First Sentences: Another "Whatcha reading?" thread

[Catamount]

I know I can’t be the only one who thinks the first sentence of a book is one of the most important. Whenever I pick up a new book, I always read the blurb on the back/inside flaps (unless it’s nothing but review snippets) and the first sentence. If I’m feeling adventurous, I may check out the last one as well.

So. Brief, pointless preamble being over, what are the first sentences of the books you’re currently perusing? I go first.

Kushiel’s Scion by Jacqueline Carey: “What does it mean to be good?”
The Memory of Earth by Orson Scott Card: “The master computer of the planet Harmony was afraid.”

[manx]

I am rereading Dreamquake by Elizabeth Knox (and everyone should rush out and buy the first book, Dreamhunter, it’s awesome), which starts ''On St Lazarus’s Eve in 1906 over one thousand people were at the Rainbow Opera to share a traditional feast-day dream."

[Aspidistra]

This isn’t actually the first sentence of Dave Duncan’s Present Tense (there is a preamble dealing with First World War stretcher bearers picking up an unexplained stranger in the mud of Flanders) but it’s what I always think of as the first one:

“Two men sat in a garden and talked about Hell. One of them had been there.”

[Chez_Guevara]

‘It was the afternoon of my eighty first birthday and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced the archbishop had come to see me.’

Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers.

[sinjin]

“Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Ares, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.”

The Children of Men, by P.D. James.

Actually I finished this last night, and although I enjoyed reading it and liked the concept I’m unsatisfied with the ending. Actually with the last 3rd of the book. Anybody else read this one?

“He was not the most honest or pious of men, but he was courageous.”

Captain Alatriste by Auturo Perez-Reverte.

I’m reading this one today. Highly recommended by my son-in-law, so far so good. And it has sequels, yeah!!

[Rhiannon8404]

“3 May, Bistritz: Left Munich at 8.35 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early the next morning; should have arrived at 6.46, but train was an hour late.”

Not a terribly exciting first line from Dracula by Bram Stoker. It gets much better from there.

[AuntiePam]

“On the 9th of August, 1964, Rome lay asleep in the afternoon light as the sun swirled in a blinding pinwheel above its roofs, its low hills, and its gilded domes.”

A Soldier in the Great War by Mark Helprin

[wonderlust]

Kushiel’s Chosen:

"No one would deny that I have known hardship in my time, brief though it has been for all that I have done in it. "

[Paintcharge]

“…slamming the door behind her. Slams it so hard the replastered wall around the doorframe shivers into a network of fine reticulations, revealing the hand of a nonunion craftsman.”

Edward Abbey The Fool’s Progress

[Eleanor_of_Aquitaine]

“In the cold, nearly colorless light of a New England winter, two men on horseback traveled the coast road below Boston, heading north.” David McCullough’s biography of John Adams.

“It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance.” Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, which I’m re-reading. Waiting for the Harry Potter book, you know.

“‘Move!’ bawled the drill corporal.” James Herriot’s All Things Wise and Wonderful, which I’m reading out loud to my kids.

[GrandWino]

I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb (just finished it and haven’t started a new book)

On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable.

[Sarahfeena]

I am reading a memoir called Ivy Briefs by Martha Kimes…it’s a hilarious and scary account of her experience at Columbia University’s Law School.

Warning: If you have any thought of some day attending law school, do NOT read this book!

[Bridget_Burke]

It began in the old and golden days of England, in a time when all the hedgerows were green and the roads dusty, when hawthorn and wild roses bloomed, when big-bellied landlords brewed rich October ale at a penny a pint for rakish high-booted cavaliers with jingling spurs and long rapiers, when squires ate roast beef and belched and damned the Dutch over their claret while their faithful hounds slumbered on the rushes by the hearth, when summers were long and warm and drowsy, with honeysuckle and hollyhocks by cottage walls, when winter nights were clear and sharp with frost-rimmed moons hining on the silent snow…

This isn’t even half of the first sentence of The Pyrates by George MacDonald Fraser. But I’m tired of typing.

(Taking a break from the amazing but endless Suns of Gene Wolfe. Just the right bit of frivolity!)

[Wakinyan]

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”

Yes indeed. Hey, I believe I won the “Length of the first sentence” competition!
Anyhow, of course I should have read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll a long time ago, but us non-anglo americans are allowed save a few classics to older age.

For instance, I thougt Catcher in the Rye was pretty good, I suspect mainly because I read in voluntarily and didn’t know it was a Great American Novel You Must Read.

• [Edit: Damn! The post above was posted in between me hitting reply, fetching the book, writing, and click Submit. - Didn’t win this either.]

[gigi]

When I’m shopping for books, I look at the back cover and read an excerpt from a random spot inside. I rarely look at the first line. That’s why I was surprised when The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber, introduced me to a new kind of narrator:

“Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before. You may imagine, from other stories that you have read, that you know it well, but those stories flattered you, welcoming you as a friend, treating you as if you belonged. The truth is that you are an alien from another time and place altogether.”

[Ludovic]

[QUOTE=Wakinyan]
Yes indeed. Hey, I believe I won the “Length of the first sentence” competition! [/QUOTE]
I’m not reading it right now, but Lolita has a very long, very obscure first sentence

[Miss_Purl_McKnittington]

Leaving Home: A collection of Lake Wobegon Stories by Garrison Keillor. All the stories begin with “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon,” which is both entirely fitting and completely inappropriate.

The Book of Guys by Garrison Keillor. Another collection of short stories/humorous pieces, the first one is called “Address to the National Federation of Associations Convention, Minneapolis, June 12, 1993.” The first line is as follows:

Madame chair, members of the clergy and judiciary, distinguished guests, members of the legislature, representatives of the skilled trades, my friends in the press, fellow artists, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages: A few years ago in a poker game I won a membership in a club called The Sons of Bernie and last January, late one night, I drove my truck deep into the woods near River Falls to attend the annual Bernie campfire and drunken orgy of song and self-pity, standing arm in arm with other S.OB.s around a bonfire under the birches, in a raw wind at twenty below zero, the snowbanks up to our waists, and there, under the Milky Way and a nearly full moon, we ate chili out of cans and drank bourbon whiskey and sang mournful songs like “Long Black Veil” and “Old Man River,” and complained about women until six o’clock in the morning, when we retired to our homes to recuperate.

I claim second-place in the longest first line contest.

Both books are hilarious, by the way, if you like Garrison Keillor.

[neorxnawange]

I’m reading Austen’s Persuasion, didn’t realize how long the first sentence was until I flipped back.

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed.

[Saltire]

I’m reading First Avenue by Lowen Clausen. It begins:

“The sky showed no hint of morning as his double-bladed oar grabbed the water and pushed the kayak east toward the bright city lights.”

[Sarahfeena]

God Damn, am I an idiot. I guess I didn’t read the very short, to-the-point OP. The first sentence of Ivy Briefs is as follows:

“The letter that arrived in the mail on that early December day was thin.”

Of course, due to the thinness of the letter, the author thinks that the law school has rejected her. By the end of the first page, though, she reveals that she was actually accepted, and so ensues her tale of Columbia Law School.