# 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:** 169
### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2025, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3371 "2025-06-12T17:13:48Z")
6:45 p.m., Monday, 8 February 1954
Brighton
Mirabelle snapped off the light at McGuigan & McGuigan Debt Recovery and locked the office door.
_British Bulldog_, by Sara Sheridan
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2025, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3372 "2025-06-13T02:05:07Z")
Brighton, 6:45 a.m., Thursday 19 April, 1956
Phil turned over in bed, pulling the sheet around his shoulders.
_Russian Roulette_, by Sara Sheridan
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2025, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3373 "2025-06-16T19:54:09Z")
“‘What’s two plus two?’ Something about that question irritates me. I’m tired. I drift back to sleep.”
_Project Hail Mary_ by Andy Weir
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2025, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3374 "2025-06-16T21:10:32Z")
“Songs are mysterious.”
_How to Write One Song_, by Jeff Tweedy
“I wake up to my pink cane propped up against the dresser–a spot where I know I didn’t leave it before going to bed.”
_It’s All or Nothing, Vale_, by Andrea Beatriz Arango.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2025, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3375 "2025-06-16T22:44:17Z")
The Invasion of England by the Norman army in 1066 – Duke William of Normandy versus King Harold of England – would be far more than a regime change for the women of England.
_Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History_, by Philippa Gregory
On a hot afternoon in May 2016, five miles outside the young petro-city of Fort McMurray, Alberta, a small wildfire flickered and ventilated, rapidly expanding its territory through a mixed forest that hadn’t seen fire in decades.
_Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World_, by John Vaillant
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2025, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3376 "2025-06-18T13:23:30Z")
“The capacity for silence–a deep, creative awareness of one’s inner truth–is what distinguishes us as human.”
_Sister Wendy’s Book of Meditations_, by Sister Wendy Beckett
“Before the lost word, there was another.”
_The Dictionary of Lost Words_, by Pip Williams
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2025, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3377 "2025-06-21T20:32:14Z")
“The fire pit was about twenty-five feet long by ten feet wide, and perhaps two feet deep.”
_Job: A Comedy of Justice_, by Robert A. Heinlein
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2025, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3378 "2025-06-21T23:44:28Z")
Korea, Sunday, July 2, 1950
At midnight, the British, American, and French prisoners were taken from the Seoul police headquarters and bundled into the back of a North Korean army truck, guarded by soldiers holding submachine guns and bayonet-tipped rifles.
_Betrayal in Berlin: The True Story of the Cold War’s Most Audacious Espionage Operation_, by Steve Vogel
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#):
>
> “The fire pit was about twenty-five feet long by ten feet wide, and perhaps two feet deep.”
>
> _Job: A Comedy of Justice_, by Robert A. Heinlein
One of the two Heinleins I never finished, though I got about halfway through this one.
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### Author:  [@MacDoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacDoc)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2025, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3379 "2025-06-22T22:59:58Z")
> Melvin Butler, the personnel officer at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, had a problem, the scope and nature of which was made plain in a May 1943 telegram to the civil service’s chief of field operations. _“This establishment has urgent need for approximately 100 Junior Physicists and Mathematicians, 100 Assistant Computers, 75 Minor Laboratory Apprentices, 125 Helper Trainees, 50 Stenographers and Typists,_” exclaimed the missive
**Hidden Figures** …
Margot Lee Shetterly
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### Author:  [@vbob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vbob)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2025, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3380 "2025-06-22T23:02:09Z")
“Call me Ishmael”
_Quarter Share_ by Nathan Lowell
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2025, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3381 "2025-06-23T14:49:04Z")
I love those books.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2025, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3382 "2025-06-23T21:19:00Z")
“This is a book about books, and the people who made them.”
_The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives_, by Adam Smyth
“I’ve finally got it figured out.”
_If You Shoot the Breeze, Are You Murdering the Weather?: 100 Musings on Art and Science_, by Alan Dean Foster
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### Author:  [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2025, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3383 "2025-06-28T04:39:10Z")
“The Reverend Tomos Parry Davies, minister of Church Bethel in the village of Llanfair, sang loudly to himself as he drove up the pass from Caernarfon.”
— _Evan & Elle_ by Rhys Bowen
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2025, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3384 "2025-07-01T22:25:00Z")
“The man in the Antares bar-lounge didn’t quite bang his head on the curved star-ceiling on this, his fourth attempt.”
_Icerigger_, by Alan Dean Foster
“OMG, I love your shoes.”
_We’ve Decided to Go in a Different Direction_, by Tess Sanchez.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2025, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3385 "2025-07-04T01:32:46Z")
February 23, 2007
The old shack stood in stark contrast to the gleaming new structure that towered over it.
_Legacy_, the sixth Event Group book by David L Golemon
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### Author:  [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2025, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3386 "2025-07-04T02:00:45Z")
“We live at a time when the fate of our liberal democratic system is being intensely questioned, autocracies appear to be on the march, and too many people speak despairingly and cynically about the ability of the democratic countries to provide good government for their citizens.”
“I spent fifty years of my life working in politics as a member of Parliament, a minister, leader of the opposition, and prime minister. Throughout that period I developed a profound faith in the merits of our Canadian democracy.”
— _My Stories, My Times_, Jean Chrétien
(so it’s more than one sentence. I thought the whole intro needed quoting. 🙂 )
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### Author:  [@MacDoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacDoc)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2025, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3387 "2025-07-05T20:40:20Z")
_When Martha Lillard turned five, she had a birthday party at an amusement park_.
# The miracle of vaccines
RAINA MacINTYRE # VACCINE NATION
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2025, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3388 "2025-07-05T22:31:08Z")
“The nickname of the train was the Yellow Dog.”
_Delta Wedding_ by Eudora Welty
“We’re so glad you’re here!”
_Obitchuary: The Big Hot Book of Death_, by Spencer Henry and Madison Reyes.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2025, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3389 "2025-07-06T00:13:06Z")
The floodplain of Yam Suph (the Sea of Reeds), 1556 BCE
The great multitude of humanity stretched out as far as the eye could see.
_Carpathian_, the eighth Event Group book by David L Golemon
Gen. Douglas MacArthur walked out onto the porch of his cottage on the battered Philippine island of Corregidor in the early evening of March 11, 1942, joining his wife Jean and the couple’s four-year-old son, Arthur – all packed for that night’s perilous escape.
_Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila_, by James M Scott
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2025, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3390 "2025-07-06T02:43:25Z")
“If you imagine the ideal West Point cadet, you’ll come up someone very much like Don ‘Whitey’ Herzog.”
_Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point_ by David Lipsky
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