# 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:** 15
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/281 "2017-12-04T02:31:10Z")
Where better to launch a patriotic uprising than Faneuil Hall in Boston? _The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire_ by Stephen Kinzer ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/282 "2017-12-04T02:48:44Z")
\*Tommy Wiseau has always been an eccentric dresser, but on a late-summer night in 2002 he was turning the heads of every model, weirdo, transvestite and face-lift artist in and around Hollywood’s Palm Restaurant. \* –The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made ---
**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:** [December 6, 2017, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/283 "2017-12-06T01:11:32Z")
“It is Christmas Eve.” (Note: Not technically the first sentence, but the first in the title story, _Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm_ by Stella Gibbons.) ---
**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:** [December 12, 2017, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/284 "2017-12-12T15:33:07Z")
“I regret exceedingly–” said M. Hercule Poirot. (_The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries_, edited by Otto Penzler.) ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2017, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/285 "2017-12-13T18:50:01Z")
“On April 27, 1822, Ulysses S. Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, tucked away in the rural southwestern corner of the state near Cincinnati.” – _Grant_, by Ron Chernow ---
**Author:** ![eunoia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eunoia/32/97_2.png) [@eunoia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eunoia)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2017, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/286 "2017-12-19T18:49:53Z")
I realize this is not a competition, and it is not possible to “win” a thread, however: “The more avant-garde an author is, the less he can allow himself to be labeled as such.” (cont’d) “But who cares about that? In fact, my opening sentence is just a McGuffin having little to do with what I intend to relate, though it could be that in the long run all I can tell about my invitation to Kassel and my later trip to that city will eventually have everything to do with that sentence.” Enrique Vila-Matas, _The Illogic of Kassel_ translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean and Anna Milsom ---
**Author:** ![jharvey963](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/54ee81/32.png) [@jharvey963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jharvey963)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2017, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/287 "2017-12-22T05:34:38Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > I was torn between posting > > “Call me Ishmael.” > > or > > “It was a dark and stormy night.” > > But the guy who posted “Fear and Loathing” gets points. Actually, I was reading A Wrinkle In Time when I first saw this thread which truly starts: “It was a dark and stormy night.” J. ---
**Author:** ![movingfinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@movingfinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/movingfinger)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2017, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/288 "2017-12-22T06:34:05Z")
They charged from the cover of the elephant grass toward the LZ, five of them swarming the slick on both sides, one among them yelling "Go! Go! Go!’–as if each man needed to be prodded and reminded that these were the most dangerous seconds of their lives.–_The Wrong Side of Goodbye_, Michael Connelly ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2018, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/289 "2018-01-27T18:36:06Z")
“In the year 1869, when the population of New York City had reached nearly a million, the occupants of 28 East 20th Street, a five-story brownstone, numbered six, excluding the servants.” – _Mornings on Horseback_, by David McCullough, his biography of Theodore Roosevelt ---
**Author:** ![CelticKnot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/celticknot/32/3392_2.png) [@CelticKnot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CelticKnot)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2018, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/290 "2018-01-27T18:58:51Z")
“Many years ago an editor from _Reader’s Digest_ in New York invited me to write a 100-word story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.” _Tell Tale,_ a collections of short stories by Jeffrey Archer ---
**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:** [January 27, 2018, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/291 "2018-01-27T19:21:09Z")
“On June 15, the first troops of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee commanding, slip across the Potomac at Williamsport and begin the invasion of the North.” _The Killer Angels_, by Michael Shaara. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2018, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/292 "2018-01-27T19:38:51Z")
“The night I called at the Manhattan General to pick up this lady doctor I was dating, something quite extraordinary happened.” MISSION, by Patrick Tilley ---
**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:** [January 28, 2018, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/293 "2018-01-28T01:35:22Z")
“Why do cows have horns?” _How the Zebra Got Its Stripes: Darwinian Stories Told Through Evolutionary Biology_, by Leo Grasset. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/294 "2018-01-28T03:04:51Z")
“Trade season came around again” _The Traitor Baru Cormorant_, by Seth Dickinson. It’s hard to explain what it is I like about it, but it’s incredibly engrossing. ---
**Author:** ![movingfinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@movingfinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/movingfinger)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/295 "2018-01-28T06:03:36Z")
“At the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the victorious British government is nearly bankrupt from the costs of the war.”— _The Glorious Cause_, Jeff Shaara ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/296 "2018-01-28T06:40:03Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > True. And yet I’d still rather have it available now. Right there with you. According to her Twitter feed, she’s still working on edits. I hope that doesn’t mean a delay. Meantime, I just finished _Cast in Deception_ by Michelle Sagara, which ends on a cliffhanger, and all I can do is scream _ **ARRRRGGGHHHH** _. She’d been publishing the books in this series about once a year, but this one was more like 18 months after the last one. I know it takes as long as it takes, but man, I hope she gets the next one out SOON. ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/297 "2018-01-28T17:33:34Z")
IN THE SECOND HALF OF the nineteenth century, the horse-pulled streetcar, clip-clopping along at five miles per hour and filled with an unbearable stench, slowly began to cripple two great American cities. \*The Race Underground \*by Doug Most ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2018, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/298 "2018-01-29T01:20:44Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > “Before she became the Girl From Nowhere – the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years – she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy.” – **The Passage** , Justin Cronin Well, that’s embarrassing. I knew this thread sounded familiar; I am back to the same book from September! I read others in between, but am back to slogging through this one. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2018, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/299 "2018-01-29T05:09:47Z")
“The primroses were over.” _Watership Down_ by Richard Adams. I’ve been wanting to read it for decades but only just got around to it. So far I’m not disappointed. ---
**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:** [January 29, 2018, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/300 "2018-01-29T13:48:12Z")
“Joe Stalin was never happier than on the day he died.” - _After the End of the World_ by Jonathan L. Howard [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=16)