The Friday 56 (With Book Beginnings): Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford + 50/50 Friday

Welcome to The Friday 56, a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice.

These are the rules:

1. Grab a book, any book.

2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.
3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.
4. Post it.
5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post.

I'm also taking part in Book Beginnings, a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader.  The rules are pretty simple - you share the first sentence or so and your initial thoughts, impressions, or whatever else it inspires.  Don't forget to link up your post's url with Rose City Reader.

This week I'm spotlighting one of my next reads, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.  This novel isn't my usual pick, but a friend of mine let me borrow this one the other day - it's one of her favorites and she wanted me to give it a try.  I have to admit that the summary and these snippets sound quite enticing.

Beginning:

Old Henry Lee stood transfixed by all the commotion at the Panama Hotel.  What had started as a crowd of curious onlookers eyeballing a television news crew had now swollen into a polite mob of shoppers, tourists, and a few punk-looking street kids, all wondering what the heck was going on.

56:

"How long are you playing here?" Henry asked.

"Just through the weekend, then Oscar said we'd talk."

"Knock 'em dead," Henry said as he and Keiko headed through the swinging kitchen door.

Sheldon smiled and held up his sax.  "Thank you, sir, you have a fine day now."

This week I'm also taking part in a linkup called 50/50 Friday, which is hosted by Carrie @ The Butterfly Reader and Laura @ Blue Eye Books.  Every week they'll have a new topic featuring two sides of the same coin - this week the topic is Character You'd Want/ Not Want To Meet.

Want To Meet: Such a hard decision!  There are so many...

Isaac Vainio from Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines - He's a professional librarian from the UP of Michigan who can magically pull items from books into the real world.  How cool is that?!

Not Want To Meet:

Jack Torrance from The Shining by Stephen King - I would probably just turn and run in the other direction if I ever set eyes on him.


Have you ever read any of these books?  What characters would you want to meet or not meet?  As always, thanks for visiting my blog, and perhaps even commenting below.