# 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:** 26
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/502 "2018-10-02T01:46:32Z")
“I’m sitting in a greenroom across from Mel Brooks on a Tuesday afternoon in February.” -_The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy_, by Kliph Nesteroff ---
**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:** [October 2, 2018, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/503 "2018-10-02T04:28:08Z")
“In the face of a deteriorating British economy and the rise of the Nazis on the European continent, Marxism became fashionable among undergraduates at Cambridge and Oxford universities between 1930 and 1936.” _Trotsky’s Run_ by Richard Hoyt (1982) ---
**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:** [October 3, 2018, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/504 "2018-10-03T18:50:31Z")
“Lopside hoped to find a rat.” Voyage of the Dogs, by Greg van Eekhout. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2018, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/505 "2018-10-03T20:19:07Z")
“On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of ROMANCE OF THE ROSE was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it.” _The Three Musketeers_, Alexandre Dumas ---
**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:** [October 4, 2018, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/506 "2018-10-04T06:25:04Z")
In the summer of his twelfth year - the summer the stars began to fall from the sky - the boy Isaac discovered that he could tell east from west with his eyes closed. _Axis_ by Robert Charles Wilson (I’m working my way through the trilogy.) ---
**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:** [October 4, 2018, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/507 "2018-10-04T21:40:38Z")
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.” _The Haunting of Hill House_, by Shirley Jackson ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/508 "2018-10-04T23:51:05Z")
“It was an unmarked car, just some nondescript American sedan a few years old, but the blackwall tires and the three men inside gave it away for what it was.” _The Outsider: A Novel_, by Stephen King ---
**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:** [October 7, 2018, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/509 "2018-10-07T17:54:34Z")
The book is _Fear: Trump in the White House_, by Bob Woodward, but I feel this needs to be a two-fer: The Prologue, the pages of which are in Roman numerals: “In early September 2017, in the eighth month of the Trump presidency, Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs and the president’s top economic adviser in the White House, moved cautiously toward the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.” Then the first sentence of the book proper: “In August 2010, six years before taking over Donald Trump’s winning presidential campaign, Steve Bannon, then 57 and a producer of right-wing political films, answered his phone.” ---
**Author:** ![Catsie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c0e974/32.png) [@Catsie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catsie)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2018, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/510 "2018-10-09T10:07:49Z")
> [@Morgyn](#): > > It would, of course, be in the cursed winter of 1915—when ice storms had glassed over the city, when Typhoid Mary had come sneaking back in, when the Manhattan coroner was discovered to be skank-drunk at crime scenes—that the loony little porter would confess to eight poison murders. > > The Poisoner’s Handbook, Deborah Blum This completely fascinating first sentence sent me to Amazon to learn more about the book: “In early twentieth-century New York, poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Science had no place in the Tammany Hall-controlled coroner’s office, and corruption ran rampant.” I mean, could you _die?_ I’ve put this book on my wishlist, which now stretches from here to the moon. Not to mention, someday, somehow, I will use the term “loony little porter”. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Catsie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c0e974/32.png) [@Catsie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catsie)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2018, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/511 "2018-10-09T10:16:27Z")
“It all starts out so well.” _Everything Trump Touches Dies_ by Rick Wilson ---
**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:** [October 10, 2018, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/512 "2018-10-10T13:49:31Z")
“It’s a room an uninspired playwright might conjure while staring at a blank page: White walls. White ceiling. White floor.” _Bad Monkeys_, by Matt Ruff ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/513 "2018-10-10T17:19:05Z")
One muggy afternoon in 1988, some local men were selling peanuts at the entrance to the botanical gardens in Penang, Malaysia._Sex at Dawn: How we mate, why we stray, and what it means for modern relationships_ – Ryan and Jetha ---
**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:** [October 11, 2018, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/514 "2018-10-11T14:21:08Z")
_In the summer of 1977, a fire swept across the wilderness of interior Alaska, west of Denali, which was then still officially known as Mount McKinley._ – **Impossible Owls** by Brian Phillips ---
**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:** [October 12, 2018, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/515 "2018-10-12T21:05:58Z")
“My mother selected her wings as early morning light reached through our balcony shutters.” _Updraft_, by Fran Wilde ---
**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:** [October 16, 2018, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/516 "2018-10-16T19:05:05Z")
“There were no windows in the Brin 2 facility–rotation meant that ‘outside’ was always ‘down’, underfoot, out of mind.” _Children of Time_ by Adrian Tchaikovsky ---
**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:** [October 18, 2018, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/517 "2018-10-18T04:45:33Z")
“Parched by the blazing sun of summer, the grassy plain of the steppe country is light brown in hue.” – _Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad_, by William Craig ---
**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:** [October 22, 2018, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/518 "2018-10-22T14:26:02Z")
“Someone once said that youth is wasted on the young.” _Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End_, by Jennifer Worth ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/519 "2018-10-22T15:13:02Z")
“In the summer of 1942, four hundred million people in Europe lay under the yoke of German rule.” _ **The Struggle for Europe** _ by Chester Wilmot, 1952. One helluva history of the Second World War! ---
**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:** [October 23, 2018, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/520 "2018-10-23T23:12:08Z")
“I slip the dress over my head.” _Recipe for Disaster_, by Stacey Ballis ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/521 "2018-10-24T16:19:12Z")
“The long curve of the bay window faced the River Harb and the late-afternoon traffic of the tugboats and barges plying their way between the two states.” _King’s Ransom_ – Ed McBain [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=25) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=27)