# 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:** 188
### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2026, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3751 "2026-06-11T23:36:02Z")
“We were in the sitting room of the presidential car, the _Ferdinand Magellan_, racing across Kansas by night.”
_Harry S. Truman_, by Margaret Truman
“It was the crying from down below that woke me up that hot night.”
_Turn Homeward, Hannalee_, by Patricia Beatty.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2026, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3752 "2026-06-12T01:30:11Z")
“Mom?” Travis Uriah Long called toward the rear of the big, quiet house.
\*A Call to Duty", by David Weber and Timothy Zahn
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2026, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3753 "2026-06-12T02:54:11Z")
“Before I was born, I went on the road.”
-- _A Life on the Road_, by Charles Kuralt
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3754 "2026-06-13T02:09:46Z")
Sherry Pinkwhistle woke up to the deep silence of snowfall, cozily ensconced in the warmth of her bed and the knowledge that she had just solved another murder.
_The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society_ by C.M. Waggoner
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3755 "2026-06-13T02:53:12Z")
“Yeah, thanks,” the teenager said, swiping his tangled mop of hair out of his eyes.
_A Call to Arms_, by David Weber and Timothy Zahn, with Thomas Pope
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [June 15, 2026, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3756 "2026-06-15T02:53:03Z")
The Spanish Inquisition hadn’t been the first political and religious witch-hunt in Old Earth’s violent history.
_A Call to Vengeance_, by David Weber and Timothy Zahn, with Thomas Pope
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2026, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3757 "2026-06-18T01:08:33Z")
“The justly named Golden Sands resort, north of Varna on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, boasts warm, shallow waters where children can paddle while their parents look on tranquilly from the beach.”
_Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global_, by Laura Spinney
“This is how I find out Jenny is pregnant on Mars.”
_How to Mars_, a science fiction novel by David Ebenbach
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [June 19, 2026, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3758 "2026-06-19T03:19:32Z")
“The five C-54 transports droned in a clumsy echelon, shepherded by skittish fighters above and below the formation.”
-- _General of the Army: George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman_, by Ed Cray
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2026, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3759 "2026-06-20T03:31:48Z")
Hereditary President Trudy McIntyre had never been what Lucretia Tomlinson would have called a handsome woman.
_A Call to Insurrection_, by David Weber and Timothy Zahn with Thomas Pope
I am looking out of the window, across farmland, houses and parks, towards a place that for hundreds of years has been known as World’s End.
_Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds_, by Thomas Halliday
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2026, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3760 "2026-06-22T16:40:45Z")
“Louise, no matter what happens, I’m glad I came with you.”
_Find Me_ by Alafair Burke
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 22, 2026, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3761 "2026-06-22T21:04:04Z")
“One typically hot summer day in Williamsburg, Virginia, I noticed a crowd of people gathering on the lawn of the Governor’s Palace.”
_A Grizzly in the Mail and Other Adventures in American History_, by Tim Grove
“Nadya Sokolov, as she grew older, would come to say that she had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her.”
_Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear_, by Seanan McGuire.
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2026, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3762 "2026-06-25T00:54:55Z")
All I had to do was pick a direction.
_Gorgon With the Wind_ by Devon Monk
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2026, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3763 "2026-06-25T19:07:15Z")
“In the late fall of 1864, as General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union Army marched toward Savannah, Sally, a freedwoman, roamed the camps at night searching for her children.”
_Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation_, by Bennett Parten
“The first day I went to Plum Grove School, a little one-room school on a hilltop where one teacher taught all the first eight grades, I met Corbie.”
_My Land Has a Voice_, by Jesse Stuart. (Note that this is a story collection, and the sentence is from “Corbie”.)
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2026, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3764 "2026-06-25T20:25:34Z")
“_One True Sentence_ was inspired by _One True Podcast_, our show about Ernest Hemingway’s life, work, and world.”
_One True Sentence_ by Mark Cirino and Michael Von Cannon
“Judge Timothy S. Black strode into his bustling courtroom, long black robe whipping around his legs, and glanced at the sea of faces that was looking at him, the judge who would decide whether the will of Ohio’s voters trumped the wishes of a dying man.”
_Love Wins_ by Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell
“Captain Kidd the pirate! Kidd the Buccaneer! Kidd the Murderer! _Rats!_ Rats and mice and likewise fiddlesticks!”
_Captain Kidd’s Cat_ by Robert Lawson
“My father drove me to school each morning during my first year of high school.”
_The Roses Speak_ by James Menkhaus
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2026, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3765 "2026-06-28T04:19:57Z")
“We hold these truths to be sacred.” _Sacred?_ No. That doesn’t sound right."
_The Greatest Sentence Ever Written_ by Walter Isaacson
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2026, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3766 "2026-06-29T18:23:01Z")
“The accomplishments of Dwight Eisenhower will be copiously recorded now that he is gone, that being the tradition, and tradition being what one has come to asssociate with General Eisenhower, who comes to us even now as a memory out of the remote past.”
_A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century_, by William F. Buckley, Jr.
“On the afternoon of Thursday, October 26, 1775, His Royal Majesty George III, King of England, rode in royal splendor from St. James’s Palace to the Palace of Westminster, there to address the openig of Parliament on the increasingly distressing issue of war in America.”
_1776_, by David McCullough
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2026, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3767 "2026-06-29T18:25:45Z")
“Stilwell could hear the plane but couldn’t see it.”
_Ironwood_ by Michael Connelly
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### Author:  [@SteviaPlumFaery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteviaPlumFaery)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2026, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3768 "2026-06-29T20:54:03Z")
This story has its beginnings in the town of Alexandria, Illinois, between 1884 and 1889, at the time when the place had a population of somewhere near ten thousand.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [June 30, 2026, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3769 "2026-06-30T13:02:54Z")
1.2 billion years ago
Arctic Canada
Little red threads waft back and forth to the slow rhythm of the waves.
_When the Earth Was Green_, by Riley Black
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2026, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3770 "2026-07-04T19:36:47Z")
“The room smells of dust and washed cotton.”
_Patchwork: A Sewist’s Diary_, by Maddie Ballard
“I’m late to homeroom.”
_The Sea in Winter_, by Christine Day
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