First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #5 and Tuesday Teaser

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea.  The idea is to share the first paragraph or two of a book I am currently reading or planning to read sometime soon.

This week I'm featuring the first paragraphs of my current read, The Movement of Stars, the debut novel by Amy Brill of Brooklyn, New York.  I received an advanced reader copy from Penguin Books.

Coming from Riverhead Books

April 18, 2013

Part One

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APRIL 1845

 Nantucket

I

Crosshairs

"Hannah bent over her notebook in the half dark of the tiny room at the top of the house, squeezing the remainder of her entry onto the very last lines of the page:

      3:04 am, 12 mo. 4, 1845, she wrote.  Unable to resolve nebulosity around Antares.  Object sighted at 22 degrees north has not reappeared.  Further observations obscured by clouds.

As if to underscore her failure, the candle at her elbow sputtered and died.  For a moment, Hannah sat in the dark, fighting the urge to hurl it across the room, and closed her eyes.  Mastering her emotions had been as much a part of her education as long division and multiplication.  She hadn't thrown anything, or stomped her feet, or wept in public in over two decades.  But now, at twenty-four years of age, unmarried, she sometimes wondered if she was even capable of feeling deeply about anything besides what she saw--or didn't see--in the night sky."

What do you think?  Would you keep reading?  This novel has a strong female protagonist whose unconventional behavior and quest to discover a comet puts her at odds with her Quaker community. The story is rich in historical detail and interesting characters, and is inspired by the work of Maria Mitchell, the first American female professional astronomer.

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Also this week is Teaser Tuesdays, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading, where bloggers open to a random page of their current reads and share a teaser sentence--no spoilers allowed--from somewhere on that page.

Here's my teaser from The Movement of Stars by Amy Brill:

"Reasonable? To join myself with a man for whom I have no feeling but scholarly respect, so that I may continue a life I've happily built for myself, and in the main by myself?"   --page 66 of ARC

 

Enjoy life with books . . .

Catherine

Follow me on Twitter: @bookclubreader

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #5 and Tuesday Teaser was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without express written consent.