# What is the first sentence from the book you are currently reading? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [April 20, 2017, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858 "2017-04-20T16:51:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 130
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2023, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2591 "2023-07-23T20:05:41Z")
I still get nightmares. In fact I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares. _House of Leaves_ by Mark Z. Danielewski ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2023, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2592 "2023-07-23T20:32:30Z")
The wind came across the bay like something living. _Mission of Gravity_ by Hal Clement ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2023, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2593 "2023-07-24T12:36:12Z")
“A dog walks up to the guard post with half its face stuck full of porcupine quills.” The Militia House, by John Milas ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2023, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2594 "2023-07-24T13:18:39Z")
“Welcome to my double life.” _I Brake for Yard Sales and Flea Markets, Thrift Shops, Auctions, and the Occasional Dumpster_, by Lara Spencer ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2023, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2595 "2023-07-24T16:58:09Z")
Zoya, Natalya and Pip had already settled with their breakfasts by the time I hit the hotel dining room. _Working Class (SC Marva Collins Book 2)_ - Nathan Lowell ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2023, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2596 "2023-07-24T17:13:28Z")
“Begin at the end: plummeting down the side of the ship in the storm’s wild darkness, breath gone with the shock of falling, my camera flying away through the rain—” _The Glass Hotel_ by Emily St. John Mandel ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2023, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2597 "2023-07-25T17:35:26Z")
“By the first Sabbath after the festival of Simchat Torah, Rav Krushka had grown so thin and pale that, the congregation muttered, the next world could be seen in the hollows of his eyes.” _Disobedience_, by Naomi Alderman ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2023, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2598 "2023-07-27T12:40:30Z")
“The full-length mirror in the lobby, there to lend a sense of light and space to the cramped entrance hall, is spotted with age, the corrosive grime picking at the silvering like a scab.” _Going Zero_, by Anthony McCarten ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2023, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2599 "2023-07-27T14:39:41Z")
“Aah, here comes Andrew Bell.” _All the Knowledge in the World: The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopedia_, by Simon Garfield. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2023, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2600 "2023-07-29T04:11:49Z")
‘But please! You must know me! Oh, why won’t you help me?’ “Hotel Splendide”, the first story in _The Lady with the Gun Asks the Questions_, by Kerry Greenwood ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2023, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2601 "2023-07-29T20:02:15Z")
“By reason of the prolonged cold, which lingered far into April and had scarcely mellowed when the month of May began, everything came laggard and reluctant that spring of 1142.” _The Rose Rent_, by Ellis Peters. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2023, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2602 "2023-07-29T20:07:45Z")
_Magic For Liars_ by Sarah Gailey. “This is a work of fiction” ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2023, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2603 "2023-07-29T20:28:11Z")
“Gabriela Rose was standing in a small clearing that led to a rope-and-board footbridge.” _The Recovery Agent: A Novel_ by Janet Evanovich. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2023, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2604 "2023-07-29T22:24:34Z")
“Who was V. M. Straka?” _Ship of Theseus_ by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst ( I used the first printed line in the Foreword, not the “handwritten” marginalia earlier) and “The red-headed girl sank into the seat in the middle of the first row with a gasp of relief.” _The Bellamy Trial_ by Frances Noyes Hart ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2023, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2605 "2023-07-30T01:11:37Z")
You know, I love the Cafael books and could tell right away that was one of his. The abbey was worried that the rosebush might not bloom in time, right? ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2023, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2606 "2023-07-30T11:18:53Z")
That was a concern, yes. (Not a spoiler, since that’s on the back cover.) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2607 "2023-07-31T18:44:47Z")
“The Martin House is a superlative work of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie period.” _Martin House: Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect_ (no author given) ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2608 "2023-07-31T19:23:47Z")
“On December 7, 1941, marine biologist Mary Sears, working in the warm waters off the western coast of South America in Pisco Bay, unfurled her plankton net from the back of the trawler Don Jaime and tossed it back into the swirl of an open sea.” _Lethal Tides: Mary Sears and the Marine Scientists Who Helped Win World War II_, by Catherine Musemeche. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2023, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2609 "2023-08-02T12:18:00Z")
“The yacht appeared nine weeks after Israel returned to his father’s house, and even from a distance and under the squeezed red sun of dawn, he could see that the vessel was in trouble.” _An Honest Man_, Michael Koryta ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2023, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/2610 "2023-08-02T20:46:45Z")
“She didn’t know she had died.” _Vacuum Flowers_, by Michael Swanwick. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=129) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=131)