# 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:** 179
### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2026, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3571 "2026-01-06T18:15:03Z")
London 1867
The hordes surging into King’s Cross station were too eager to catch their trains that morning to remember that the terminus was built on the site of a smallpox and fever hospital.
_Murder on the Great Northern Railway_, by Edward Marston
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2026, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3572 "2026-01-07T02:52:07Z")
“The day wasn’t meant to start like this.”
_Hexed in Hawes_ by Kim Watt
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### Author:  [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2026, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3573 "2026-01-07T20:02:10Z")
The boy was odd.
_Dorsal!_ by Gordon R. Dickson
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2026, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3574 "2026-01-07T21:01:01Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#):
>
> “Marley was dead, to begin with.”
>
> (I think you all know the book.)
I didn’t know you were a Melville fan.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2026, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3575 "2026-01-10T03:19:36Z")
They all knew the danger.
_A Bespoke Murder_, by Edward Marston
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2026, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3576 "2026-01-11T01:39:16Z")
“As I write this, I have a beard that makes me resemble Moses.”
_The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible_, by A. J. Jacobs
“Lenny! Oh, Lenny!”
_Crimes of the Heart_, by Beth Henley.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2026, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3577 "2026-01-11T22:17:41Z")
“Science fiction must be the most heavily anthologized of all fields of literature - which is, of course, a tribute to its vitality and its popularity.”
_Time Probe_, ed. by Arthur C. Clarke
“_They was born out the same womb, two minutes apart_, Rosalie says, and her head lolls back.”
_One of Us_ by Dan Chaon
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [January 14, 2026, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3578 "2026-01-14T04:01:08Z")
January, 1916
The meeting was held in secret.
_Instrument of Slaughter_, by Edward Marston
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### Author:  [@Kelevra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kelevra)
#### Post date: [January 14, 2026, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3579 "2026-01-14T14:19:28Z")
It is important, when killing a nun, to bring an army of sufficient size.
Red Sister
Mark Lawrence
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [January 14, 2026, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3580 "2026-01-14T15:07:32Z")
> No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. ~~`H.G.Wells. _The War Of The Worlds_.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [January 14, 2026, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3581 "2026-01-14T22:07:01Z")
“As the cruise ship almost tips over, the horizon that once bisected my lovely balcony door rises like a theater curtain and disappears.”
_The Passenger: How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship_, by Chaney Kwak
“Toward the end of 1861, a photographer named Nadar descended into the catacombs underneath Paris, armed with his photographic equipment.”
_Flashes of Brilliance: The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History_, by Anika Burgess
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2026, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3582 "2026-01-16T02:00:51Z")
Maureen Quinn usually had to drag herself reluctantly out of bed at five o’clock but it was different that morning.
_Five Dead Canaries_, by Edward Marston
The basis for a consistent classification of living organisms began in the mid-eighteenth century with Carolus Linnaeus’s (Karl von Linné) monumental work _Systema naturae_.
_Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History_, by Xiaoming Wang and Richard H Tedford
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2026, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3583 "2026-01-18T00:47:17Z")
“Fuck!” cried Fern, ducking back inside the carriage a whisker before a clawed and scaled hand sailed past.
_Brigands and Breadknives_ by Travis Baldree
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2026, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3584 "2026-01-18T03:24:33Z")
“Late one Thursday morning at the beginning of July 1914, a young woman with dark wet hair strode long-legged from the Serpentine in Hyde Park along Oxford Street towards Marylebone.”
– _Precipice_, by Robert Harris
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2026, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3585 "2026-01-18T14:43:05Z")
Savernake Forest trembled in the fading light.
_The Wolves of Savernake_, by Edward Marston
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2026, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3586 "2026-01-18T18:17:59Z")
“A prince of Faerie, nourished on cat milk and contempt, born into a family overburdened with heirs, with a nasty little prophecy hanging over his head–since the hour of Cardan’s birth, he had been alternately adored and despised.”
_How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories_, by Holly Black
“Allan Marley glanced out of the window at a cloudy, threatening sky.”
_Stormy_, by Jim Kjelgaard
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### Author:  [@plankter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plankter)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2026, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3587 "2026-01-20T05:21:11Z")
“She turned to avoid a broken mass of gleaming marble that had once been a temple.”
_The Rose Field_ by Philip Pullman
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2026, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3588 "2026-01-20T14:23:40Z")
Blackwater Hall seemed to hover like a bird of prey over the river estuary whose name it held in its eager talons.
_The Ravens of Blackwater_, by Edward Marston
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2026, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3589 "2026-01-20T21:54:25Z")
“When he closed his eyes, he could still see the flames.”
_Into Unknown Skies: An Unlikely Team, A Daring Race, and the First Flight Around the World_, by David K. Randall
“The mortar fire was nearer.”
_Janissaries_, by Jerry Pournelle
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### Author:  [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2026, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3590 "2026-01-21T14:47:39Z")
“Admiral’s compliments and you’re to come to his office right away,” Midshipman Staley announced.
_The Mote in God’s Eye_ by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
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