THURSDAY SPARKS: THEMES & BOOKING — MARCH 1

Good morning!  Welcome to another Thursday event, in which we spark some creativity and dig into the books we’re reading for our Thursday Themes, hosted by Reading Between Pages ; or explore our thoughts and feelings about bookish topics in Booking Through Thursday.

Our themes give us a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand different writing styles and descriptive approaches adopted by authors.

Today’s Theme:

March is going to be all about making life easy. This month we will do ‘Pick what you see first‘ themes. So open the book you are reading, continue reading; pick the first mention of any name in it and post the snippet. The only condition is ‘No Ebooks’.. lets go traditional. Easy-peasy!!

NAME – The first name you come across while reading

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I grabbed a book from next week’s list.  Gossip, is an ARC from Beth Gutcheon, one of my favorite authors.

Loviah “Lovie” French owns a small, high-end dress shop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Renowned for her taste and discretion, Lovie is the one to whom certain women turn when they need “just the thing” for major life events—baptisms and balls, weddings and funerals—or when they just want to dish in the dressing room. Among the people who depend on Lovie’s confidence are her two best friends since boarding school: Dinah Wainwright and Avis Metcalf.

Outspoken and brimming with confidence, Dinah made a name for herself as a columnist covering the doings of New York’s wealthiest and most fabulous. Shy, proper Avis, in many ways Dinah’s opposite, rose to prominence in the art world with her quiet manners, hard work, and precise judgment. Despite the deep affection they both feel for Lovie, they have been more or less allergic to each other since a minor incident decades earlier that has been remembered and resented with what will prove to be unimaginable consequences.

These uneasy acquaintances become unwillingly bound to each other when Dinah’s favorite son and Avis’s only daughter fall in love and marry. On the surface, Nick and Grace are the perfect match—a playful, romantic, buoyant, and beautiful pair. But their commitment will be strained by time and change: career setbacks, reckless choices, the birth of a child, jealousies, and rumor. At the center of their orbit is Lovie, who knows everyone’s secrets and manages them as wisely as she can. Which is not wisely enough, as things turn out—a fact that will have a shattering effect on all their lives….

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Snippet:  “You were asking about Dinah Wainwright,” I said to Judy Mellincroft, once we got her bodice basted.  Mrs. Oba was on the floor with her mouth full of pins, taking up the hem of a sleek wine-colored evening sheath.

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Booking Through Thursday:

Our leader asked participants about questions they would like to see asked.  Today’s is from Ted:

Have you ever fallen in love with a fictional character? Who and what about them did you love?

When I was very young, I read Gone with the Wind around three times.  Almost as if I could make things turn out differently.  Like when you watch a movie over and over, hoping that maybe the characters will take a different turn.

Well, I kept hoping Scarlett would come to her senses and realize how fabulous Rhett Butler was…but she didn’t.  Not until it was too late.

I couldn’t imagine falling in love with Scarlett’s obsession.  Ashley Wilkes was a milquetoast, IMO.   But Rhett, with his dark good looks and swashbuckling ways was brave, kind of bad, and strode right into every situation as if he had total control of everything.

Perhaps his finest moment was when he finally gave up on the silly Scarlett:  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

I wonder if I’ll love him just as much when I reread the book?  I ordered it recently just so I could see if my younger self had any taste at all….

In current times, I have “fallen in love” with characters like Ranger, in the Stephanie Plum books.  It’s easy to put a face to the name when you see the movie, which I recently did.  Janet Evanovich’s  One for the Money brought Ranger to life on the Big Screen.

Again, many of the same qualities as numerous heroes.  I wish I wasn’t drawn to these types.  Bad boys.

Perhaps if I had more time to think about it, I would come up with those quiet, bookish types that I also enjoy.  Right now I can’t put a name to any of them.

What about the rest of you?  Who floats your boat?