# What is the first sentence from the book you are currently reading? **URL:** \ **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:** 25
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2018, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/482 "2018-09-12T05:41:57Z")
“From two thousand feet, where Claudette Sanders was taking a flying lesson, the town of Chester’s Mill gleamed in the morning light like something freshly made and just set down.” – _Under the Dome_, by Stephen King ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2018, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/483 "2018-09-12T06:19:43Z")
I’ll have to quote the first 3, since the first 2 are sentence fragments, and this is the first sentence of the book proper, not the prologue: “Hmm. No. I’m telling this wrong.” – _The Obelisk Gate_ by N. K. Jemisin ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/484 "2018-09-19T20:01:18Z")
“Curdie was the son of Peter the miner.” _The Princess and Curdie_, by George MacDonald ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2018, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/485 "2018-09-19T20:32:43Z")
Everybody falls, and we all land somewhere. _Spin_ by Robert Charles Wilson ---
**Author:** ![uncle\_squeegee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b5e925/32.png) [@uncle\_squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/uncle_squeegee)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2018, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/486 "2018-09-19T22:13:33Z")
Whenever I woke up, night or day, I’d shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed. \*My Year of Rest and Relaxation \*by Ottessa Moshfegh ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2018, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/487 "2018-09-20T12:25:36Z")
“All good things must end”, said Frances Price. - _French Exit_, by Patrick DeWitt ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2018, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/488 "2018-09-21T12:46:11Z")
“Where are those two lunkheads?” Menage a 3, Round 9 Gisele Lagace David Lumsdon ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2018, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/489 "2018-09-21T19:59:54Z")
“The old orchard stood besieged.” _The Bees_, by Laline Paull ---
**Author:** ![AngryBlonde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f475e1/32.png) [@AngryBlonde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngryBlonde)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2018, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/490 "2018-09-21T20:41:08Z")
“A lot of romance is associated with Prohibition—this was the Roaring Twenties of flappers in speakeasies, of Fitzgerald in New York and Hemingway in Paris, of bootleggers.” _The Essential Cocktail: The Art of Mixing Perfect Drinks_ by Dale Degroff ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2018, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/491 "2018-09-24T14:01:37Z")
“Call me Bathsheba.” - _And The Ocean Was Our Sky_, Patrick Ness ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2018, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/492 "2018-09-25T21:36:40Z")
“I first heard Personville called Poisonville in 1920, in the Big Ship in Butte, by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey.” _The Cleansing of Poisonville"_ by Dashiell Hammett, first published in _Black Mask_, November 1927. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/493 "2018-09-26T12:18:57Z")
“Maureen Swanson was known among the other children in her neighborhood as a hard slapper, a shouter, a loud laugher,a liar, a trickster, and a stay-after-schooler.” - _The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House_, by Mary Chase ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/494 "2018-09-28T00:55:49Z")
“Mercedes had particularly preserved her chastity, as her adenoids, out of intellectual conviction.” _A Handful of Time_, by Rosel George Brown. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/495 "2018-09-28T03:40:28Z")
One of the least known facts about Louis XIV is that he had a railway in his backyard. _Fire & Steam: How the Railways Transformed Britain_ by Christian Wolmar ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/496 "2018-09-28T15:58:37Z")
\*I was driving south from Las Vegas through hot flat desert in my new secondhand car, a 1993 Dodge Dynasty with 90,000 miles on the clock. \* – **The Call Of The Weird** by Louis Theroux ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2018, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/497 "2018-09-28T22:16:52Z")
“Even now that it is all over it is hard to grasp the enormity of what has happened: in the last quarter of the twentieth century, Great Britain has been to war and has fought on a scale and in a manner not seen by this country since the Second World War.” _The Falklands War_ by Paul Eddy et al. (1982) ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2018, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/498 "2018-09-29T12:31:59Z")
Kris sat in the basement, hunched over her guitar, trying to play the beginning of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” _We Sold Our Souls_ by Grady Hendrix ---
**Author:** ![CelticKnot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/celticknot/32/3392_2.png) [@CelticKnot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CelticKnot)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2018, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/499 "2018-09-30T00:09:16Z")
“First the colors.” _The Book Thief_ by Markus Zusak The sentence is the first in the prologue, but the prologue is part of the book. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2018, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/500 "2018-09-30T18:34:20Z")
“Ever since Jack Aubrey had been dismissed from the service, ever since his name, with its now meaningless seniority, had been struck off the list of post-captains, it had seemed to him that he was living in a radically different world; everything was perfectly familiar, from the smell of seawater and tarred rigging to the gentle heave of the deck under his feet, but the essence was gone and he was a stranger.” Patrick O’Brian- _The Letter of Marque_ ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/501 "2018-10-01T15:40:08Z")
“I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites.” - _All Systems Red_, Martha Wells [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=24) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=26)