Special Post - Extreme Reading

I love reading books about books, about readers, collections, libraries, and any other aspect of the printed word. Recently, I have been exploring "Extreme Reading" adventures where the authors have consumed a large number of books in a never-before-been-tried route. Whether reading an entire Encyclopedia Britannica, all 20 volumes of The Oxford English Dictionary, an entire shelf of library books, or the 51 books in the Harvard Classics, these people have passion and are not shy about pursuing their trail-blazing, quirky projects and then writing about the adventures.

Below are  several absolutely delightful books tracing the humorous, trying, fascinating, and eye-opening discoveries these committed readers found along their unique pathways. They are all such personable authors who can express their passions so convincingly that each author made me consider retracing their footsteps to read the titles in their projects or take on an extreme reading project of my own. After all, as a kid I did read all 25 of the Tarzan books in order three times. Does that count?

This is a long post, but I hope you stick with it as there are some great books here. Consider the reading of this post your own extreme reading experience.

Happy reading.

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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The Shelf: From LEQ to LES - Phyllis Rose

First Sentences:

This book records the history of an experiment.

Believing that literary critics wrongly favor the famous and canonical -- that is, writers chosen for us by others -- I wanted to sample, more democratically, the actual ground of literature. So I chose a fiction shelf in the New York Society Library somewhat at random -- it happens to be the LEQ-LES shelf -- and set out to read my way through it, writing about he experience as I went....I was certain, however, that no one in the history of the world had read exactly this series of novels. That made the project exciting to me. 

I thought of my adventure as Off-Road or Extreme Reading. To go where no one had gone before.

Description:

When standing in the stacks of the New York Society Library, Phyllis Rose wonders about all the other books on the shelves that surround the books she is looking for. So she decides to find out by reading  an entire shelf of library books. And it's not just any random shelf of library books, oh no. She creates criteria to insure randomness, diversity, and non-bias of the shelf to be read. Her shelf must contain:

• Several authors (and no more than five books by any one author);
• A mix of contemporary and older works;
• At least one book that is a classic she had not read;
• No books by an author she had already read

The LEQ-LES stack range she selects contains The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux; Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, (a "seminal work in the history of the Russian novel); and the 758-page The Adventures of Gil Blas, "the granddaddy of picaresque fiction" by Alan-Rene Lesage.

And boy, does she read them, looking up background on the Internet; finding other translations to help her understanding; contacting reviewers of the books who knew the authors; and even corresponding with the authors themselves to gain insight and even friendship. 

In all, a thoroughly engaging ride through each book, with Rose carefully describing her experiences, good and bad, as she eagerly turns pages or flips ahead to see how much remains before calling it quits. Her writing sparkles with passion, confusion, and curiosity as each book enters her life and now ours.

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Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages  - Ammon Shea

First Sentences:

There are some great words in the Oxford English Dictionary. 

Words that are descriptive, intriguing, and funny. Words like artolater (the worshipper of bread).... 

If you were to sit down and force yourself to read the whole thing over the course of several months, three things would likely happen: you would learn a great number of new words, your eyesight would suffer considerably, and your mind would most definitely slip a notch.Reading it is roughly the equivalent of reading the King James Bible in its entirety every day for two and a half months or reading a whole John Grisham novel every day for more than a year. 

One would have to be mad to seriously consider such as undertaking. I took on the project with great excitement.

Description:

Just hefting the 137-pound The Oxford English Dictionary is daunting. To search for a specific words and definition in its 21,700 pages of fine print is terrifying. To read the entire 20-volume set of 59 million words seems impossible. But the rewards inside those covers, the beautifully-written definitions, the first occurrences of each word -- well, for some people this is heaven, the stuff of dreams. That goes double for Ammon Shea, who "collects words" and owns "a thousand volumes of dictionaries, thesauri, and assorted glossaries" that he reads for fun, finding the satisfaction and diversity that other people enjoy when re-reading their favorite novels. After all, "how many authors say something interesting on every single page?"

