I’ve got a book.
Would you like it?
That’s right, an honest to goodness hard cover book that I’m ready to put in the mail and send to your door. But, because I’m the sort of person who would never read the last chapter first (Except for recently but that was totally an accident!) and rarely read the front matter or even the back cover to decide if I’m going to read it, I’d also like to introduce you to my favorite way to pick a book. I prefer choosing a book by reading the first page or even better the first line to see what I think and avoid any and all potential spoilers.
The first line of the book I have for you goes like this:
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.”
The book I’m ready to send doesn’t look like the photo above, that picture is instead the paper crafting genius of my best friend Sarah. Normally here is where I would tell you a million places to track down the lovely person who donated their time and art to the giveaway. Sarah says she social medias only in technology school teachery sorts of ways and nobody wants to see that. I think that’s probably untrue, she does pretty neat things in her school under the guise of technology integration so I’m just going to sneak her twitter account in here (thinkbigmuch on Twitter) because someone is always interested. Then, since it is a little bit sad that the book doesn’t actually look like this when you open it, I will also send along a high quality print of this piece of art. (My apologies, we are having a little technical difficulties, the printed copy will be much better quality than the photo above- promise!)
If the first line of this book sounds promising to you, all you have to do is either tell me the title of the book (Go ahead use the google, it knows all the things!) or tell me one of your long time favorite books in the comments below. Your name will then be entered in a random drawing for the book (which happens to be one of my long time favorites) and print (which happens to be made by one of my long time favorites). Win, win people, win win!
Contest will be open through January 31st.
The winner will have the honor of receiving a quality print of Sarah’s artwork in the mail as well as the book.
Artists of all kinds (Yes, you photographers and you who says you can’t draw and you who just wants to practice hand lettering and you who is selling paintings online and…all of you!) if you are interested in providing a small piece of work that includes a first sentence, I would love to hear from you!
Authors, have I read your book and tagged it as a recommended read? Would you like to donate a hard copy? Let me know!
Behind the Willows 
I love Rebecca!
This is Kari, not sure why it’s logging in as my WordPress account from 5 years ago as a teacher assignment..
Ha! I thought that “neweglishteacher12” was a kind of funny name but I wasn’t going to say anything! And I love Rebecca too. I think I “have” to re-read it to do a review for next week… 😉
Sarah’s artwork is beautiful!
I’m not sure which book your first sentence above is from…it’s sounds interesting though!
I wanted to share that one of my favorite books is “We are thier Heaven” by Allsion DuBois. Perhaps not too many people would like it as much as I do, or may not be too interested in it…. but for whatever reason, I’ve found it’s main message very helpful after hard losses thru my life. After many rounds of chemo some years ago, I still find to this day that after reading books, the words that I’ve read somehow slip away from my brains storage after awhile, and I later read it all over again hoping that this time, more of it will obsorb for me 🙂 But for some reason, with this book, no matter how many times I read it or how many of the words disappear from me, the message always remains, and continues to bring me comfort…
I’ve really been enjoying reading your writings ❤️ I may not remember the words for too long, but I remember the feelings they bring to me at the time anyways! Above all; your honest/great sense of humor through your words stands out the most to me 🙂
Thank you Laura, both for sharing a favorite book and your kind words about my blog. 🙂 ❤
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. (Thank you Google!) The first line was really familiar to me, but it turns out that I’ve never read this book. I must have heard the first line somewhere else…
Well, it is a pretty darn good first line. I’m not sure if it’s the line or because I’ve read the book that it has always seemed a bit haunting and eerie to me.
I hadn’t realised the “again” was actually part of the famous line from Rebecca. Some of my favourite reads have been from Maeve Binchy, Nora Roberts, Jean M Auel, currently I’m enjoying books from Kirsten Weiss.
Well I like the first three authors so I guess that means I need to check out some books by Kirsten Weiss! 🙂
Rebecca!! One of my favourites too 🙂
I had to go out and find a copy to give away, I couldn’t part with the one on my shelf. 🙂
Perfect cover illustration for that book. (Sarah’s obviously read it!!)
She said it had been a long time since she read it but she must have remembered it well enough to come up with that! 🙂
I knew it was Rebecca, amazing that my brain had it in there! I loved that book and it is one of the few books that I have read more than once. Beautiful art, Sarah!
After reading the book I find it to be such an eerie line, maybe that’s why it sticks in the brain?
The book is Rebecca! I don’t think I’ve read the whole thing😮
Tragic- perhaps I can mail you a copy so you can rectify that!!!
I haven’t heard of the book before but it sounds interesting – and I love to read everything! One of my favourite books is Wuthering Heights 🙂
If you like Wuthering Heights I’ll be you’ll like this one too! 🙂
Thanks everyone who entered, winner to be announced soon!