An Invitation to Read

Missy Wick, Straw Dog Blog Editor

They say that you can’t tell a book by its cover, but the first words can make or break the relationship.  “How can the writer,” asks author Stephen King, “extend an appealing invitation — one that’s difficult, even, to refuse?”*  Here are some answers – first lines – from authors I plan to spend time with this summer.  I look forward to their company. 

 

Archangel by Andrea Barrett

Early that June, Constantine Boyd left Detroit with his usual trunk but got on a train headed east instead of west. 

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All the Land to Hold Us by Rick Bass

He was not the first seeker of treasure upon the landscape, was instead but one more in the continuum of a story begun long ago by greater desires than even his own.

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All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

At dusk they pour from the sky.

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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

In winter, when the green earth lies resting beneath a blanket of snow, this is the time for storytelling. 

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The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall

Human life is so bound up in stories that we are thoroughly desensitized to their weird and witchy power.

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Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin

The sky had lifted at least thirty feet.

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One Man’s Meat by E.B. White

Several months ago, finding myself in possession of one hundred and seventeen chairs divided about evenly between a city house and a country house, and desiring to simplify my life, I sold half of my worldly goods, evacuated the city house, gave up my employment, and came to live in New England.  

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* Why Stephen King Spends ‘Months and Even Years’  Writing Opening Sentences