# 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:** 33
**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:** [April 5, 2019, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/642 "2019-04-05T23:08:02Z")
“Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me.” _Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography_, by Zora Neale Hurston. ---
**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:** [April 10, 2019, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/643 "2019-04-10T00:17:51Z")
“It was so early in the morning that the birds wasn’t even up yet, to my way of thinking, and here I was down to the gate of the Old Egypt Cemetery tryin’ to decide whether to tell a white woman a lie or not.” _Other Worlds, Better Lives: Selected Long Fiction, 1989-2003_. ---
**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:** [April 10, 2019, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/644 "2019-04-10T04:11:19Z")
“Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case.” _The Sign of Four_ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890) ---
**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:** [April 11, 2019, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/645 "2019-04-11T13:58:01Z")
“The candidate was terrified.” _Headhunters_ by Jo Nesbo (2008) ---
**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:** [April 12, 2019, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/646 "2019-04-12T23:40:13Z")
“The monster has been here today.” _Trail of Lightning_ by Rebecca Roanhorse ---
**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:** [April 13, 2019, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/647 "2019-04-13T20:33:25Z")
“Dr. Alexander Hoffman sat by the fire in his study in Geneva, a half-smoked cigar lying cold in the ashtray beside him, an anglepoise lamp pulled low over his shoulder, turning the pages of a first edition of _The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals_ by Charles Darwin.” – _The Fear Index_, by Robert Harris ---
**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:** [April 15, 2019, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/648 "2019-04-15T22:13:34Z")
“I have the worst luck with bot-driven transports.” \* Rogue Protocol\*, by Martha Wells. ---
**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 15, 2019, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/649 "2019-04-15T22:16:30Z")
Duncan Makenzie was ten years old when he found the magic number. _Imperial Earth_ - Arthur C. Clarke ---
**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:** [April 17, 2019, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/650 "2019-04-17T14:00:19Z")
“The real story isn’t half as pretty as the one you’ve heard.” _Spinning Silver_, by Naomi Novik ---
**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:** [April 23, 2019, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/651 "2019-04-23T18:11:55Z")
“Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small, watery, excitable country called Italy, a soft-spoken, rather nice-looking gentleman by the name of Enrico Fermi was born into a family so overprotective that he felt compelled to invent the atomic bomb.” Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente ---
**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:** [April 23, 2019, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/652 "2019-04-23T18:35:15Z")
(That’s a good one, **DD**!) “I was happy then.” _American War_ by Omar El Akkad (2017) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2019, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/653 "2019-04-24T08:45:22Z")
“A comet hurtled through the cloudy summer sky.” _The Quest of the Spider_ by Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent) ---
**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 24, 2019, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/654 "2019-04-24T12:08:54Z")
“An angry squeal erupted from the pile of deadwood.” - _For We Are Many_, by Dennis E. Taylor ---
**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:** [April 26, 2019, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/655 "2019-04-26T14:24:30Z")
“I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Shop in Butte.” _Red Harvest_ by Dashiell Hammett (1929) ---
**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:** [April 27, 2019, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/656 "2019-04-27T04:42:12Z")
“Shortly before one o’clock on the afternoon of Tuesday, 27 September 1938, Mr. Hugh Legat of His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service was shown to his table beside one of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Ritz Restaurant in London,ordered a half-bottle of 1921 Dom Perignon he could not afford, folded his copy of _The Times_ to page 17, and began to read for the third time the speech that had been delivered the night before in Berlin’s Sportpalast by Adolph Hitler.” – _Munich_, by Robert Harris ---
**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:** [April 27, 2019, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/657 "2019-04-27T18:28:28Z")
“President Dewey Congratulates NACA on Satellite Launch”. _The Calculating Stars_, by Mary Robinette Kowal ---
**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:** [April 30, 2019, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/658 "2019-04-30T18:20:32Z")
“I was sitting in my office above the bank with my tie loose and my feet up, reading a book called _Play of Double Senses: Spenser’s Faerie Queene_.” _A Savage Place_ by Robert B. Parker (1981) ---
**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:** [April 30, 2019, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/659 "2019-04-30T19:15:16Z")
“Alive! Still alive. Alive…again.” _Dawn_, by Octavia E. Butler ---
**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:** [May 2, 2019, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/660 "2019-05-02T20:37:03Z")
“Of course,” they told him in all honesty, “you will be a slave.” _Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand_, by Samuel R. Delaney ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/661 "2019-05-02T22:12:52Z")
> [@](#): > > DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR TO THE READER. > Gentle reader, I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what antic or personate actor this is, that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre, to the world’s view, arrogating another man’s name; whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say; although, as he said, Primum si noluero, non respondebo, quis coacturus est? Dr Johnson said it was the only book that drew him out of bed on a Sunday morning before he wished to rise and I know exactly what he means. Over a thousand pages of pure unadulterated pleasure, it’s one of the greatest books I’ve ever read, which is why I’m reading it again some 20 years after I first read it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=32) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=34)