B@TD 1/17 « Behind the Willows

And the winner is…

I won a Book at the Door with Behind the Willows

Charlene! (Who, by the by, can be found on her blog The Illusion of Controlled Chaos).

Charlene will get a package in the mail with this month’s book, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, as well as a fine, printed copy of this month’s first line artwork created by Sarah (@thinkbigmuch on Twitter).

img_4707-2 Now is where I get to tell you that Rebecca is one of my all time favorite books. If the first line of the first chapter doesn’t draw you in perhaps the next chapters’ will…

Chapter 2: “We can never go back again, that much is certain.”

Chapter 3: “I wonder what my life would be today, if Mrs. Van Hopper had not been a snob.”

Chapter 5: “I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love.”

Chapter 7: “We came to Manderley in early May, arriving, so Maxim said, with the first swallows and the bluebells.”

Would I recommend it? Yes! I have read it many time since I first read it and I still love it. Though it should be noted that I can’t get John to try it, he says it’s “a girl book” I’m not convinced, what do you think?

Book at the Door winner was chosen using a random number generator from http://www.random.org

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!

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! Book at the Door