Shea reads the OED for 8-10 hours each day, sharing with readers his notes along with a few of the most interesting words and definitions in short chapters for each letter. He adds a brief, witty interpretation so we are very clear of the usage of each word. While this may not seem particularly interesting, he also includes clever and insightful tidbits about his adventures, the reactions of people (including his girlfriend who works as a lexicographer for the Miriam-Webster Dictionary), his failing eyesight, pounding headaches, a dictionary convention, the best place to read (the isolated basement of Hunter College library), and the shortcomings of the electronic version of the OED.

Along with his clever stories, we also learn of so many new, delightful words, like all-overish ("feeling an undefined sense of unwell that extends to the whole body"), gound ("the stuff that collects in the corners of the eyes"), hypergelast ("a person who will not stop laughing"), pessimum ("the worst possible conditions"), and xenium ("a gift given to a guest"). Who could not want to know these words and use them if possible? Shea reveals to us lucky readers special words that define our world clearly and concisely, giving answers to those times when we think "there must be a word for that." 

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Howard's End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home  -  Susan Hill

First Sentences:

It began like this. 

I went to the shelves on the landing to look for a book I knew was there. It was not. But plenty of others were and among them I noticed at least a dozen I realized I had never read...

I found the book I was looking for in the end, but by then it had become far more than a book. It marked the start of a journey through my own library....The journey through my own books involved giving up buying new ones....I felt the need to get to know my own books again....I wanted to repossess my books, to explore what I had accumulated over a lifetime or reading, and to map this house of many volumes....A book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life. 

Description:

We all check out, buy, read, ignore, shelve, and stack up on our bedside table various books throughout our lives. Yet do we really remember all (any?) of these books? Susan Hill decides to find out by reacquainting herself with her sprawling collection, picking up titles she has never read or forgotten, reading them, and reporting on her experiences. 

She lets her mind meander as she explores her collections of pop-up books, poetry,  favorite authors (Dickens, Hardy, Wodehouse, Woolf), as well as tangents such as possible reasons she hasn't read some books, things she finds inside her books (receipts, notes, postcards), written notations and comments in books, slow reading, and the feel of books. She also selects the top forty books in her ideal collection. Thankfully, the list is included a the end. 

I also realized that, like her, "I am the unique sum of the books I have read. I am my literary DNA." I also marvelled on her musing that all of the books in her library were created using just 26 characters of the alphabet, "plus some small dots and curves of punctuation." How can you not love a person who can see the world of books in this way?

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The Know-It-All: One Man's Quest to Become the Smartest Man in the World - A.J. Jacobs

First Sentences:

I know the name of Turkey's leading avant-garde publication.

I know that John Quincy Adams married for money. I know that Bud Abbot was a double-crosser, that absentee ballots are very popular in Ireland, and that dwarves have prominent buttocks....

I know this because I have read the first hundred pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I feel as giddy as famed balloonist Ben Abruzzo on a high-altitude flight -- but also alarmed at the absurd amount of information in the world.. I feel as if I've just stuffed my brain till there are facts dribbling out my ears. 

But mostly I'm determined. I'm going to read this book from A to Z -- or more precisely a-ak to zywiec. I'm not even out of the early As but I'm going to keep turning those pages till I'm done. I'm on my way. Just 32,900 pages to go! 

Description:

I'm a huge A.J. Jacobs fan for his previous, off-beat works describing his adventures when he completely immerses himself in some new adventure such as The Year of Living Biblically (where he lives to follow all the commandments and tenets of the Bible), and Drop Dead Healthy (where he explores every health tip and practice available to achieve perfect health).

Here he takes on the Encyclopedia Britannica in its 32-volume entirety. Each chapter in The Know-It-All covers a different letter, full of interesting words, concepts, histories, and oddities he found. Intellectual pursuits naturally lead him to apply to join Mensa and try out for Jeopardy. He is obsessive, neurotic, dogged, and definitely passionate about  his project. And because he is such a wonderfully funny writer, his reading journey an absolute pleasure to follow. 

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The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else  - Christopher Beha

First Sentences:

A few moments before midnight on New Year's eve, while December 2006 prepared to pass into January 2007, I sat alone in the library of my parents apartment on York Avenue in Manhattan... 

Halfway between my family and the rest of the world, I read the first pages of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography....I should say here that my odd choice of reading material wasn't arbitrary. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the first volume of the Harvard Classics -- a fifty-volume set of "great books" compiled and published a century ago. Known informally as he Five-Foot Shelf, the set spans the time from the ancient Greeks to the end of the nineteenth century....

