Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

Thank you for joining me this week for Book Beginnings on Fridays where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The house lights dim. The audience quiets.

-- from the Prologue to Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood.

Hag-Seed is a novel by Margaret Atwood that retells (in prose) William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. It is part of of a series of Shakespeare retellings from Hogarth Press. "Hogarth Shakespeare" began in 2015 with Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time (The Winter’s Tale) and now includes Howard Jacobson’s Shylock Is My Name (The Merchant of Venice), Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl (The Taming of the Shrew), Tracy Chevalier's New Boy (Othello), Edward St. Aubyn's Dunbar (King Lear), and Jo Nesbo's Macbeth (Macbeth, duh).

I read Shylock is My Name and loved it. It's one of my favorite books and one I am looking forward to rereading. I also liked Vinegar Girl a lot. I picked Hag-Seed for my book club's next read. We'll see what the other ladies think. I'd like to read all of the books in this series.  

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below. If you participate or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so other people can find your post.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 asks participants to share a two-sentence teaser from their book of the week. If your book is an ebook or audiobook, pick a teaser from the 56% point. 

Anna at My Head is Full of Books hosts The Friday 56, a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please visit My Head is Full of Books to leave the link to your post. 

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Hag-Seed:

Leaving the Festival parking lot, Felix didn’t have the sensation of driving. Instead he felt he was being driven, as if blown by a high wind.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Felix is at the top of his game as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. Now he’s staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, but it will also heal emotional wounds. Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge, which, after twelve years, arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison.

Margaret Atwood’s novel take on Shakespeare’s play of enchantment, retribution, and second chances leads us on an interactive, illusion-ridden journey filled with new surprises and wonders of its own.

Graham Greene Jewel -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

Graham Greene Jewel

What a gem!

This little beauty is the jewel in the crown of my Graham Greene collection. See the little video reel I posted on Instagram walking through this adorable little book. 

A Weed Among the Flowers is an essay Greene wrote about a trip he made in 1957 to China. The essay was first published in The Times, London, in 1985. Sylvester & Orphanos, a tiny fine press in Los Angeles, worked with Greene to publish this miniature edition in 1990, with an afterword written by English poet Stephen Spender and illustrations by Vance Gerry. It is signed by Greene and Spender.

This little book is something of a publishing mystery. It is the second Greene book Sylvester & Orphanos published. In 1980, they published How Father Quixote Became a Monsignor, a limited edition novella that was a precursor to his novel 1982 novel Monsignor Quixote. That book was regular-sized and conventionally bound, not a little bon bon like this one.

When Sylvester & Orphanos produced A Weed Among the Flowers, they intended a limited run of 330 copies – 300 numbered, 26 lettered, and four with recipient names. However, it was the last book they published (there was another in production that was later published by a different art press) and rumor has it that far fewer were actually bound because of “material shortages.” That may explain why there are so few available and, like mine, copies are often missing their number (handwritten in in other copies) and do not have the decorative label on the cover of the book and spine of the box.

There is one notable errata. In the first paragraph of Greene’s essay, he refers to his monthlong visit to China in 1957, but Stephen Spender’s Afterword says the trip occurred in 1951.

The essay itself is a comic piece, focusing on Greene’s complaints about his traveling companions and over-consumption of the local liquor. It’s a charming bit of travelogue fluff.

As a historical footnote, Greene donated the manuscript of the essay to the Robert Louis Stevenson Trust to help fund a memorial to Stevenson, an author Greene admired and to whom he was distantly related on his mother’s side.

The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie

Thank you for joining me this week for Book Beginnings on Fridays where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The day Junior fell down began like any other day: the explosion of heat rippling the air, the trumpeting sunlight, the traffic's tidal surges, the prayer chant in the distance, the cheap film music rising up from the floor below, the pelvic thrusts of an "item number" dancing across a neighbor's TV; a child's cry, a mother's rebuke, unexplained laughter, scarlet expectorations, bicycles, the newly plaited hair of schoolgirls, the smell of strong coffee, a green wing flashing in a tree.

-- from the "In the south," the first of five stories in The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie.

I joined a new book club in 2026* and this is our first book. I'm halfway through and can tell we will have a LOT to discuss. 

Are you a Rushdie fan? I loved Midnight's Children but really struggled to engage with The Satanic Verses and that's as far as I got. So far, I am loving the stories in this new collection so I am happy to read it. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below. If you participate or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so other people can find your post.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 asks participants to share a two-sentence teaser from their book of the week. If your book is an ebook or audiobook, pick a teaser from the 56% point. 

Anna at My Head is Full of Books hosts The Friday 56, a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please visit My Head is Full of Books to leave the link to your post. 

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from "The Musician of Kahani," the second story, maybe even a novella, in The Eleventh Hour:

Jimmy was tall, thin, graying, a carefully spoken man, expressing himself softly (in a high tenor voice), with kindly eyes; and he ran his enormous empire without ever giving the impression of being busy, flustered, or in doubt. Dimmy was his perfect alternate self: the most glamorous grande dame in the city, extroverted, flamboyant, and given to talking nonstop in a low, cigarette-haunted voice.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to life’s final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his work—India, England, and America—and feature an unforgettable cast of characters.

