# 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:** 3
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/41 "2017-04-21T00:59:14Z")
Another Multiverse line from the Discworld: “It is hard to understand nothing, but the multiverse is full of it” (Raising Steam) ---
**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:** [April 21, 2017, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/42 "2017-04-21T01:01:45Z")
At 2:50 a.m. on Friday, September 1, 1939, a telephone rang in a darkened bedroom on the second floor of the White House. _Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World_ by Michael Fullilove ---
**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:** [April 21, 2017, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/43 "2017-04-21T01:05:07Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > “Thank you for coming. Please, won’t you sit with me a moment, my friend?” > > Although I think the chapter title is much more in line with the vibe of the book: “Hello, Slattern!” > > - [Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady’s Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners](https://www.amazon.com/Unmentionable-Victorian-Ladys-Marriage-Manners/dp/031635791X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492715906&sr=8-1&keywords=unmentionable+the+victorian+lady%27s+guide+to+sex+marriage+and+manners) I feel _“Thank you for coming.”_ gets into the spirit of a guide to sex and manners. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/44 "2017-04-21T01:05:30Z")
_As soon as the door opened he knew he was dead._ John Katzenbach, “What Comes Next” ---
**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:** [April 21, 2017, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/45 "2017-04-21T01:07:01Z")
My earlier post was from the book I’m reading at work. Here’s the first line of the one I’m reading at home: \* “In Big Bend National Park, the Rio Grande is so low because of drought, locals are calling it the Rio Sand”.\* – **The Hour Of The Land** by Terry Tempest Williams ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/46 "2017-04-21T01:13:46Z")
“Quaraqua.” -Jack McDevitt, _The Engines of God_ ---
**Author:** ![Battle\_Pope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Battle\_Pope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Battle_Pope)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/47 "2017-04-21T01:23:10Z")
> [@](#): > > The space station _Belvaille_ was not the most corrupt city in the galaxy, but we liked to think we were in the top five. \*Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy \*by Steven Campbell ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/48 "2017-04-21T02:10:35Z")
“I am Ivan.” From _The One and Only Ivan_, by Katherine Applegate. ---
**Author:** ![5\_time\_champ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/5/278dde/32.png) [@5\_time\_champ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/5_time_champ)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/49 "2017-04-21T02:19:37Z")
“THE SECRET Service holds much that is kept secret even from very senior officers in the organization. ” Just completed my third or fourth rereading of _The Man with the Golden Gun_, by Ian Fleming. Actually a little better than I remembered. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/50 "2017-04-21T03:02:21Z")
“Bon Agornin writhed on his deathbed, his wings beating as if he would fly to his new life in his old body.” –Jo Walton, _Tooth and Claw_ (a romantic Victorian novel where everyone is a dragon) ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/51 "2017-04-21T04:23:39Z")
Recently I’m trying a thing where I read a bunch of books at once, and switch between them more-or-less at random. Results are mixed so far. But I’ll go ahead and post the first sentences of what I have currently open… “No one could say he hadn’t been warned.” –Matt Ruff, _Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy_ “Every inch of wall space is covered by a bookcase.” –Eliezer Yudkowsky, _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_ (this one is a fourth or fifth re-read) “In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilard waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change.” –Richard Rhodes, _The Making of the Atomic Bomb (25th Anniversary Edition)_ “The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.” –Colson Whitehead, _The Underground Railroad_ “I remember throwing away a child.” – Kameron Hurley, _The Stars are Legion_ Holy crap, this next one is a long sentence. Which is very representative of the way Ada Palmer has been writing this book so far. Weird, but interesting. “You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I describe, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described.” –Ada Palmer, _Too Like the Lightning_ “On our wedding day I was forty-six, she was eighteen.” –George Saunders, _Lincoln in the Bardo_ ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/52 "2017-04-21T04:51:14Z")
_No biography of Hubert de Burgh has ever been written._ From Clarence Ellis’ 1952 biography of Hubert de Burgh ;). ---
**Author:** ![movingfinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@movingfinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/movingfinger)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/53 "2017-04-21T05:25:09Z")
“These days, if you are a German, you spend your time in Purgatory before you die, in earthly suffering for all your country’s unrepented and unpunished sins, until the day when, with the aid of the prayers of the Powers–or three of them, anyway–Germany is finally purified.” From **A German Requiem** , by Phillip Kerr, set in Berlin in 1947 ---
**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:** [April 21, 2017, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/54 "2017-04-21T14:51:29Z")
> [@Tibby or Not Tibby](#): > > The sun did not shine. > > –_D. Seuss_ Ooh, don’t miss the sequel! ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/55 "2017-04-21T15:14:18Z")
> [@chorpler](#): > > Recently I’m trying a thing where I read a bunch of books at once, and switch between them more-or-less at random. Results are mixed so far. But I’ll go ahead and post the first sentences of what I have currently open… “No one could say he hadn’t been warned. And then the murders began.” “Every inch of wall space is covered by a bookcase. And then the murders began.” “In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilard waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change. And then the murders began.” “The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no. And then the murders began.” “I remember throwing away a child. And then the murders began.” “You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I describe, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described. And then the murders began.” “On our wedding day I was forty-six, she was eighteen. And then the murders began.” Oh, wait–wrong thread. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/56 "2017-04-21T15:16:39Z")
> [@chorpler](#): > > Recently I’m trying a thing where I read a bunch of books at once, and switch between them more-or-less at random. Results are mixed so far. But I’ll go ahead and post the first sentences of what I have currently open… That’s how I normally read. It’s just too much of a hassle with a kindle to go back to the first page and then get back to the right spot, unless I’m dumb and am just not seeing how to do it easily. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/57 "2017-04-21T15:22:09Z")
‘‘Readers are like fish.’’ \*Structuring Your Novel \*by KM Weiland. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/58 "2017-04-21T15:39:20Z")
> [@chorpler](#): > > Holy crap, this next one is a long sentence. Which is very representative of the way Ada Palmer has been writing this book so far. Weird, but interesting. > > “You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I describe, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described.” > –Ada Palmer, _Too Like the Lightning_ I can beat it: “‘After an absence of nearly two years,’ Jefferson Davis told the legislators assembled under the golden dome of his home-state capitol on the day after Christmas, 1862–twenty months and two weeks, to the day, since the guns of Charlestown opened fire on Sumter to inaugurate the civil war no one could know was not yet halfway over–‘I again find myself among those who, from the days of my childhood, have ever been the trusted objects of my affection, those for whose good I have ever striven and whose interests I have sometimes hoped I may have contributed to subserve.’” –From volume 2 of Shelby Foote’s 3-volume _The Civil War_. Actually not atypical of the kind of complex sentences Foote writes. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/59 "2017-04-21T15:47:18Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > I can beat it: > > “‘After an absence of nearly two years,’ Jefferson Davis told the legislators assembled under the golden dome of his home-state capitol on the day after Christmas, 1862–twenty months and two weeks, to the day, since the guns of Charlestown opened fire on Sumter to inaugurate the civil war no one could know was not yet halfway over–‘I again find myself among those who, from the days of my childhood, have ever been the trusted objects of my affection, those for whose good I have ever striven and whose interests I have sometimes hoped I may have contributed to subserve.’” > > –From volume 2 of Shelby Foote’s 3-volume _The Civil War_. Actually not atypical of the kind of complex sentences Foote writes. Too bad no one’s reading _Absalom, Absalom!_ ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/60 "2017-04-21T16:11:59Z")
“The jewel garden really began in the spring of 1981, when we started the jewellery business.” from The Jewel Garden by Monty and Sarah Don. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=4)