Together again

I knew that it had been a good while since I'd been able to participate in a read-a-thon, but I had no idea that "good while" translated into five whole years. I was number 707 when I linked up yesterday and see that at least 800 readers are expected this time around. That's incredible.

My plans?

I intend to finish Penelope Fitzgerald's At Freddie's, currently in progress on my ipad.

First sentence: "It must have been 1963, because the musical of Dombey & Son was running at the Alexandra, and it must have been the autumn, because it was surely some time in October that a performance was seriously delayed because two of the cast had slipped and hurt themselves in B dressing-room corridor, and the reason for that was that the floor appeared to be flooded with something sticky and glutinous."

After that, my stack consists of Rufi Thorpe's The Girls from Corona del Mar, Hilary Mantel's The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, and two Caroline Gordon's, The Strange Children and The Women on the Porch.

First sentences:

"'You're going to have to break one of my toes,' I explained." (The Girls from Corona del Mar)

"In those days, the doorbell didn't ring often, and if it did I would draw back into the body of the house." (The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher)

"At three o'clock in the afternoon the house became so quiet that you imagined that you could hear the river lapping softly at the foot of the green hill." (The Strange Children)

"The sugar tree's round shadow was moving past the store." (The Women on the Porch)

I feel most in the mood for trying Caroline Gordon. She was on my read-a-thon list five years ago and I didn't pick her up then, and haven't in the meantime. This oversight must be rectified.