Teaser Tuesday and Where Are You? 06-30-09: The Invention of Everything Else

Should Be Reading - Miz B - hosts this weekly event. We throw out a couple of sentences from our current read (without spoilers, of course) to entice you to read the book.


This week my teaser is from The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt. I'm bending the rules a bit, but could not resist this teaser from Page One. It needs to be longer than a couple of sentences too.

Take for example the dust here in my hotel room. Each particle says something as it drifts through the last rays of sunlight, pale blades that have cut their way past my closed curtains. Look at this dust. It is everywhere. Here is the tiniest bit of a woman from Bath Beach who had her hair styled two days ago, loosening a few small flakes of scalp in the process. Two days it took her to arrive, but here she is at last. She had to come because the hotel where I live is like the sticky tongue of a frog jutting out high above Manhattan, collecting the city particle by wandering particle. Here is some chimney ash. Here is some buckwheat flour blown in from a Portuguese bakery on Minetta Lane and a pellicle of curled felt belonging to the haberdashery around the corner.

If the rest of the book is half this good, I'm in for a treat!



It's Tuesday, Where Are You? is hosted by an adventure in reading.

I am in a hotel in Manhattan. I've lived here a long time. I have pigeons who come and keep me company.