

I think books that stick with us for years, and I have many, just spoke to us in some way....a way that's hard to describe, as hard as it is to describe why you love somebody....and we each have our own favorites. Ones we might "flashback" to every so often.