# What is the first sentence from the book you are currently reading?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858
**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:** 152
### Author:  [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)
#### Post date: [June 26, 2024, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3031 "2024-06-26T11:29:10Z")
The first thing the voice said to Jess was: \*_does your mother know you’re a pengkid?_
Black Water Sister by Zen Cho
I just wanted to say that this was an excellent book and I’d really recommend it if it’s up your alley. Basically a closeted and jobless young woman moves back to Malaysia with her parents and her dead grandmother started talking to her. And things go sideways from there. A fascinating glimpse into the country and religion.
\*a term or a slang used in Malaysia to refer to lesbians in the butch category. \*
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2024, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3032 "2024-06-27T19:58:12Z")
“The Texas sun reflected off the aircraft lined up on the flight line, and Hazel raised her hand to block the blinding glare.”
_American Flygirl_, by Susan Tate Ankeny
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2024, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3033 "2024-07-01T11:33:50Z")
“Working for paranoids isn’t the easiest or the safest way to make a living, but it paid well.”
_The Company Man_, by Edward M. Lerner
“Once there was and once there was not a poor stonecutter who lived on the faraway shores of the Black Sea, in a little town called Trabzon.”
_The Stone of Destiny: Tales from Turkey_, by Elspeth Tavaci
(Note that this is a story collection, and the above sentence is from the first story, “The Stone of Destiny”.)
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [July 2, 2024, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3034 "2024-07-02T05:45:20Z")
“Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic.”
– _The Art of Rhetoric_, by Aristotle
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2024, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3035 "2024-07-03T20:21:03Z")
“Now that I am approaching the final stages of life, I find myself thinking more and more about the kind of world we have made for our children.”
_Around Distant Suns: Nine Stories Inspired by Research from the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science_, edited by Emma Johanna Puranen
(Note: The above sentence is from the first story, “The Stripped Core”, by Colin Bramwell.)
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2024, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3036 "2024-07-05T15:21:13Z")
“It was 1699, on a Thursday in the second week of the coldest February Amsterdam had experienced for five or six years.”
_Silk: A World History_, by Aarathi Prasad
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2024, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3037 "2024-07-05T19:12:19Z")
“No one stays forever. On the morning of her disappearance Lilia woke early, and lay still for a moment on the bed.”
_Last Night in Montreal_ by Emily St. John Mandel
“_The Big Sleep_ doesn’t. It never even nods.”
_The Annotated Big Sleep_ by Raymond Chandler, ed. by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson and Anthony Dean Rizzuto
“Franz Stigler buried his hands in the pockets of his long, tattered wool coat as he shuffled along the streets of the small, bombed-out city.”
_A Higher Call_ by Adam Makos
“Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered.”
_The Yiddish Policemen’s Union_ by Michael Chabon
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2024, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3038 "2024-07-07T23:42:20Z")
“The heads of two vast, unblinking gorgons stare out between the stone columns of Istanbul’s palatial underground cistern.”
_Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones_, by Hettie Judah.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2024, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3039 "2024-07-09T00:51:30Z")
“Fancy a pint?”
3 SheetsTo The Wind: One Man’s Quest For the Meaning of Beer, Pete Brown
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2024, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3040 "2024-07-09T13:16:49Z")
“I’ll know it’s working when he starts to scream.”
They Never Learn, by Layne Fargo
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2024, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3041 "2024-07-10T16:31:46Z")
“Movie stars!” he growls, and hurls the magazine across the office.
_By Any Other Fame_, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg. (Note: This is a collection of “What if?” stories about famous people who did something else in another universe. The quote is from “Farewell, My Buddy” by Barbara Delaplace, and is about Humphrey Bogart, PI.)
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2024, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3042 "2024-07-12T19:54:04Z")
“Let’s face it: humans are weird.”
_First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human_, by Jeremy DeSilva
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2024, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3043 "2024-07-15T21:28:54Z")
“When the Madison Railroad laid the tracks at the base of Prospect Hill, there were no roads cleaving the thickly forested slopes and no houses overlooking the distant river.”
_The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill_, by Rowenna Miller
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2024, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3044 "2024-07-15T22:51:26Z")
“The phone call came late one August afternoon as my older sister Gracie and I sat out on the back porch shucking the sweet corn into the big tin buckets.”
_The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet_, by Reif Larsen
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2024, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3045 "2024-07-15T23:14:30Z")
“There was a rising murmur of voices in the entranceway of Sagamore Hill’s great North Room. Theodore Roosevelt and his advisors ignored it.” _Black Chamber_, by S. M. Stirling
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2024, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3046 "2024-07-15T23:22:48Z")
Prologue:
On July 2, 1775, when George Washington rode into Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take command of the Continental Army, he expected to be attacked at any moment by the British soldiers camped across the Charles River in Boston and commanded by Gen. Thomas Gage.
Chap 1 (1763)
Upper Ohio Valley warriors took the Battle of the Monongahela as a signal to attack colonists everywhere west of the Appalachian Mountains, killing many, capturing still more, and chasing survivors back east into Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.
_Liberty is Sweet_, by Woody Holton
My heart beat something fierce as the bell on the door jingled.
_Flipped for Murder_, by Maddie Day
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2024, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3047 "2024-07-18T19:28:59Z")
“I’ll know it’s working when he starts to scream.”
_They Never Learn_ by Layne Fargo
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2024, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3048 "2024-07-22T20:20:21Z")
“I pull up the blind and the sunshine streams through the window.”
_Existence is Elsewhen_, by John Gribbin, Rhys Hughes, et al.
Note: The above book is a science fiction anthology. The sentence is from the first story, “Inside and Out (Trademark) V. 5” by J. R. Christy.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2024, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3049 "2024-07-24T23:45:19Z")
“I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car.”
_Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood_, by Trevor Noah
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2024, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3050 "2024-07-26T17:38:25Z")
“Monday, October 9, 1933, began as a gray day in Seattle.”
_The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics_, by Daniel James Brown
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