Teaser Tuesday: Island of the Blessed

This book was a bit daunting to pick up, aside from its size. The subject matter is a little outside of anything I've read before, but I know I like Harry Thurston's writing and I find archaeology fascinating so I figured I'd give it a try. So far, so good, although I have a little niggling worry that he might ambush me with doom at any point.

Teaser Tuesdays are hosted by Should Be Reading. It works as follows:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Include the title and author.

From Island of the Blessed: The Secrets of Egypt's Everlasting Oasis by Harry Thurston, p91:

"The desert is a tabula rasa, stripped of all vestiges of modern life and most signs of the prehistoric past. To suddenly come upon a structure of the scale of the stone ring is somehow exhilarating, life-affirming, in the face of so much barrenness."