Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. You know the rules: grab your current read, open to a random page and share a two sentence teaser with us (no spoilers!). Be sure to tell us about the book, so we can add it to our TBR list!

This week, my Teaser is from This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking by edited by John Brockman. It’s a collection of essays answering the question, “What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?”

This teaser comes from an essay called “The Snuggle for Existence” by Roger Highfield, Editor of New Scientist magazine. It’s about the importance of cooperation as a strategy for success:

“Many problems that challenge us today can be traced back to a profound tension between what is good an desirable for society as a whole and what is good and desirable for an individual. That conflict can be found in global problems such as climate change, pollution, resource depletion, poverty, hunger, and overpopulation.”

While I was home last week, I got 3 new books! Some great reading coming up, so be sure you check back for the reviews!

First, The Inquisitor’s Key: A Body Farm Novel by Jefferson Bass:

Miranda Lovelady, Dr. Bill Brockton’s protÉgÉ, is spending the summer helping excavate a newly discovered chamber beneath the spectacular Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France. There she discovers a stone chest inscribed with a stunning claim: inside lie the bones of none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Faced with a case of unimaginable proportions, Miranda summons Brockton for help proving or refuting the claim. Both scientists are skeptical—after all, fake relics abounded during the Middle Ages—but evidence for authenticity looks strong initially, and soon grows stronger.

Brockton and Miranda link the bones to the haunting image on the Shroud of Turin, revered by millions as the burial cloth of Christ, and then a laboratory test finds the bones to be two thousand years old. The finding triggers a deadly tug-of-war between the anthropologists, the Vatican, and a deadly zealot who hopes to use the bones to bring about the Second Coming—and trigger the end of time.

I also have The Bone Yard, another Body Farm novel, on the shelf. I think I may have to schedule a Body Farm Weekend coming up!

Next, I got a little something that was pitched to me by email and looks really interesting, Something Red by Douglas Nicholas:

During the 1200s in northwest England, in one of the coldest winters in living memory, a formidable middle-aged Irishwoman and the troupe she leads are trying to drive their three wagons across the mountains before the heavy snows set in. Molly, her powerful and enigmatic lover, her fey granddaughter, and her young apprentice, soon discover that something terrible prowls the woods. As the group travels from refuge to refuge, it becomes apparent that the mysterious evil force must be faced and defeated—or else they will surely die.

An intoxicating and spirited blend of fantasy, mythology, and history, Something Red features the most fascinating of characters including shapeshifters, Irish battle queens, Norman knights, Templars, pilgrims, Saracens, a Lithuanian noblewoman, warrior monks, strong—even dangerous—women, and ten murderous mastiffs, as well as an epic snowstorm.

Last, I am always excited when a Harper Collins package shows up — it is always something good! This week, it’s The Unseen by Katherine Webb:

England, 1911. When a free-spirited young woman arrives in a sleepy Berkshire village to work as a maid in the household of The Reverend and Mrs Canning, she sets in motion a chain of events which changes all their lives. For Cat has a past – a past her new mistress is willing to overlook, but will never understand …This is not all Hester Canning has to cope with. When her husband invites a young man into their home, he brings with him a dangerous obsession…During the long, oppressive summer, the rectory becomes charged with ambition, love and jealousy – with the most devastating consequences.

 

How about you — anything new on your bookshelf?

This week, I am coming to you from Sheffield, England. I have been looking forward to meeting all of the folks at our facility there. It’s also my first trip to England, and I hope to get a little sightseeing done while I’m there.

Monday: Let me tell you about what came in my mailbox!

Tuesday: I’m sure I’ll have a teaser, I’m just not sure what it will be from!

Wednesday: Wondrous Words Wednesday – I’ve got some great words lined up for you this week. Maybe a book review, if I get an opportunity.

Thursday: Check back for my review of Carry the One by Carol Anshaw. This was a heart-breaker of a book, and I look forward to sharing it with you.

Friday: I hope to be meeting in London on Friday with one of my colleagues and perhaps doing a little sightseeing while I’m there.

Saturday: This is going to be a travel day, so my travel pics might have to wait until next week.

Sunday: And on Sunday, she rested. And read.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. You know the rules: grab your current read, open to a random page and share a two sentence teaser with us (no spoilers!). Be sure to tell us about the book, so we can add it to our TBR list!

This week, I am listening to Olive Kitteridge on audiobook. That makes it a little harder to pull a quote for Teaser Tuesday, but thanks to Amazon Look Inside, I’ve got a little something.

“‘It changed me,’ she wrote, ‘as experiences do. It put all my priorities straight and I have lived every day since then with the deepest gratitude for my family. Nothing matters except family and friends,’ she wrote in her small, neat hand.”

