# Identify the books from the opening lines

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [January 20, 2005, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695 "2005-01-20T08:17:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 9

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**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/161 "2005-01-27T12:30:00Z")

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Might as well do mine too:

Ril2: Right now I’m supposed to be all geeked up because I’m getting ready for a New Year’s Eve party that some guy named Lionel invited me to. Sheila, my baby sister, insisted on giving me his phone number because he lives here in Denver and her simple-ass husband played basketball with him eleven years ago at the University of Washington, and since I’m still single (which is downright pitiful to her, considering I’m the oldest of four kids and the only one who has yet to say “I do”), she’s worried about me.

**Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMilllan**

Ril8: Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912.

**A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith**

Ril9: Amoebae leave no fossils. They haven’t any bones. (No teeth, no blet buckles, no wedding rings.) It is impossible, therefore, to determine how long amoebae have been on earth.

**Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Tom Robbins**

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**Author:** ![look\_hergo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85e7bf/32.png) [@look\_hergo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/look_hergo)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/162 "2005-01-27T16:47:06Z")

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Looks like this thread has kinda pooped out. Here’s the answer to mine:

> [@look@hergo!](#):
>
> look2: He wished the phone would stop ringing. It was bad enough to be sick let alone having a phone ring all night long.

**Johnny Got His Gun** , by Dalton Trumbo.

It’s a good read. And if this sort of recommendation influences you, Metallica did a video based on this book for their song **One**.

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**Author:** ![The\_Mermaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a183cd/32.png) [@The\_Mermaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Mermaid)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/163 "2005-01-27T19:24:25Z")

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> [@The Mermaid](#):
>
> My favorite opening sentence ever.
> 
> _A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate._

This is of course the first line of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy.

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