I had decided to read the entire Shelf over the course of the year to come. 

Description:

I had heard rumors of the existence of the Harvard Classics, but had only seen small pieces of the set in used book stores and certainly never read more than parts of a couple of them.

Enter Christopher Beha to come to my rescue. After losing his job and moving back into his parents' house, he re-discovers an old set of the Classics purchased and read by his grandmother during the Depression, and decides to read them all himself.

But this project becomes more than just an exercise in perseverance. Beha uses the wisdom of these authors to help him deal with personal circumstances including serious illness and the death of a treasured aunt. These books were originally collected for the working class to expose them to the wisdom of the ages, but Beha finds that his education and experience make these books as relevant to his own situation now as they were 100 years ago.

He does not praise all books, and indeed skips over several after feeling the content and style did not have the power to speak to him. But what he does read and analyze is fascinating and eye-opening. Their words don't provide pat answers to his life and questions, but they do draw him back into the world. A very personal journey of discovery, wisdom, humor, and frustration with this exploration of the literature of the classic liberal arts education.

Shakespeare Saved My Life

Bates, Laura. Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks. 2013. Print

First Sentences:

"Oh, man, this is my favorite freaking' quote."

What professor wouldn't like to hear a student enthuse so much over a Shakespeare play - a Shakespeare history play, no less! And then to be able to flip open the two-thousand-page Complete Works of Shakespeare and find the quote immediately: "When that this body did contain a spirit, a kingdom for it was too small a bound"!

He smacks the book as he finishes reading. Meanwhile, I'm still scrambling to find the quote somewhere in Henry the Fourth, Part One.

Description:

Just imagine yourself as a 17-year-old boy, a fifth-grade dropout, in court facing the death penalty for your involvement in a random murder of a stranger. Advice from your family is to plead guilty and accept whatever the court gives you in order to escape execution.

The verdict: a life sentence with no possibility of parole, no appeal of the sentence, and incarceration at a juvenile and then an adult prison - mostly in solitary confinement. For the rest of your life. And you are only 17.

Such is the fate of Larry Newton, depicted in Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard by Laura Bates. Newton went to jail as a teen, spent 10 years in solitary confinement, stabbed a guard, lead a prison riot, had several escape attempts, and in general was angry at the world, himself, and life. 

Enter Laura Bates, a professor at Indiana State University and prison volunteer who had been going inside the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Indiana to teach classes for prisoners pursuing undergraduate degrees. 

In 2000 she was allowed to teach several prisoners in the supermax portion of the prison, the solitary confinement section that housed the most violent of men. Her goal was to read and discuss Shakespeare with these prisoners, seemingly an absurd notion. 

But Bates reasoned that these prisoners would relate to the ambition, violence, murder, and revenge portrayed in the plays. She hoped that familiarity with these situations and themes would create discussion among the prisoners and her about their experiences with human psychology, social pressures, behavior, and punishment.

In the supermax, she met Newton, the man with the most violent history, but also with one of the brightest minds. "Met" does not exactly describe their first encounter. For these sessions, Bates had to sit on a folding chair in an empty area surrounded by four blank, solid doors of the solitary confinement cells. Her only view of the four prisoners in her class was via a small slot in each man's solid iron door where they received their food. They cannot see each other, can barely see her, and must talk with faces pressed against that rectangular slot.

Newton responds to one of the first readings Bates gives the men, the soliloquy from Richard II delivered from Richard's prison cell. Dialogue between Newton and the prisoners soon arises about the meaning and relevance of "fortune's slaves" and predetermination. Newton reasons that Shakespeare might have done time in prison for his accurate portrayal of the thoughts Richard feels while pacing inside his cell, the most common activity of prisoners according to Newton. 

Newton becomes the leader of these classes, asking insightful questions and encouraging dialog among the solitary prisoners. Bates later even asks him to create a teaching packet based on his questions for other prisoners outside of the program to learn about Shakespeare's themes. His packets contain discussion questions for Macbeth, King John, Hamlet, and other plays. He and others in solitary write their own versions of Romeo and Juliet and other plays which are performed by prisoners in the regular prison population. Of course, Newton and his fellow playwrights cannot attend.

