Books and beginnings
I’ve been thinking about beginnings, and about books.
Once I heard John Irving say, “A writer has exactly 47 seconds to hook a reader.” He was on a publicity tour for The World According to Garp. Its first line: “Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.”
That sentence made a lot of people keep reading. We wanted to find out why Jenny Fields had wounded a man, and how, and what happened after she got arrested. (Make the reader curious, then make them wait, says the writer Bret Anthony Johnston.) The specific details–Boston, 1942, movie theater–helped create an authoritative tone, assuring us we were the hands of a skilled storyteller, while the action–wounding a man–hinted that we should gird ourselves for violence to come.
One of my favorite first lines is from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web: “‘Where’s Papa going with that ax?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.” An observant girl doing a routine chore asks a seemingly simple question that, as it turns out, ushers the idea of death into the room. This sets the stage for a story of daily life on a farm, of family, and of mortality.
The line that set in motion the series events leading to this First Words newsletter was, “Don’t you think Swarthmore needs an independent bookstore?”
That question was asked of me over the phone one hot July morning in 2023 by my friend Beth Murray. I was sitting at an outdoor cafe table in the sun finishing a coffee, and her question sent a jolt of electricity through me.
“I do,” I replied, unconsciously echoing the words people use to seal marriage partnerships. In this case–although I didn’t quite know it yet–I was sealing a bookstore partnership.
Since that phone call, Beth and I have been busy working toward opening Celia Bookshop here in Swarthmore, the town in which both of us have lived for decades, raised families, and read a lot of books. We were both ready for something new in our lives, and we’re so excited to dive into this book-centric adventure. We hope you are too.
This newsletter will keep you updated on our journey and recommend books for you and the people on your holiday list. Our bricks-and-mortar store won’t open until next fall, but you can shop from us online here right now. Or here, if you prefer audiobooks. Each newsletter will suggest a handful of titles for readers of a variety of ages and interests.
If you read any of these, Iet me know what you think at rachel@celiabookshop.com. Sharing ideas and feelings about books helps weave together a community of readers.
Recommendations:
I’ve been called Bone all my life, but my name’s Ruth Anne.
The writer Dorothy Allison died on November 6. When her semi-autobiographical novel, Bastard Out of North Carolina, came out in 1992, I–like millions of others–devoured it. A coming-of-age story featuring a bright, forthright girl born into a family where poverty, love, violence, and storytelling are all muddled up together, the book–which became a working class lesbian classic–won its struggling author a National Book Award nomination and a place at the literary table.
Even in that first, simple sentence, the narrator’s distinctive voice rings out: direct, personal, intent on setting the record straight. She wants the world to understand that she’s more than the wounded bird people think they know. Like the bone she’s nicknamed for, this girl is strong, vital, and alive–and Allison’s novel is too.
She liked waiting for the wave more than riding the wave.
Michael Connelly, one of my favorite mystery writers, came out with a new thriller this fall featuring LAPD detective Renée Ballard. In The Waiting, Ballard’s cold case unit is tracking down a serial rapist when they stumble across new evidence about a famous (and real) case, the Black Dahlia murder of 1947. The inimitable Harry Bosch shows up to help out, and Bosch’s police officer daughter Maddie takes a star turn–an extra delight for those of us who watched her grow up across the pages of the early books.
I love it when Connelly shows us Renée Ballard at the beach surfing as he does in this book’s opening, and I love what he does with the idea of anticipation in the first line. It makes me think about the pleasure of holding a new book you have yet to open.
I am a frozen statue of a girl on my knees in the woods.
A young adult thriller about Daunis Fontaine, a half-Ojibwe teenage girl whose dreams of going away to college are ended when her best friend is shot and killed, Angeline Boulley’s Firekeeper’s Daughter is a rich portrayal of life on and around Daunis’s Michigan reservation. Knowledge of native plants, FBI informants, high school hockey, and the all-too-real drug epidemic are some of the many threads of this story that is at once a nuanced portrait of contemporary Ojibwe culture and a propulsive nail-biter.
I loved this book (it reads more like adult fiction than YA to me), but I confess I’m not crazy about the first sentence of the prologue, which is on the melodramatic side for me. I prefer the first sentence of chapter one:
I start my day before sunrise, throwing on running clothes and laying a pinch of semaa at the base of a tree, where sunlight will touch the tobacco first.
But that’s one of the great things about this book: whether you like to read about dramatic events or ordinary daily life, Boulley and her unforgettable heroine have you covered.
Each peach pear plum, I spy Tom Thumb.
The opening line of Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s picture book classic, Each Peach Pear Plum, gives you a taste of the authors’ gift for rhythmic playfulness. Each gorgeously illustrated spread features familiar fairy tale characters up to some hijinks or other, and invites readers to hunt for the teasingly half-hidden ones. Turn the page and see how one set piece tumbles into the next, until all the characters are happily assembled in a meadow for tea.
This is a great book for new babies (because their parents will love it), for toddlers who will delight in the hide-and-seek game, or for kids learning to read who can sound out the words and enjoy the rhymes on their tongues.