Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
This week I have picked up The Ninth Wife by Amy Stolls.
I'm not sure where I heard about this book, but I've been waiting awhile to read it. The blurb on the back says that 35-year-old Bess meets a charming Irishman and learns that he has been married 8 times before. She decides to travel across the country and meet this Irishman's previous wives before she is willing to become wife number nine.Here's the first paragraph:
"Pick a partner," says Bess's karate teacher, "and get a tombstone." As Bess learned nine months ago when she began her schooling in Tae Kwon Do, a tombstone is a black rectangular punching bag that you hold against your torso as a target for someone to kick you repeatedly in the stomach. Or, ideally, your solar plexus, your myung chi, the soft spot at the top of the rib cage that if kicked directly with a powerful eap chagi, say, by a one-hundred-ninety-pound software engineer from Bethesda, can knock the breath out of you and send you flying across the room into a pile of smelly sparring gear. Tombstones, Bess has come to realize, are a good thing. Tombstones can save lives.
The first paragraph without the blurb probably wouldn't grab me, but I'll keep reading to see if it pans out.
What about you? Would you keep reading?
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