“In the South” introduces a pair of quarrelsome old men—Junior and Senior—and their private tragedy at a moment of national calamity. In “The Musician of Kahani,” a musical prodigy from the Mumbai neighborhood featured in Midnight’s Children uses her magical gifts to wreak devastation on the wealthy family she marries into. In “Late,” the ghost of a Cambridge don enlists the help of a lonely student to enact revenge upon the tormentor of his lifetime. “Oklahoma” plunges a young writer into a web of deceit and lies as he tries to figure out whether his mentor killed himself or faked his own death. And “The Old Man in the Piazza” is a powerful parable for our times about freedom of speech.

* I now belong to three book clubs, which I think is insane. I've been in one for 19 years, the second for 12 years, and now this one. My problem is that I hate to miss out on book fun and I really like all the women in all three of the clubs. The original one is cool because (with a few exceptions here and there) we are friends through the book club. The second one is cool because we were a group of friends who started a book club. The third one hasn't met yet, but I think it will be a combination. Half the women are neighbors (and friends) and each of them invited a friend. Fortunately, each club meets every other month, otherwise I could not keep up! 

 

My Wrap Up Post -- 2025 EUROPEAN READING CHALLENGE

THE 2025 EUROPEAN READING CHALLENGE

My Wrap Up Post

This is my wrap up for the 2025 European Reading Challenge. To join the 2026 challenge (and I hope you do), go to the main challenge page, here.

Even though 2025 was the 13th year I hosted the challenge, I haven't been very good about my own participation. In 2024, I even forgot to do a sign up post! I resolved to do better in 2025 and I did, a bit. I read more books set in European countries and I read more books in translation, but I was still no good at reviewing the books I read. Maybe 2026 will be the year I hit my stride.

I didn't pick any particular books for the challenge. Those in the photo were possibilities, but I didn't read any of them. Here are the counties I visited in the books I did pick, in the order I visited them:

• THE UK: Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. As always, I read many, many UK books, but this reread of an old favorite was the first UK book I read in 2025.

• IRELAND: Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan. I also read quite a few books set in Ireland or by Irish authors. This was the first I read in 2025, but it wasn't my favorite. 

• BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien

• FRANCE: Maigret and the Spinster by Simenon, one of the translated books I read, by a Belgian author who wrote in French.

• RUSSIA: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, a translated classic.

• NORWAY: How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days by Kari Leibowitz

• UKRAINE: The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev, another book in translation. 

• HOLLAND: The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, also in translation. 

• AUSTRIA: The Salzberg Connection by Helen MacInnes

• CZECH REPUBLIC: The Snare of the Hunter by Helen MacInnes

• BULGARIA: A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

• GREECE: Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki, a translated NYRB Classic.

• POLAND: The Ice Saints by Frank Tuohy, 1964 winner of the James Tate Black Memorial Prize and an undercover gem. 

• GERMANY: Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, translated. 

• SWITZERLAND: Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes. Thank goodness for MacInnes -- she took me to several European countries. 

• DENMARK: The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry

• PORTUGAL: I Like it Here by Kingsley Amis

• ITALY: Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell

• FINLAND: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, author of the Moomin books, in translation. 

• BELGIUM: The British Baking Book: The History of British Baking, Savory and Sweet by Regula Ysewijn. A very British book but by a Belgian author who originally wrote the book in Dutch. 

In all, I visited 20 countries for the 2025 European Reading Challenge and read eight books in translation, both persona bests. Let's see how far I can go in 2026!

My Friends by Fredrik Backman -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

Thank you for joining me for the first Book Beginnings on Fridays of the new year! Book Beginnings is a weekly blog hopping event where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment. 

Happy 2026 and happy reading!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human. 

-- from My Friends by Fredrik Backman. 

Not to sound like the cranky old lady I don't want to become, but I disagree with the opening sentence. Actually, the first chapter put me off so much I almost gave up. But My Friends is my book club's pick for this month so I wanted to try harder. I read some reviews that assured me there would be adults, not just teenagers, so I kept reading. I'm now halfway through and like it quite a bit, although it's not my favorite.   

Have you read this one yet? Are you a Backman fan?

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below. If you participate or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so other people can find your post.

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 asks participants to share a two-sentence teaser from their book of the week. If your book is an ebook or audiobook, pick a teaser from the 56% point. 

Anna at My Head is Full of Books hosts The Friday 56, a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please visit My Head is Full of Books to leave the link to your post. 

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from My Friends:

Then they lay on the pier and drank cheap sodas and watched the sunset for free. The summer was still endless and the world-famous artist who wasn't world-famous yet slowly moved his finger across the sky in the last of the daylight, drawing skulls in the air.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.