Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

I'm still reading A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay. I took a vacation -- from everything, including reading! So my Teaser Tuesday is again from A Secret Kept.

I'm almost finished so I will give the ARC to one lucky random TT fan! Winning the giveaway is a good way for you to review the book before picking it as your choice for your reading group. A Secret Kept is a great book club pick, full of discussion points -- family, secrets, romance, hope, loss.

"I want to call Melanie about all this, and nearly do, but it is getting on for one o'clock in the morning. I lie in bed for a long time, tossing and turning, before sleep finally sinks in.

My father's cancer. My grandmother's upcoming funeral. The tall, blond American.

You better tell me how Clarisse died, right now."

-- p. 238 of ARC of A Secret Kept (September 2010) by Tatiana de Rosnay

Anyone can play Teaser Tuesday!

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
  Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too. 

What's your TT? Leave a comment and you will be entered in the A Secret Kept Advance Readers' Copy giveaway. Giveaway closes on July 29 -- open only to US addresses.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I'm so excited about this Teaser Tuesday! It is from new Tatiana de Rosnay, A Secret Kept! De Rosnay's previous novel was Sarah's Key. One of Reading Group Choices 2009 Top Ten Favorite Discussible Books. A Secret Kept is my next read.

"I am shown into a small, drab room, told to sit down and wait. Six empty brown chairs face each other on tired linoleum. In a corner, a fake green plant, shiny leaves coated with dust. I do as I am told. I sit down. My thighs tremble. My palms feel clammy, my throat parched. My head throbs. I think, I should call our father now, I should call him before it gets too late. But my hand makes no effort to grab the phone in the pocket of my jeans. Call our father and tell him what? Tell him how?" -- beginning paragraph, A Secret Kept, Tatiana de Rosnay, September 2010. 

What's your TT?

I'm looking forward to The Wave by Susan Casey (September 2010). The ocean is such a incredible part of nature and can be utterly destructive. 

Scoop from publisher.

From Susan Casey, bestselling author of The Devil’s Teeth, an astonishing book about colossal,  ship-swallowing rogue waves and the surfers who seek them out.

For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves, 100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dis­missed these stories—waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary was brewing in the planet’s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea—including several that approached 100 feet.

As scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge. These are extreme surfers who fly around the world trying to ride the ocean’s most destructive monsters. The pioneer of extreme surfing is the legendary Laird Hamilton, who, with a group of friends in Hawaii, figured out how to board suicidally large waves of 70 and 80 feet. Casey follows this unique tribe of peo­ple as they seek to conquer the holy grail of their sport, a 100­ foot wave.

In this mesmerizing account, the exploits of Hamilton and his fellow surfers are juxtaposed against scientists’ urgent efforts to understand the destructive powers of waves—from the tsunami that wiped out 250,000 people in the Pacific in 2004 to the 1,740-foot-wave that recently leveled part of the Alaskan coast.

Like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, The Wave brilliantly portrays human beings confronting nature at its most ferocious.

I grew up in Annapolis on the Chesapeake Bay and now live on the Eastern Shore -- the Bay on one side, Tte Atlantic Ocean on the other. Water, everywhere! Sailing, crabs, beach, and awesome wildlife. And, terrible floods, changing currents resulting in water-logged towns, eroding beaches, and sometimes, drownings. The Wave will be informative, scary and amazing!

Here's the book trailer. 

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading hosted by Bermudaonion. 

If you want to play along, grab the button, and join the fun!  (Don’t forget to leave a link in the comments if you’re participating.)

My words are names of people in the art world that I didn't know from By NIghtfall by Michael Cunningham (Octocber 2010). I am totally clueless when it comes to art. Yes, I know Rembrandt, Picasso, Constable, Manet, Monet, -- the oldies but goodies. It is the contempory artists I don't know and I felt very unsophisticated and dumb when reading By Nightfall.

Here is three of the many artists that Michael Cunningham threw at me.

Walker Evans -- An American photographer, (1903-1975) was best known for his photographs of American life between the world wars. Everyday objects and people - the urban and rural poor, abandoned buildings, storefronts, street signs, and the like - are encapsulated in his laconic images.

John Currin -- (1962 -- ) is an American painter. He is best known for satirical figurative paintings which deal with provocative sexual and social themes in a technically skillful manner. He often distorts or exaggerates the erotic forms of the female body.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres -- (1957-1996) was a Cuban artist who grew up in Puerto before moving to NYC. He was known for his quiet, minimal installations and sculptures. Using materials such as strings of lightbulbs, clocks, stacks of paper, or packaged hard candies, Felix Gonzalez-Torres's work is sometimes considered a reflection of his experience with AIDS.

Do you have new words you have encountered when reading? Has a author used many words. names, places, that you didn't know and turned you off because of that?