I’ve been meaning to participate in a Top Ten Tuesday for a while now and just never seem to get organized enough to do one of these but this week I’m prepared! So Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week a new topic is listed and for this week it’s Ten Favorite Beginnings/Endings In Books.

I decided to stick with beginnings in case someone is reading a book I mention and I’d hate to spoil the end! So here are some of my Top Ten from my keepers shelf (in no particular order):

• “I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” From Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst.
• “Once upon a time, there were five French soldiers who had gone off to war, because that’s the way of the world.” From A Very Long Engagement by Sébastien Japrisot.
• “No one who had ever seen Catherine Moreland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine.” From Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen.
• “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” From Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.
• “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” From Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier.
• “In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.” From Perfume by Patrick Süskind.
• “We came on the wind of the carnival.” From Chocolat by Joanne Harris.
• “One village post office in Austria is much like another: seen one and you’ve seen them all.” From The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig.
• “A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.” From A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
• “So that’s settled, then; we bury her alive in the iron bridle.” From Company of Liars by Karen Maitland.

Some of these are books I’ve loved since childhood, some are classics and some are fairly recent reads that were quite memorable. I had such a fun time putting this list together as I got to look through my shelves and revisit with some favorites.

How about you, I’m sure you recognize some of these lines. What are some of your favorite beginnings?

As I mentioned in my last post, we have a new Half Price Books in town and it’s close to my home so that was my big to-do for the weekend. Go check it out!

It was very bright and well-organized and I was happy to see a good mystery section. I wandered around looking through the craft books, fiction, poetry and the clearance section.

I was hoping to find a book by Banana Yoshimoto for the Japanese Reading challenge but no luck. Then I thought maybe I’ll find a mystery by Peter James and again no luck but friends, I found two really great books.

First, Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins. I’ve raved about his poetry before so I’m very happy to add this book to my collection. And, guess what? The book is even a signed copy! I promise to report back on this book after I’ve had a chance to spend some time with it.

My other find, was The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries. Danielle recently wrote about a short story from this collection and I was all excited when I saw this. Of course when I got it home and looked through the book I realized this wasn’t exactly the one she mentioned. I forgot that there are several mammoth books of Best British Mysteries. Still I love mysteries and a foreign setting so I still think this was a find. Actually, now I think it’d be pretty cool to have the whole series which I believe is up to 10 books. I guess I have more book hunting to do.

So that was my excitement for the weekend. How about you? Did you go to any bookstores? What did you get?