The Hook

[jteethy]

Here's the opening paragraph of The Dreaming Jewels (aka The Synthetic Man) by Theodore Sturgeon:

They caught the kid doing something disgusting under the bleachers at the high-school stadium, and he was sent home from the grammar school across the street.  He was eight years old then.  He'd been doing it for years.

That's a hell of a hook. How could

Comments

[pasley]

Totally a mood thing with me as well. There are times---and it can be a seasonal determinant---when I have infinite patience with some pretty dense and/or obtuse writing, writing that requires special attention, and I am often rewarded after fifty pages or so, because suddenly I am completely engrossed and it was worth the initial struggle. (A recent example was Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, which I actually stuck with for 70 pages or so before it finally took off, after which time I was unable to put it down until I finished it.)

Other times, I can't be bothered with a book that doesn't grab me right away in some fashion; so I guess for me it can be as much about the book as it is about what sort of reader---and maybe what kind of person?---I am when I come to it. The same book I closed after five pages six months ago I might go back to now and enjoy right away, or else read at least fifty pages in the hopes it will get better.

There's also a desperation/scarcity factor, too. Right now, for example, I have gone through the pile of books that I bought second hand, cannot get any more until next payday, don't yet have the book for the book club. . . Some books that have been sitting on the shelves all lonely and unread, or sampled and rejected are starting to tempt me.