I have a feeling this one is going to be a heartbreaker, but I am really enjoying it. What’s teasing YOU this week?

UPDATE: My World Book Night books are gone!

Originally, I was scheduled to be in our West Coast facility this week. A lot of my co-workers there are not big readers and they are not native English speakers, so I figured that they probably read very different books in school and this would be a great chance to give them a book I loved. Instead, I was here in Kent, Ohio without much of a plan. So on a very windy Monday, I headed out to hand out books to random strangers. There are a bunch of folks in Kent who got a tattoo and a free book today!

What a blast! I just headed up and down Main Street and Acorn Alley and stopped in interesting places and gave out books. My first stop was Kent Family & Community Services — I had a donation for them anyway, and I gave books to the receptionist and a couple of people in the waiting room.

I stopped one fellow on the street who was walking along, staring in the window of the used bookstore.

And I want to give a shout out to the other local businesses who were kind enough to let me hand out books:

Smokin’ Joe’s Tattoos

Tree City Coffee & Pastry

Defiance Tattoos

Empire Artisan Chocolates where I treated myself to a few dark chocolate absinthe truffles for all my hard work!

I definitely want to do this again next year. It was great fun and a chance to give a bunch of people a book that I loved!

Finally! I’ve got my books and my button and this afternoon I am headed downtown, to walk around and hand out my copies of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Pray for a little good weather for me, since I want to find some people on the street during the lunch hour.

The hardest thing for me has been coming up with a plan for giving out the books. My travel plans changed radically, and I have been so swamped and far away from home, that I didn’t have a chance to find someplace locally that really inspired me. So, my plan is to just hit the streets. I have a donation to take down to Kent Social Services, and I hope to hand out a couple of books there. I need to take a bag of stuff to Goodwill, and I am hoping to do the same there. I also want to walk down the newly renovated Acorn Alley, see if anyone is hanging around in the coffee shops and stores, stop at the two tattoo parlors on the main drag, see if anyone is interested in a terrific book.  Any leftovers, I plan to take to work with me on Wednesday — there are a lot of folks there who might be interested. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home with Books. To participate, post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

Last week, I had a horrible flight home from California. I left Orange County at 9:30 pm and landed in Atlanta at 4:30 am with a 3 hour layover. I normally love a red-eye, because I sleep really well on planes, but this was just nuts.

The trains were down for maintenance, so I had to hoof it from Terminal T to Terminal C. The underground tunnels are kind of spooky, that late at night. I’m not sure whether it’s because there are so few people there, or because anyone is there at all! But they had a lovely sculpture display by African artists, and I had the chance to take a few pictures:

It’s Friday, so I’m taking it easy and letting someone else do the writing! I’ve got a great guest post for you today from Brian Holers, author of Doxology. When I read the synopsis, I was struck by how important the location seemed to the story. You know how sometimes the setting seems to be as much a part of the story as the characters, and I wondered, just how important is the setting? Can you move a story around and have it be the same story?

Can this story be relocated?

How important is setting to story? Can the same tale be told as well in one place as in another? Can human conflicts and struggles transfer readily from an Indonesian village to the heart of New York City? The answer depends on what the reader is looking for.

A story presented in fictional form can thrive in a multitude of settings. If one were to gather all the stories read and heard and repeated over a lifetime, and reduce them to essentials, there would only be a few.  Themes of love, loss, birth, death and revenge abound. In this way, fiction presents nearly infinite options for telling a story as there are no facts to consider, while opportunities to expand detail or backstory are everywhere. When we read books and see movies and shows, we experience the same few stories, told in different costumes and different eras with different characters exploring different parts of their experience, over and over again.  The particular time, location and setting detail in which a story is told provide anchors, hold it in place in the real world, allow the reader to relate to it. These facets draw the reader in, either with familiarity or by contrast with the reader’s own experience.

Every detail in a book affects all its other details, as well as its transportability. For instance, a story told indoors is more easily transplanted into another location. As more of the events in a book take place outside, location becomes more important. Two characters working things out over drinks in a hotel bar can take place in New York as easily as New Orleans; when they step into the air, everything changes.

We are often advised to write what we know. My novel, Doxology, follows two stories; Vernon Davidson comes to terms with loss while his nephew Jody goes on a journey of discovery. As a writer, and a storyteller, I am most familiar and most at home with Southern, charismatic people who speak in laden expressions and who are steeped, whether they like it or not, in the Gospel and in Christian experience. Doxology tells of drives in the country, fishing in ponds, characters pulling trucks to the side of the road to take little walks in the woods. The telling of this story requires it be set in a rural area, and the colorful language anchors it in the rural South.

