# 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:** 189
### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2026, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3771 "2026-07-04T19:56:49Z")
“She had long blonde hair and was almost pretty, in the manner of tennis jocks and female gymnasts; too much muscle in the face and arms and butt for the smooth baby-fat look of fashion models or movie stars.”
_Revenge Prey_ by John Sandford
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2026, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3772 "2026-07-05T02:33:52Z")
_Manila, Philippine Islands
Feb. 19, 1841
Dear Mother,
They are sending the Army dependents back to the States, which is as it should be, in case anything happens over here._
[Italics in original]
_And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II_, by Evelyn M Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2026, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3773 "2026-07-05T23:48:17Z")
“Perry Mason extended his hand for the oblong business card which Della Street was carrying as she entered the lawyer’s private office.”
_The Case of the Lonely Heiress_, by Erle Stanley Gardner
“Eighty-three for Clifton.”
_The Jaybird_, by MacKinlay Kantor
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### Author:  [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2026, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3774 "2026-07-08T14:27:50Z")
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”
– _The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy_ by Douglas Adams
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2026, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3775 "2026-07-09T00:09:28Z")
“Eighteen!” bellowed Viv, bringing her saber around in a flat curve that battered the wight’s skull off its spine.
_Bookshops & Bonedust_, by Travis Baldree
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2026, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3776 "2026-07-10T18:10:20Z")
“Girl Scouts saved my life.”
_Intrepid Girls: The Complicated History of the Girl Scouts of the USA, by Amy Erdman Farrell_
“I fell.”
_The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet_, by Richard Panek.
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2026, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3777 "2026-07-11T03:04:01Z")
The Emperor broke into the throne room.
_Long Live Evil_ by Sarah Rees Brennan
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2026, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3778 "2026-07-11T04:52:21Z")
“Captain to the bridge! Captain to the bridge!”
_Off Armageddon Reef_, by David Weber
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2026, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3779 "2026-07-13T23:39:54Z")
“Food can fix almost anything.”
_Good Grief: Life in a Tiny Vermont Village_, by Ellen Stimson
“They sat stiffly on his antique Eames chairs, two people who didn’t want to be here, or one person who didn’t want to and one who resented the other’s reluctance.”
“Beggars in Spain”, by Nancy Kress. (Novella version)
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2026, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3780 "2026-07-14T03:35:44Z")
“A puppy is a puppy is a puppy.”
_Dog Songs_ by Mary Oliver (a poetry collection; this is the first line from the poem “How It Begins”)
“When you’re a kid in a 1994 junior high school locker room, and on the receiving end of towel-snaps and occasionally missing gym clothes, you also quickly pick up on a pervasive amount of slurs.”
_Luke Skywalker Can’t Read: And Other Geeky Truths_ by Ryan Britt
“He had come into the habit, before dinner, of taking a walk around the park: ten laps, as slow as he pleased on some evenings, briskly on others, and then back up the stairs of the house and to his room to wash his hands and straighten his tie before descending again to the table.”
_To Paradise: A Novel_ by Hanya Yanagihara
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2026, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3781 "2026-07-14T15:37:40Z")
_Today should be a holiday,_ I thought as I punched my entry code into the keypad of the Westford Elementary School front door, _or at least a snow day._
_Bernie’s Mitten Maker_ by Jen Ellis
Helen Reid Bryan - fifty-one years old, a touch above five feet tall, with dark brown hair in a tight bun and a thinning face framed by black-rimmed glasses - sat in a leather-backed chair, staring at the congressmen with contempt.
_Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America_ by Clay Risen
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2026, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3782 "2026-07-16T17:13:23Z")
“We walked out of the Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma still covered in the liquid we found beneath, our lungs rasping with that alien atmosphere, skin shining and slick.”
_Hole in the Sky_, by Daniel H. Wilson
“God has no need for dynamite!”
_Big Stick_, by Michael A. Ventrella.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2026, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3783 "2026-07-16T23:10:46Z")
“Fuck!” cried Fern, ducking back inside the carriage a whisker before a clawed and scaly hand sailed past.
_Brigands & Breadknives_, by Travis Baldree
Bright morning sunlight glittered on the crossed golden scepters of the green banner of the Church of God Awaiting.
_By Schism Rent Asunder_, by David Weber
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2026, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3784 "2026-07-18T14:17:04Z")
“So you’ve decided to commit a murder.”
_Murder Your Employer_ by Rupert Holmes
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2026, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3785 "2026-07-19T18:13:09Z")
“If you ask him where he went to high school, he likes to boast that, actually, he went to an all-girls school.”
_Rejection_ by Tony Tulathimutte (that’s the first sentence from “The Feminist,” the first short story in the collection)
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2026, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3786 "2026-07-20T00:05:58Z")
“We couldn’t put in all the great/Or even all the small,/And many names with sterling claims/We haven’t used at all.”
_A Book of Americans_, by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet
“If the whole tangled affair could be said to have a beginning at all, it began on that cold, blustery afternoon in late October when the man with the Igloo cooler walked into Richard Leyster’s office.”
_Bones of the Earth,_ by Michael Swanwick.
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### Author:  [@Patx2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patx2)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2026, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3787 "2026-07-21T23:05:27Z")
“When Riley Tatum vanished twelve years ago, no one sounded an alarm.”
The Shark by Mary Burton
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2026, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3788 "2026-07-22T21:18:33Z")
“Anyone remember what day it is?”
_The Vixen War Bride_, by Thomas J. Doscher
“I was late for my wedding–so late that the date on three hundred engraved announcements had to be forever wrong.”
_Tomboy Bride: One Woman’s Personal Account of Life in the Mining Camps of the West_, by Harriet Fish Backus.
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### Author:  [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2026, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3789 "2026-07-22T22:28:26Z")
“The water would rise up every few years, wash across the low, flat land, and take everything a poor man had, ruin his cotton and corn and drown his hogs, pour filth and dead fish into his home, even push the coffins from the earth and float his ancestors all the way to Avoyelles.”
_Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story_ by Rick Bragg
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2026, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/3790 "2026-07-23T15:07:32Z")
Lizardherd Square,
City of Manchyr,
Princedom of Corisande
“So I don’t know about _you_ people, but _I’ve_ had more than enough of this dragon shit!” Paitryk Hainree shouted from his improvised speaker’s perch on the municipal fire brigade cistern.
_A Mighty Fortress_, by David Weber
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