"Scorching salt sprinkled onto a healing wound -- that's how the wedding of his young neighbor felt to Petko."

-- #FirstSentences of *White Moss* by Anna Nerkagi, translated by Irina Sadovina. Pushkin, 2026.

(Started last night. #ReadingNotes will go here.)

#Bookstodon #AnnaNerkagi #WhiteMoss

"As silent as a mirror is believed
Realities plunge in silence by . . ."

-- #FirstLines of Hart Crane, "Legend," the opening poem in his *White Buildings* volume (1926)

A poetry thread in the #ReadingNotes thread? Sure!

Going to read through Crane's *White Buildings*, as a cure for poetry paralysis (having trouble deciding what to read lately).

Will put some reading notes here, unsure of how much.

#HartCrane #Poetry #WhiteBuildings

"We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. It was surprising there were so many of us left to die."

-- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich, *Tracks*

(Started 6/2. Notes will go here.)

#LouiseErdrich #Bookstodon #ReadingNotes #LoveMedicine

"In the place I used to live, my rusty top bunk rocked like a boat. Night after night, it carried me off towards a secret crevice."

-- #FirstSentences of Dorothy Tse, *City Like Water*

(trans. Natascha Bruce, Graywolf Press, 2026)

Started this morning. Reading notes will go here.

#ReadingNotes #DorothyTse #CityLikeWater #Bookstodon

"Jude had been teaching Engineering Communication and Design online for so long that the temporary virtual classroom seemed permanent. Every year or two someone in the department brought up in-person classes, but he wasn't surprised when the state of emergency extended another year, and they continued to wait for a return to normal that never came."

-- #FirstSentences of Rebecca Campbell, *Arboreality*

(Started tonight. #ReadingNotes will go here.)

#RebeccaCampbell #Bookstodon #Arboreality

"He was the second, or perhaps the third, Nero owned by my grandparents. With a grocery store that included a butcher shop and a slaughterhouse, they could feed as many dogs as they liked."

--- #FirstSentences of Louise Erdrich's story, "Python's Kiss"

(This is also the title story of her new short story collection. Reading notes will go here.)

#LouiseErdrich #ReadingNotes #Bookstodon

"Should I dream one dream or seven?"

-- First sentence of William Vollmann, *The Ice-Shirt*

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(Started this morning. #ReadingNotes will go here.)

#WilliamVollmann #Bookstodon #WilliamTheBlind #TheIceShirt #FirstSentences