# 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:** 174
### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [October 8, 2025, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3471 "2025-10-08T18:10:13Z")
“My home town was just a village of six hundred or so (and still is, although I have moved away), but we had the Internet just like the big cities, so my father and I got less and less personal mail.”
_If It Bleeds_ by Stephen King
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2025, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3472 "2025-10-09T23:24:39Z")
“Summer on the high plateau can be delectable as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge.”
_The Living Mountain_, by Nan Shepherd
“There was a time, and it was many years ago now, when I had to stay in a hospital for almost nine weeks.”
_My Name Is Lucy Barton_, a novel by Elizabeth Strout.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2025, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3473 "2025-10-10T01:13:15Z")
'It is an extraordinary thing," said Harold Shoosmith one breakfast time,‘but I seem to have lost my reading glasses.’
_Friends at Thrush Green_, by Miss Read
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2025, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3474 "2025-10-10T19:38:30Z")
At dusk, the sky over Lake Geneva is the colour of blood in a glass of water.
_Love, Sex, and Frankenstein_ by Caroline Lea
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2025, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3475 "2025-10-12T15:44:04Z")
“‘Hello,’ I said. ‘My name is Gretchen Trujillo, and I will be killing you today.’”
_The Shattering Peace_ by John Scalzi
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2025, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3476 "2025-10-12T21:37:14Z")
The snow came on Twelfth Night.
_The Year at Thrush Green_, by Miss Read
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2025, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3477 "2025-10-14T13:58:48Z")
“I tapped the address in my file with the lid of the pen I’d been chewing on.”
_A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer_, by Maxie Dara.
“I am not all here.”
_Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons From a Writing Life,_ by Terry Brooks
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2025, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3478 "2025-10-15T08:56:39Z")
“_umber whunnnn_
_yerrrnnn umber whunnnn_
_fayunnnn_
These sounds: even in the haze.”
– _Misery_, by Stephen King
(Not only is that the first sentence from the book but also the entirety of Chapter 1.)
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### Author:  [@bmasters1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bmasters1)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2025, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3479 "2025-10-16T09:53:00Z")
“I had been urban-renewed right out of my office and had to move uptown.”
First sentence in _Promised Land,_ the fourth of the Robert B. Parker Spenser novels, from 1976
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2025, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3480 "2025-10-18T03:17:42Z")
The first day of term has a flavour that is all its own; a whiff of lazy days behind and a foretaste of the busy future.
_Village School_, by Miss Read
When World War II erupted in September 1939, it didn’t mean much to Germaine Tillion, who at that moment was living in a cave on the side of a cliff overlooking the Sahara.
_The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler’s All-Female Concentration Camp_, by Lynne Olson
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2025, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3481 "2025-10-19T21:07:48Z")
“Like all cockroaches, Shoebag was named after his place of birth.”
_Shoebag_, by Mary James
“Owls are probably the most distinctive order of birds in the world, with their upright bodies, big round heads, and enormous front-facing eyes–hard to mistake for any other creature.”
_What an Owl Knows: The Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds_, by Jennifer Ackerman.
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2025, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3482 "2025-10-19T22:07:02Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#):
>
> Yes, I’m excited to be reading it. I think this is my 4th Bryson, I’m a fan.
>
> mmm
I’m intrigued, but this guy wrote a lot of books. Where do I start?
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2025, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3483 "2025-10-19T22:10:06Z")
“On 20 May 2119 I took the overnight ferry from Port Marlborough and arrived in the late afternoon at the small quay near Maentwrog-under-Sea that serves the Bodleian Snowdonia Library.”
Ian McEwen, _What We Can Know_
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2025, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3484 "2025-10-19T22:19:45Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> I’m intrigued, but this guy wrote a lot of books. Where do I start?
At the library. Grab three or four of his books, check them out, and take them home.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2025, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3485 "2025-10-19T22:36:29Z")
I strongly recommend Bryson’s _At Home: A Short History of Private Life_.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2025, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3486 "2025-10-19T23:13:25Z")
I like Bryson, but that one was such a big chunk, it defeated me.
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### Author:  [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2025, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3487 "2025-10-20T01:35:36Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> > [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#):
> >
> > Yes, I’m excited to be reading it. I think this is my 4th Bryson, I’m a fan.
> >
> > mmm
>
> I’m intrigued, but this guy wrote a lot of books. Where do I start?
Looking over the list of his books, I have read:
- The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
- Notes from a Small Island
- A Walk in the Woods
- A Short History of Nearly Everything
- In a Sunburned Country
I enjoyed them all, but If I were forced to choose one to start with, I guess it would be _Thunderbolt_.
mmm
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2025, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3488 "2025-10-23T08:27:48Z")
“From my window, the deep solemn massive street.”
– _Goodbye to Berlin_, by Christopher Isherwood
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2025, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3489 "2025-10-23T15:36:58Z")
Well before dawn on 21 February 1916, when powdery snow lightened the darkness shrouding the lines of trenches gashed across the face of northern France, a 15-inch Krupp naval gun fired the first shot in the battle of Verdun.
_The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s_ by Piers Brendon
I read this before, back around the time it was published in 2002. But twenty years is long enough for a re-reading.
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2025, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3490 "2025-10-24T00:17:13Z")
“A colony of moss does not speak or think in language.”
_Bog Queen_ by Anna North
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