pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

It felt like a great and happy luxury to take time out of my professional reading to read this book just for me. (Actually it is referenced as a standard by a book I was hired to read, and you will see that one come up later. But I already had this one on my desk. So it counts.) I was struck immediately by the opening lines: how perfect.

We went there for everything we needed. We went there when we were thirsty, of course, and when hungry, and when dead tired. We went there when happy, to celebrate, and when sad, to sulk. We went there after weddings and funerals, for something to settle our nerves, and always for a shot of courage just before. We went there when we didn’t know what we needed, hoping someone might tell us. We went there when looking for love, or sex, or trouble, or for someone who had gone missing, because sooner or later everyone turned up there. Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.

There is, of course, a certain special bar that I think of, where I have gone when happy and when sad. Miss y’all.

Just a few paragraphs later, another piece of profundity:

While I fear that we’re drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we’re defined by what embraces us.

I think this will be a good one, friends.

Filed under: book beginnings | Tagged: booze, memoir, nonfiction, sense of place |