A novel is all details. A generic story of acceptance and rediscovery and salvation can be  fleshed out and fitted to work in any of a number of locations. But the particular setting, and the characters and details that are part of that setting, must be genuine enough and work together well enough to draw us into the story, and give us a reason to care. Doxology, like many good stories, could be transplanted to a different time and a different place, with different characters.  But they would have to be taken apart, undressed and reconfigured in the new setting. And then we would have a completely different story.

More on Brian Holers…

Blog: http://brianholers.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brianholerswriter

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/BrianHolers

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5270173.Brian_Holers

Carry the One has a dramatic beginning: it’s the evening of Carmen and Matt’s wedding and they are surrounded by their family and friends. It’s a non-traditional, very Bohemian wedding at a farmhouse owned by Alice, Carmen’s sister, and Jean, both artists. In the wee hours of the morning, several party guests — drunk, stoned and sleepy — are making their way home when there is a tragic accident. A young girl is killed on a dark country road. One guest will take the blame, but they will all carry the guilt.

For the rest of their lives, the accident will play in the background — their relationships, their careers, their friendships are all tested and changed. Their lives are already intertwined: Carmen’s sister, Alice, and her brother, Nick, were in the car when the accident happened. Nick’s girlfriend, Olivia, was driving. Alice’s new lover, Maude (sister to Matt, the groom) was in the car, as was Tom, Jean’s married lover. (If you’re confused, don’t feel bad. It took me a while to sort them out in my head.) Even Carmen and Matt, who weren’t in the car, carry the guilt of letting them all drive off, knowing they weren’t sober enough to be behind the wheel. That little girl becomes a constant presence in their lives. As one character says, “When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.”

I think the most tragic story belongs to Nick. He was a wild kid with an equally wild girlfriend, but that all ended the night of the wedding. After that, it was just a slow spiral — although he still has flashes of brilliance and you always believe he can pull himself out. Alice’s life is a perfect example of  ”be careful what you wish for.” Carmen tries so hard, but she just doesn’t get it when it comes to relationships. I found myself wanting to sit her down for a stiff drink and some straight girlfriend talk. But that’s life, isn’t it? Things never seem to turn out the way you planned. It’s all ups and downs with long stretches in between and nobody ever really lives happily ever after. I was proud of Olivia; she had the hardest road of all, I think, but the peace she found came at a great price.

I really loved this book. I got caught up in these stories so easily and I was surprised by how invested I felt in their stories. Even when I wanted to smack them in the head or shake some sense into them, I wanted things to turn out well. It’s really a sign of great writing, I think, when you feel all wrapped up in the story. At the same time, I found myself afraid to turn the pages, because you just knew that some stories would end in tears — and they did, quite literally, for me.

My copy of Carry the One was a review copy, provided free of charge.

 Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is intriguing as soon as you look at the cover — it took a second or two for me to realize the little girl on the cover (her name is Olive, by the way) is floating. Floating. And such an odd expression on her face! She made me want to open the book and turn the pages.

This is the story of Jacob Portman, an unremarkable young man with a very remarkable grandfather. All through his childhood, Grandpa Portman told wonderful stories of his own boyhood — in particular, of his time on a magical island full of the most unusual children. There was a girl who could fly. There was a young boy who could lift boulders over his head and all sorts of children with peculiar skills and talents. The island itself was like a paradise, always sunny, always beautiful, and the children played and lived happily ever after.

Of course, eventually Jacob began to grow up and he began to recognize his grandfather’s stories as fantasies. His father is able to fill in some of the blanks about Grandpa Portman’s tragic young life — the loss of his parents, his time in an orphanage — turned into the fantastic stories he shared with Jacob.

But what if those stories were all real?

The story is a little predictable, but the strange and spooky photos give it a marvelous twist. Jacob grows up and learns a lot about himself and his family. Some of the things he learns are not pretty, and he doesn’t always do the best job coping with them, but you really root for him to get his act together.

What I loved the most about this book is that the photos are real. From the author’s notes:

“The pictures in this book are authentic, vintage found photographs, and with the exception of a few that have undergone minimal postprocessing, they are unaltered. They were lent from the personal archives of ten collectors, people who have spent years and countless hours hunting through giant bins of unsorted snapshots at flea markets and antiques malls and yard sales to find a transcendant few, rescuing images of historical significance and arresting beauty from obscurity…”

Real pictures of floating girls and invisible boys! What is more cool than that? I can understand why these eerie photos inspired a novel — they could inspire several different types of novels, in my opinion. With no history behind them, the stories you could invent for these spooky images are endless.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is a quick read — it’s meant for young adults, which isn’t my usual genre, but I definitely enjoyed it (even when the story got a little predictable). I picked this copy up for my personal library and I am definitely going to enjoy sharing it with others.