Teaser Tuesday (January 28)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teaser this week is from Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers which I’m reading for a bit of light relief amongst all my crime and dark reads!

It all starts when Mary Poppins is blown by the east wind onto the doorstep of the Banks house. She becomes a most unusual nanny to Jane, Michael, and the twins. Who else but Mary Poppins can slide up banisters, pull an entire armchair out of an empty carpetbag, and make a dose of medicine taste like delicious lime-juice cordial? A day with Mary Poppins is a day of magic and make-believe come to life! Goodreads

I’d forgotten quite how vain Mary Poppins was so I’m giving a couple of teasers this week to illustrate this point (or just because I want to share my joy in re-reading this book!)
Here she is off to meet Bert on her day off…
So Mary Poppins put on her white gloves and tucked her umbrella under her arm – not because it was raining but because it had such a beautiful handle that she couldn’t possibly leave it at home. How could you leave your umbrella behind if it had a parrot’s head for a handle?

And later in the book after buying sausages from the Butcher who was clearly taken by the very handsome nanny….

“There will be no next” said Mary Poppins with a haughty sniff. And she took the sausages and turned the perambulator round very quickly, and wheeled it out of the shop in such a way that the Butcher knew he had mortally offended her. But she glanced in the shop window as she went so that she could see how her new shoes looked reflected in it. They were bright brown kid with two buttons, very smart.

I hope I have brightened up your day with these teasers. What are you reading this week?

Friday Finds (January 3)

Hosted by Should be Reading

FRIDAY FINDS showcases the books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list… whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library — wherever! (they aren’t necessarily books you purchased).

So, come on — share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

On Monday I went to the cinema. Now I’m sure many of you do this quite regularly but it is a rare occasion for me, mainly because I’m not a big film lover and so I’m not good at sitting still for over 2 hours to watch one! However back in November I saw an advert for Saving Mr Banks and knew that this was one film I wanted to see! My companion of choice agreed to join me despite not knowing that Mary Poppins was a book!! I quickly filled him in that it wasn’t just one book but a whole series and the film was about the author P.L. Travers. Sadly, I live on an island with one cinema and when I checked the schedules it wasn’t showing here. Christmas preparations took over and whilst not forgotten the film was put to the back of my mind and then on Monday said companion got an email saying it was showing for that night only, oh the excitement!! So off we set in the wind and the rain, bought our drinks and popcorn and I sat down to a great film (and yes it made me cry!)

Now this is a tale of how my book collection is so large because I then wanted to re-read the original book (really I want to re-read the whole series but I do have some self-control) but decided that I wanted one with the illustrations in as I remember it from childhood. These were not books that I ever owned but I remember borrowing them from multiple libraries over the years. As the kindle version doesn’t have the illustrations Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers is winging its way to my bookshelf.

It doesn’t stop there because I now want to know more about the author so also ended up buying Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers by Valerie Lawson

In addition to this new passion for all things Mary Poppins I came across a review for The Shuttle which was written by one of my favourite authors from childhood, Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote The Secret Garden and A Little Princess which I re-read countless times. As this was free on Amazon I just had to have it!

Blurb

The Shuttle was first published exactly a hundred years ago and was begun in 1900 but frequently abandoned while its author, Frances Hodgson Burnett, wrote several other books (including, most famously, The Making of a Marchioness). It is about American heiresses marrying English aristocrats; by extension it is about the effect of
American energy, dynamism and affluence on an effete and impoverished English ruling class. Amazon

From Amazon Vine I have a copy of Mother, Mother by Koren Zailckas which is due to be published on 16 January 2014
by HarperCollins

Blurb

Meet Violet Hurst -16 years old, beautiful and brilliant. So why is she being accused of being a danger to herself and others?
Meet her brother Will Hurst – the smartest and sweetest twelve-year old boy around. But does he really need all that medication he is being told to take?
Meet oldest sister Rose – the one who got away. She disappeared one night in her final year of school, never to be heard from again.
And then meet their mother – Josephine. Perhaps it will then all start to make sense.
An electrifying debut novel about a mother’s love gone too far Amazon

And my favourite publishing house, Random House UK, have given me a copy of The Last Winter of Dani Lancing by P. D. Viner which was published in September 2013.

Blurb

Something very bad happened to Dani Lancing.
Twenty years later, her father is still trying to get her to talk.
Her best-friend has become a detective, the last hope of all the lost girls.
And her mother is about to become a killer… Netgalley

Doesn’t that sound like an amazing read? I am looking forward to getting stuck into my latest haul as well as deciding which of all the best books of 2013 lists I really want. Did I mention that my resolution for 2014 is to get a new bookshelf? (it is the only option!)

What books have you found that have made their way to your TBR’s?