Shakespeare Saved My Life tells a bittersweet story. It's not always a pretty picture, but the book honestly shows the environment of these men, their complete lack of control and decision-making regarding any aspect of their lives, and their limited opportunities to improve their minds. Hanging over each page is the realization that Newton is in prison forever, no matter his intelligence or positive influence in spreading the thoughts of Shakespeare to his fellow inmates.

But the book succeeds over and over in recalling the discussions with Newton and others, their probing new theories about about the motivation of Shakespeare's characters, and the repeated examples that show the Bard created situations, people, and actions that still ring true 400 years later, even to men behind bars. Professor and prisoner, together and alone, expand their awareness about the completely different life in existance outside their own world.

A fantastic book, intriguing, and eye-opening on many levels. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Lowrie, David. My Life in Prison  

Memoirs of a man sentenced to 15 years in San Quentin in the early 1900s, He intelligently and compassionately describes the ordinary people incarcerated there, all aspects of the prison life, and even the torture of solitary confinement and the early version of the straight jacket. Fascinating, riveting reading. 

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare  

Absolutely the best book for general readers to understand each of Shakespeare's plays, with historic background, significant passages, insight into motivation, explanation of Renaissance themes and word plays, and more to make any Shakespeare play understandable and enjoyable. Fantastic. [Previously reviewed on this blog.]  

One for the Books

Queenan, Joe. One for the Books. New York: Viking. 2012. Print

First Sentences: 

The average American reads four books a year, and the average American finds this more than sufficient.

Men who run for high office often deem such a vertiginous quota needlessly rigorous, which is why they are sometimes a bit hazy on what Darwin actually said about finch beaks and can never remember which was Troilus and which was Cressida.

I am up to speed on both. Yet I find this no cause for celebration, much less preening. For though I read at least a hundred books a year, and often twice that number, I always end up on New Year's Eve feeling that I have accomplished nothing.

Description:

Book readers are a select group of humans. Bibliophiles are in an even smaller, more passionate sub-species of this group. And then there's Joe Queenan, author of One for the Books. 

In this intelligent, fascinating, and sometimes wacky book, Queenan describes all aspects of his existence as a passionate book reader, including his preferences and dislikes in authors and topics, bookstores, and libraries, as well as strong opinions on borrowing/lending books, writing notes in books, and finishing a book. 

Queenan estimates he is actively reading thirty-two books at any given time. He admits to having read between 6,000 - 7,000 books in his lifetime, broken down into about 150 books a year not including titles he reviews for newspapers and magazines. Of course, he never speed-reads a book as "that would defeat the purpose of the exercise, which is for the experience to be leisurely and pleasant." 

We learn he uses several techniques to select a book: by its book jacket design; by the the blurbs written on the back cover by writers he respects; and even by its length (once spending a year reading only short books). And he favors reading books where a reviewer has used the word "astonishing" to describe the work, but refuses to read any book with that same word occurs in the title (e.g., The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation).

At his age (60 something), he calculates he could read "2,138 books" before he dies, therefore he must be careful about what titles he will consider reading in his years left. He has time for "500 masterpieces, 500 minor classics, 500 overlooked works of pure genius, 500 oddities, and 168 examples of first-class trash." 

This means, of course, there are books he knows he will never read unless he is paid to do so. His black-listed books include anything recommended and loaned to him by friends, books on current affairs, biographies, inspirational themes, books written by businessmen, and anything electronic. 

Also eliminated from consideration is anything written by an author involving a character Queenan knows to be a lover of the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Cowboys, Duke University basketball, University of Southern California football, or Manchester United soccer team. Such people are beneath contempt and certainly not worth his time to read. 

What books he loves, he LOVES. He admits to skipping work for a week to "lie on the sofa and read ten Ruth Rendel novels." After discovering Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop, he immediately bought and read all of her works, as he did with Henning Mankell and his Kurt Wallander Scandinavian detective novels.

His strong opinion reveal a love and devotion to books that are inspirational and jaw-dropping at the same time, such as his future reading goals (e.g. reading one book a day for a year, re-reading all books in his collection that he has already read twice, reading only books picked off public library shelves "with my eyes closed," etc.). Other reflections are more poetic including the serendipitous pleasures he experienced via print books vs. electronic books.

