# 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:** 43
**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 15, 2019, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/842 "2019-10-15T18:57:57Z")
“Buy a marriage bureau?” _The Marriage Bureau: The True Story of How Two Matchmakers Arranged Love in Wartime London_, by Penrose Halson ---
**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 16, 2019, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/843 "2019-10-16T14:30:45Z")
“A gentle breeze from the north-east after a night of rain, and the washed sky over Malta had a particular quality in its light that sharpened the lines of the noble buildings, bringing out all the virtue of the stone; the air too was a delight to breathe, and the city of Valletta was as cheerful as though it were fortunate in love or as though it had suddenly heard good news.” _Treason’s Harbour_ by Patrick O’Brian (1983) ---
**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 20, 2019, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/844 "2019-10-20T21:46:40Z")
“The lift van banked.” \*The Flowers of Vashnoi \*by Lois McMaster Bujold. ---
**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 21, 2019, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/845 "2019-10-21T12:47:38Z")
From the introduction: “We had a new monster every night.” First line of the first story: “They rode west from the slaughter, through the painted desert, and did not stop until they were a hundred miles away.” _Full Throttle_, by Joe Hill ---
**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, 2019, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/846 "2019-10-22T20:19:34Z")
“Mother was the youngest of the Floradora girls.” _Mother Wore Tights_, by Miriam Young ---
**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 24, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/847 "2019-10-24T21:39:21Z")
“The Phantom Prom Date is unique among the annals of American hitchhiking ghosts.” _The Girl in the Green Silk Gown_, by Seanan McGuire. ---
**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 25, 2019, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/848 "2019-10-25T03:51:17Z")
“The King stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored.” _Station Eleven_ by Emily St. John Mandel (2014) ---
**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 27, 2019, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/849 "2019-10-27T20:34:12Z")
“Harvey and Stemmes were making progress, but they couldn’t just blow into the club and flash the picture.” – _The Wanted_, by Robert Crais ---
**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 27, 2019, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/850 "2019-10-27T21:01:00Z")
“I’ve never liked being the center of attention.” _The Sound of Silence: Growing Up Hearing with Deaf Parents_, by Myron Uhlberg. ---
**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 28, 2019, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/851 "2019-10-28T03:27:17Z")
Twenty-six months before her second birthday, Maia learned the true difference between winter and summer. _Glory Season_ by David Brin ---
**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 28, 2019, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/853 "2019-10-28T23:14:00Z")
“Then good-bye, Pall, darling.” _The Honour of the House_, by E. M. Channon. ---
**Author:** ![Personal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Personal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Personal)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2019, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/854 "2019-10-29T00:41:58Z")
“Being present for a person who has been harmed is without question one of the most important aspects of intervening in harm.” _Disrupting the Bystander: When #metoo Happens Among Friends_, by A.V. Flox ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2019, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/855 "2019-10-29T14:28:12Z")
Take your pick. First sentence of author’s note (p xvii): Many of my books have focused on big-picture topics: major wars, an expansionist president, a controversial general, and the four men to hold the five-star rank of fleet admiral in the United States Navy. First sentence of prologue (p xxi): For one family, in a working-class neighborhood nestled along the Mississippi River in northwestern Illinois, the smattering of Christmas lights brought no holiday cheer. First sentence of actual story (p 3): In a world at peace, there did not seem to be any particular danger to brothers serving on warships. _Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS_ Arizona, by Walter R Borneman ---
**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 30, 2019, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/856 "2019-10-30T13:37:29Z")
“When I first met Cecil, I almost couldn’t believe that anybody could live in such blackness–not for a day, and certainly not for ten long, lonely years.” _God Can Move Mountains: The Story of the Christian Appalachian Project_, by Father Ralph W. Beiting ---
**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 31, 2019, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/857 "2019-10-31T18:13:46Z")
“It started as a joke.” _Bite Club_ by Laurien Berenson ---
**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:** [November 2, 2019, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/858 "2019-11-02T03:50:05Z")
“I was nursing a bottle of Murphy’s Irish Whiskey, drinking it from the neck of the bottle sparingly, and looking down from the window of my office at Berkeley Street where it crosses Boylston.” _The Widening Gyre_ by Robert P. Parker (1983) ---
**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:** [November 3, 2019, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/859 "2019-11-03T05:46:38Z")
“Bosch arrived late and had to park on a cemetery lane far from the grave site.” – _The Night Fire_, by Michael Connelly ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2019, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/860 "2019-11-03T08:47:27Z")
‘That nigger going down the street,’ said Dr Hasselbacher standing in the Wonder Bar, ‘he reminds me of you, Mr Wormold.’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . — _Our Man in Havana_ by Graham Greene I’d forgotten how good Graham Greene is. In future I shan’t bother with any other writer for fiction of this type. (I’d decided to post in this thread before recalling that the first sentence of this 1958 novel has the N\_\_\_\_ word. I wonder how sensitive today’s readers are to that.) ---
**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:** [November 3, 2019, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/861 "2019-11-03T22:09:37Z")
“On the January day I arrived in Milwaukee, it was so cold the streets themselves had blanched white.” _Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet_, by Andrew Blum. ---
**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:** [November 7, 2019, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/862 "2019-11-07T21:53:29Z")
“Lieutenant Sikander Singh North leaned forward in the shuttle’s right-hand seat, eager to catch his first glimpse of the light cruiser _Hector_.” _Valiant Dust_ by Richard Baker [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=42) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=44)