Book Beginnings & The Friday 56 #4

"Book Beginnings" on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader, the meme encourages 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.

"The Friday 56" is also a weekly event, hosted by Freda's Voice, where you find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it) that grab you from page 56 or 56% in your book/eReader (If you have to improvise, that's ok.)

I've really come to appreciate the beginning of books. The first line can tell you a lot - more than I ever realized - which is why this feature has quickly become my favorite. If you're anything like me you read for enjoyment, but rarely take the time to stop and analyze the structure of the books you're reading. I've taken pleasure in pausing to really appreciate the few words we highlight here each week.

The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith 

Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they're rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father.

Lucy and Owen's relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and -- finally -- a reunion in the city where they first met.
A carefully charted map of a long-distance relationship, Jennifer E. Smith's new novel shows that the center of the world isn't necessarily a place. It can be a person, too.

"On the first day of September, the world went dark."

Scared! I don't know what to think of this. Could this be some dystopian in surprise? Could the MC have gone blind? You just don't know! But what we find out is that it's a blackout and the world in question is actually NYC and the east coast. I remember when this actually happened. I was in PA for the summer and I heard about it and was so scared for my mom who was back home. This first line I think is meant to put some dose of fear or the unexpected into you.

"Lucy froze, staring at the corner, where a sliver of sky was peeking out. She knew it couldn't be from Owen - it had been a couple of months since she'd heard from him - but still, her heart was pounding like crazy. She nudged at the envelope on top of it, revealing a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, and she felt whatever had been bubbling up inside of her suddenly deflate."

Every Day by David Levithan

There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.
It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.

"I wake up. 

    Immediately I have to figure out who I am. It's not just the body-opening my eyes and discovering whether the skin on my arms is light or dark, whether my hair is long or short, whether I'm fat or thin, boy or girl, scarred or smooth. The body is the easiest thing to adjust to, if you're used to waking up in a new one each morning. It's the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp. 

   Every day I am someone else. I am myself-I know I am myself-but I am also someone else. 

   It has always been like this." 

Whoa. What would that be like? To wake up in a different boy every single day? I can't help but wonder if I would still be the same person if I were in a different skin. Obviously, the mind wouldn't change, but with different circumstances, different surroundings, surely I would  feel differently, think differently, etc.? I'm literally one paragraph into this book and already my mind's wheels are churning.

Since I am between books I couldn't decide which to use, so this week, I'm going with both. I've just finished The 100 Society, so that's my pick for my Friday 56!

The 100 Society by Carla Spadbery 

For sixth-form student Grace Becker, The 100 Society is more than just a game; it's an obsession. Having convinced her five friends at Clifton Academy to see it through to the end, Grace will stop at nothing to carry out the rules of the game: tagging 100 locations around the city. With each step closer to the 100-mark they get, the higher the stakes become. But when the group catches the attention of a menacing stalker - the Reaper - he seems intent on exposing their illegal game, tormenting Grace with anonymous threats and branding their dormitory doors with his ominous tag.
As the once tight-knit group slowly unravels, torn apart by doubt and the death of a student, they no longer know who to trust.
With time running out, Grace must unmask the Reaper before he destroys everything she cares about for ever...

 "Once, when Grace had failed miserably in a science exam, he had been the one to sweep her away from it all. She closed her eyes at the memory, almost feeling the warmth of that summer's day when he had taken her from the school grounds into the land surrounding the school. The meadows had been bursting with colour and they had walked together for what felt like hours through the fields, the air alive with dandelion seeds, before finding a patch of grass way out of Clifton's sight." 

Until Next Time,