Queenan is a confident, intelligent, and discerning reader, When he praises one of your own personal favorites like Philip Roth's Great American Novel or Huckleberry Finn, you feel a smugness that your taste in reading has passed a test of some sort. 

However, it is admittedly deflating when he denigrates a book or author you enjoy, as he does for To Kill a Mockingbird (one of the school-assigned "featherweight homilies"), P.G. Wodehouse (a "poncey aristocrat who played footsie with the Nazis"), and David Benioff's City of Thieves (because the narrator/survivor of the siege of Leningrad eventually emigrates to the US and becomes a Yankee fan).  

I loved this book and Joe Queenan for his cleverness, his obsession, his high-quality writing, and his unwavering standards of what should and should not be read. If you love reading about books and looking for new titles to pursue, One for the Books is a fantastic world to explore. 

Happy reading.


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Sankovitch, Nina. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading  

The author tries to deal with her grief for her sister's death by committing to read a book a day and then write a review of each for her website (readallday.org). Great bibliography of the books she read as well as insight into how books and memoirs can help deal with sorrow.

Basbanes, Nicholas A. A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books  

A wonderful history of book collectors and their collections, delightful in its portrayal of the quirks, passion, and overwhelming commitment to purpose shown by this bibliophiles.

The End of Your Life Book Club

Schwalbe, Will.The End of Your Life Book Club. New York: Knopf. 2012. Print

First Sentences:

We were nuts about the mocha in the waiting room at Memorial Sloan-Kettering's outpatient care center.

The coffee isn't so good, and the hot chocolate is worse. But if, as Mom and I discovered, you push the "mocha" button, you see how two not-very-good things can come together to make something quite delicious. The graham crackers aren't bad either.

Description:

Cancer-related books deeply affect me as someone who is three and a half years in remission from Stage 4 Large B-Cell Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Been there and done that. 

During that experience and currently, I read a lot of books about cancer and treatment as well as memoirs with personal stories written by fellow "combatants," (my term for any patient, doctor, family member or friend who has had to deal this disease first hand and continues to struggle against its possible return). 

Such writers detail, with humor and intelligence, their efforts to live life as a patient or care-giver without succumbing to the overwhelming sadness and helplessness brought on by this disease.

While these memoirs are fascinating to me as a cancer patient, I think they also are helpful to those living in "Wellville" (as Christopher Hitchens labels the non-afflicted populace in his brilliant cancer memoir, Mortality). These books gently and sometimes not so gently reveal to healthy people what we cancer patients experience, what we are thinking, and how we interact with friends and family. These memoirs reveal the long periods of uncertainty, of waiting, of hoping, and despairing with each new diagnosis and treatment. They describe the humor found in interactions with friends and medical environments alike. And they show the indomitable spirit of ordinary people.

Will Schwalbe's compassionate, humorous, and highly personal The End of Your Life Book Club is one of these great cancer combatant memoirs. In it, Schwalbe documents his relationship with his mother as she (and he) deal with her pancreatic cancer, usually a terminal form of the disease. Mother and son find themselves spending many hours in medical facilities waiting for appointments and treatments, passing the nervous minutes discussing any small matter, including the books each has recently read, to distract themselves. 

Seizing on their shared interest of reading, they form a two-person book club to insure that they read what the other is reading and can hold discussions that might take them away from the tedium of waiting. Through their comments about these books and the ensuing bantering talks, they slowly reveal details about their lives, their fears, and their hopes.

We learn that Mary Anne, Schwalbe's mother, is not merely a cancer patient, but a woman of wit and humor, of contemplation and intelligence. She is shown to be a complex, internationally-know humanitarian, the founder of the Women's Refugee Commission, a fundraiser for a new library in Afghanistan, director of admissions for major colleges, and a world traveler. And, of course, she is a voracious, opinionated reader. 

We also get to know Will Schwalbe and his struggles to cope with a family member facing terminal cancer. His worries and his hopes rise and fall with her treatments, revealed through the conversations between son and mother over books. The buoyancy and sadness these two experience with each diagnosis, pulls readers slowly and inexorably into their lives, their thoughts, and their emotions. Truly, these are two people you love getting to know.

