# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/61 "2017-04-21T16:51:39Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Ooh, don’t miss the sequel! Don’t spoil it for me. …but, I’m guessing the protagonist comes back? ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/62 "2017-04-21T17:02:23Z")
> [@koeeoaddi](#): > > “To Athene then. Young Gnossos Pappadopoulis, furry Pooh Bear, keeper of the flame, voyaged back from the asphalt seas of the great wasted land: oh highways U.S. 40 and unyielding 66, I am home to the glacier-gnawed gorges, the fingers of lakes, the golden girls of Westchester and Shaker Heights.” > > – _Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me_, by Richard Farina Abandonned. I seem to remember absolutely loving this book back in the day, but now I find it just about unreadable. ☹ New first sentence: “Forty-one years after I died, my friend Dale returned to the farm where I was murdered.” _A Winter Haunting_, by Dan Simmons ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/63 "2017-04-21T19:57:33Z")
“I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.” -The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/64 "2017-04-21T20:51:35Z")
“In the morning they gave Reacher a medal, and in the afternoon they sent him back to school.” Should be an easy one to guess. ---
**Author:** ![K364](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k364/32/5_2.png) [@K364](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/K364)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/65 "2017-04-21T21:44:38Z")
A short story: “Bob Wilson did not see the circle grow” ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/66 "2017-04-21T22:45:29Z")
"If you look as satellite photographs of the far east by night, you’ll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. " from “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea” by Barbara Demik. ---
**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:** [April 21, 2017, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/67 "2017-04-21T22:50:24Z")
“Stephen Whitler Fox could not remember when he had first realized he was going to run for president.” from _Act of Darkness_ a Gregor Demarkian Mystery, by Jane Haddam. ---
**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, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/68 "2017-04-21T22:57:58Z")
“The boat moved with a nauseous, relentless rhythm, like someone chewing on a rotten tooth.” _The Lie Tree_, by Frances Hardinge ---
**Author:** ![SigMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@SigMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SigMan)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/69 "2017-04-21T23:55:56Z")
Here at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute, we’re suckers for cool facts, and we’re constantly quizzing each other. \_Uncle John’s Rathroom Reader “Wise Up!” ---
**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 22, 2017, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/70 "2017-04-22T00:55:21Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > “The boat moved with a nauseous, relentless rhythm, like someone chewing on a rotten tooth.” > > _The Lie Tree_, by Frances Hardinge Ugh. Vivid. ---
**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 22, 2017, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/71 "2017-04-22T23:32:13Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > “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. Nice. Seems to work pretty well for several of them. Now I wish I had posted the little “teaser” that is before the first sentence of _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_: > [@](#): > > \*Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line… > > (black robes, falling) > > … blood spills out in litres, and someone screams a word.\* Although then the appending of “and then the murders began” might even be a step down. ---
**Author:** ![Julius\_Henry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8797f3/32.png) [@Julius\_Henry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Julius_Henry)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/72 "2017-04-23T02:43:28Z")
“For sixty-five days, the _Mayflower_ had blundered her way through storms and headwinds, her bottom a saggy pelt of seaweed and barnacles, her leaky decks spewing saltwater onto her passengers’ devoted heads.” _Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War_ by Nathaniel Philbrick © 2006 by Nathaniel Philbrick Highly recommended to all you history buffs out there. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/73 "2017-04-23T04:05:48Z")
“Even though feeling like a drama queen sucked donkey’s balls, it was still true – leaving Dragos and New York behind was one of the hardest things Pia had ever done.” _Lord’s Fall_, Thea Harrison ---
**Author:** ![SuperNelson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7feea3/32.png) [@SuperNelson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuperNelson)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2017, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/74 "2017-04-23T19:04:22Z")
[This time](http://a.co/26MWkQw) there would be no witnesses. ---
**Author:** ![movingfinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@movingfinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/movingfinger)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/75 "2017-04-24T05:41:56Z")
“Virgil Earp was determined to sleep in on Wednesday, October 26, 1881.” **The Last Gunfight** – Jeff Guinn ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Burden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/958977/32.png) [@Jack\_Burden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Burden)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/76 "2017-04-24T15:59:46Z")
“Deep in Honduras, in a region called La Mosquitia, lie some of the last unexplored places on earth.” - The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2017, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/77 "2017-04-24T17:27:22Z")
“Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered.” – **[The Yiddish Policemen’s Union](http://a.co/9ApDgWE)**, Michael Chabon ---
**Author:** ![Annoying\_Buzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Annoying\_Buzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annoying_Buzz)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/78 "2017-04-25T01:14:35Z")
“At dusk they pour from the sky.” All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/79 "2017-04-25T01:20:40Z")
“It was a dark and stormy night…” No, really. That’s the first sentence. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/80 "2017-04-25T02:44:06Z")
“The following pages are a compilation transcribed from petabytes of analyzed text, audio, and video recovered from Hub sensor Big Iron.” Tomorrow War by J.L. Bourne [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=5)