# 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:** 170
### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2025, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3391 "2025-07-07T05:06:44Z")
“The marine layer was as thick as cotton and had formed a thousand-foot wall that shrouded the entrance to the harbor.”
– _Nightshade_, by Michael Connelly
---
### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2025, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3392 "2025-07-10T18:43:44Z")
“On a brisk autumn day when I was nine years old, I saw that trees could dance.”
_TreeNotes: A Year in the Company of Trees_, by Nalini Nadkarni
“Phyllis Wagonner was crying when she walked into Delio’s to meet Mother Grey for breakfast.”
_Bury the Bishop_, a cozy mystery by Kate Gallison.
---
### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2025, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3393 "2025-07-11T01:58:53Z")
700,000,000 BCE
The entire crew with the exception of himself and the maneuvering watch had been evacuated to the new colony on the western side of the giant supercontinent.
_Overlord_, the ninth Event Group novel, by David L Golemon
---
### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2025, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3394 "2025-07-12T17:05:16Z")
“I am a farmer singing at the plow
And as I take my time to plow along
A steep Kentucky hill, I sing my song–
A one-horse farmer singing at the plow!”
_Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow_ by Jesse Stuart
“When you join the military, none of the recruiting material shows you trying to stow away on a bot freighter headed to a warzone on a hellhole of a planet.”
_The Misfit Soldier_, science fiction by Michael Mammay
“Why does the G in wage sound different from the G in wag?”
_enough is enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell_, by Gabe Henry.
---
### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2025, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3395 "2025-07-13T00:44:46Z")
“‘Let me go to the house of the Father.’ These words were whispered in Polish at 3:30pm on April 2, 2005.”
_The Two Popes: Francis, Benedict, and the Decision That Shook the World_ by Anthony McCarten
---
### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3396 "2025-07-14T02:32:18Z")
Antarctica, 227,000 B.C.E.
The tremendous gravitational forces pulling at the man sent his conscious thoughts spinning into obscurity.
_The Traveler_, the eleventh Event Group novel, by David L Golemon
---
### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2025, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3397 "2025-07-15T01:46:31Z")
November 8, 1888
Whitechapel, London
Mary Jane Kelly stood silent and still as the man watched from a rickety chair in the darkened corner of her two-bed flat.
_Ripper_, the seventh Event Group novel, by David L Golemon
---
### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2025, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3398 "2025-07-16T00:15:57Z")
It was a very fine day, until something tried to eat him.
_Impossible Creatures_, by Katherine Rundell
---
### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2025, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3399 "2025-07-16T05:14:43Z")
The large man with the brown fedora sitting at its usual jaunty angle on his head sipped his coffee and watched the passersby on Flores Street.
_Beyond the Sea_, the twelfth Event Group novel, by David L Golemon
---
### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2025, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3400 "2025-07-16T05:24:57Z")
“March, and the weather’s miserable.”
– _Never Flinch_, by Stephen King
---
### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2025, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3401 "2025-07-17T18:27:59Z")
“There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother’s house.”
_A House With Good Bones_ by T. Kingfisher
“On a cool summer evening in 1939, hundreds of paper lanterns danced across the lawn of Paradise Pond in Northampton, Massachusetts, where the graduating women of Smith College’s senior class had gathered near midnight.”
_Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II_, by Lena Andrews
---
### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2025, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3402 "2025-07-18T00:01:56Z")
“He dreams of his mother.”
_King of Ashes_ by S.A. Cosby
---
### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3403 "2025-07-21T15:28:32Z")
Resplendent in his brilliant yellow coat with real gold embroidery on black velvet facings, cuffs, and collar, General Xacolotl would’ve stood out among any collection of subjects of the Holy Dominion, but he was also considerably taller.
_Inferno’s Shadow_, the fourth Artillerymen book, by Taylor Anderson
“SIX—seven—eight—nine—ten!”
“Tarzan and the Champion”, the first story in _Tarzan and the Castaways_, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
---
### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3404 "2025-07-22T19:59:16Z")
“The prosecution has made its case: Batman responded to the Bat Signal, apprehended the crooks, and left them for the authorities.”
_The Law of Superheroes_, by James Dailey and Ryan Davidson
“Captain Phelan Morgan sat in his quietly-lit office contemplating the dark blue of the words he’d just written, floating before him against a cream-colored background in the virtual display of the mesh when Ghadi Saeed, his first mate, called to him in the mesh.”
_11,000 Years_, by Mark Roth-Whitworth
---
### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3405 "2025-07-22T21:12:03Z")
“Aaron has disappeared. It has happened before and, despite my recent hopes, it will probably happen again.”
_Presumed Guilty_ by Scott Turow
---
### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2025, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3406 "2025-07-26T18:14:31Z")
Philadelphia
January 1939
Eleanor Kraus glanced around the dining room of her spacious three-story brick home on Cypress Street, in Philadelphia’s well-heeled Fitler Square neighborhood.
_50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple’s Extraordinary Rescue Mission Into the Heart of Nazi Germany_ , by Steven Pressman
Truth is stranger than fiction.
_Tarzan the Magnificent_ , the twenty-first Tarzan book, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
---
### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2025, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3407 "2025-07-27T18:14:11Z")
“‘Cielo, what an enormous crystal globe, Filippo!’ exclaimed Dottore Giuseppe del Giovine, regarding the great inverted glass bell that hung over the professor’s dissecting table.”
_The Women of Weird Tales: Stories by Everil Worrell, Eli Colter, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, and Greye La Spina_ (This is from the story “The Remorse of Professor Panebianco”, by Greye La Spina.)
“The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was fascinated by scientific experiments.”
_An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment_, by Patricia Fara
---
### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2025, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3408 "2025-07-28T00:36:11Z")
“Conscription Day is always the deadliest.”
_Fourth Wing_ by Rebecca Tarros
---
### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2025, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3409 "2025-07-31T19:04:51Z")
“The heavy red-figured drapes over the courtroom windows were incompletely closed against the sun.”
_The Chill_, by Ross Macdonald
“So you want to live to be 100.”
_The Delany Sisters’ Book of Everyday Wisdom_, by Sadie and Bessie Delaney with Amy Hill Hearth.
---
### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2025, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3410 "2025-07-31T22:06:14Z")
In the second week of April 1945 a rumour reached the war correspondents attached to the British Army in Germany.
_After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945_, by Ben Shephard
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=169)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=171)