While this may seem a depressing theme, the book is uplifting, funny, and introspective. Their dialog is witty and pointed as they argue over authors, chastise each other's book selection, and wander off-topic into areas that reveal their character.  

Each chapter focuses on a specific time period in her treatment and the book currently up for discussion. Schwalbe helpfully includes a bibliography at the end of the book listing all titles mentioned in their discussions, offering a plethora of reading temptations for any book lover.

The End of Your Life Book Club is highly recommended by one who has been there (me) as an accurate, sensitive portrayal of two individuals, one trying to maintain her wit and individuality while facing cancer treatments, and the other struggling with issues of care and support for a family member. Their relationship, their love of life, and their passion for books are inspiring, funny, and poignant. Please read this book.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

Comments 

Previous posts

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All Maladies.

Complete history of cancer from its first appearance and initial treatments to current efforts in the battle with this disease. Extremely readable and fascinating in its clear writing style, its depth of research, and its introduction of key milestones in cancer discoveries and treatments. 

Hitchens, Christopher. Mortality.

One man's personal thoughts on his battle with cancer. Very compelling reading to help readers understand what someone with this disease is feeling regarding his illness, how friends interact with him, care from his doctors, and his plans.

Diamond, John. Because Cowards Get Cancer Too: A Hypochondriac Confronts His Nemesis.

Thoughtful, personal, and humorous account of John Diamond's long struggle with cancer as originally told through his column in the Times of London. Highly recommended along with the Hitchens' book for anyone who wants to know what having cancer is like. His words ring true to me as a fellow cancer patient.

Halpern, Susan. The Etiquette of Illness: What to Say When You Can't Find the Words.

Excellent suggestions and practical applications for talking (or not talking) to people with illness: how to say what you want without causing offense or embarrassment, what they want you to say, when to just remain silent. Very valuable examples and advice for well-intentioned friends and family of patients of all ages and illnesses.

Introduction to The First Sentence Reader

Call me Fred.  

A terse, yet friendly opening line to introduce the author (me) of this new blog about books. Shows a certain style, don't you think? For sure, a blatant appeal to your literary sense with this play on other great first lines: “Call me Ishmael” (Herman Melville’s Moby Dick),” Call me Jonah” (Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle) or even “Call me Smitty” (Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel). Even Calvin starts his journal with "Call me Calvin, Boy Genius. Hope of Mankind." So I am in good company.

But why start a new blog with this particular sentence? Because I feel the first line is critical to making you, the reader, continue to read. That is the goal for every author. And I do want you to continue reading my blog, if for no other reason than to hear me out on my radical theory for how to select quality books to read, and then in later posts to share some of these titles with you.

Riddle me this: How do we choose to read the books we read? What makes us willing to devote our precious time to a particular book over other temptations? Its cover? Length? Pictures? Characters? Plot? Writing style? Book club demands?  To read it or not to read it, that is the challenge of the times we live in, with the constant siren calls of Web sites, games, news articles, Twitter feeds, Facebook, blogs, recipes, and reviews requesting your time. This is a very important decision: how and why we select which books deserve our time.

And then once a book is selected, what makes us keep reading it or decide to call it quits, if we have the strength and commitment to actually stop reading and move on? How much of a chance to we give a book? The entire book? 50 pages? 10 pages? Less? Are you a member of the clean-plate-finish-every-book-no-matter-what club or can you set a book down, with no intention to ever pick it up again?

I submit that it is the very first sentence of a book that makes or breaks any hopes it might have to capture our attention and be deemed worthy of our time. The tone for the entire book is set by how the author selects and uses those first words to convey the foundation of the book, its emotion, characters, and action. These words show the author's commitment to create an interesting situation that will make us want to read more. 

Works that start off poorly, in my experience, rarely improve in style, characters, plot, etc., so why should I continue spending time with these books to the end?  Any author who is confident that a reader will patiently give him/her additional time, say 50 pages, to develop these areas and grab our interest is fooling him/herself. (OK, I've been PC enough with the s/he attempts. From now on, I'll use the masculine pronoun with the understanding this is inclusive of women as well.) 

I for one simply won't spend hours on a book that on the first page already requires I must slog through it. The telling signs of my impatience include: 1) checking how many pages are left in the chapter; 2) skimming to another chapter: 3) hefting the book to estimate the time I will have to be involved in this book before I can start another one. These actions are huge red flags telling me to stop reading. Other books are calling, so I have no problem cutting my losses after one paragraph, sentence or first page, abandoning that book, and dipping into something else more interesting.

Skeptical? OK. Try it yourself. Get up and go grab one of your own favorite books and take a look at the first sentence and first paragraph. (If the book is not readily available, you can often find the first sentence in the "Look Inside" link in its Amazon listing, my new way of identifying quality reads). Notice the presence of three key elements that are introduced immediately - interesting characters, quality writing style, and intriguing story line or topic - and then critically evaluate these by your own definition of quality and interest.  Probably, you found something in this favorite book which you immediately liked and were intrigued enough to keep reading.

Now pick up any book you were disappointed with and examine its first sentences. What did this author give you from the onset to make you turn the pages? Not much is my bet. Probably you noticed that the first page was slow in the introduction of plot and character, the writing style not to your liking for some reason, the plot forgettable, offensive, or uninteresting to you. Need you read further to reinforce your first impression? 

If you still need convincing, open that same disappointing book to any random page and read a few paragraphs. Probably you'll find the plot, style, and characters have not improved. What you saw originally is carried out throughout the book. While it might be considered a good book by some standards, for you it is just not a great book.

I am now only looking for the great, the fascinating, compelling, and memorable reads, and don't want to pursue unsatisfying works that disappoint from the opening sentences. Sure, I probably missed out on a couple of good books, but likewise I have not wasted a huge amount of time hoping a bodice-ripper will eventually turn out to be another Anna Karenina. "Entice me or you're gone" is my motto. (I do have my own quirky exceptions to this rule -- non-fiction on topics I have an interest in and very long novels -- but more about those in a later post.)

Big talk, you're probably thinking. Show me some examples. So now it's Quiz Time. Take a look at the first lines below. See how many catch your interest. How many can you identify? (answers at the end of this post).

First Sentences:

1. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. 

2. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. 

3. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. 

4. I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie  ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. 

5. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. 

6. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 

7. You better not never tell nobody but God. 

8. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. 

9. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. 

10. All children, except one, grow up. 

11. As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. 

12. It was a pleasure to burn. 

13. Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. 

14. This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.  

15. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard.                

                       [Answers are below. Go ahead and peek.]

Well, was I right? Didn't each one of these opening sentences grab you enough that you were curious to want to read more? Even if a particular sentence was not your cup of tea, you have to admit that each one demonstrated a writing style that stands out above the norm of most books.

If none of these sentences grabbed you, no problem. It's OK. We all have our individual tastes for plot, character, and style. There are plenty of other opening lines out there for you to pursue and be hooked on according to your own preference. Keep looking until you find these great reads written by authors who want your attention and have taken the trouble to create compelling openings. Don't settle for anything less and continue to read a disappointing book just to say you have finished it. When you are only reading the first sentences, you can evaluate a large number of books quickly!

This first sentence/paragraph indicator of quality is the philosophy I will defend in this blog, presenting books that I have not merely read, but savored, and now want to share with you. The titles selected for postings might come from current best seller lists, or have drifted to obscurity over time. In these postings, I'll give you the title, opening sentence, link to that book on Amazon for more information, and a short (with no spoilers) review, hoping to peak your interest to read the book for yourself.

Check back tomorrow for the first book of this blog. After that, there will be 1-2 weekly posts (I hope!). I've have lots of titles to tempt you. Maybe you will be willing to share your favorites as well. And I promise future posts will not be so long as this one!

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com (Other recommendations) 

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First Line Quiz Answers

1.  Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813)

2.  Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (1877)

3.  1984, George Orwell  (1949)

4.   Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1952)

5.  The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford  (1915)
6.  The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald  (1925)

7.  The Color Purple, Alice Walker  (1982)

8.  I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (1948)
9.  Middle Passage, Charles Johnson  (1990)
10. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie  (1911)
11. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka  (1915) 

12. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury  (1953)

13. Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell  (1936)

14. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins  (1860)

15. Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathaniel West,  (1933)

Examples above were culled from personal readings and also: 

Novel First Sentences 

100 Best First Lines of Novels 

Books (First Lines)