# 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:** 50
**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:** [February 24, 2020, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/983 "2020-02-24T14:11:34Z")
The father of Admiral Farragut, George Farragut, was of unmixed Spanish descent, having been born there on the 29th of September, 1755, in the island of Minorca, one of the Balearic group, where the family had been prominent for centuries. –_Admiral Farragut_ A.T. Mahan I think writers in 1890 could buy phrases wholesale. ---
**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:** [February 25, 2020, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/984 "2020-02-25T14:35:57Z")
“The camera light blinks like a winking red eye, telling me it’s time to start.” _Each Tiny Spark_, by Pablo Cartaya ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2020, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/985 "2020-02-25T14:45:04Z")
“The first liberals name was Lucifer.” Unholy Trinity by Matt walsh ---
**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:** [February 26, 2020, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/986 "2020-02-26T14:34:08Z")
“Faces hit walls all the time in the movies, but this was different.” _Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative_, by Lawrence Weschler ---
**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:** [February 26, 2020, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/987 "2020-02-26T18:20:51Z")
“Elizabeth Anne Holmes knew she wanted to be a successful entrepreneur from a young age.” _Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup_ by John Carreyrou (2020) ---
**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:** [February 29, 2020, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/988 "2020-02-29T15:22:19Z")
“Don’t shoot guns into the hurricane.” _Naked Came the Florida Man_, by Tim Dorsey ---
**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:** [March 2, 2020, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/989 "2020-03-02T14:07:48Z")
“A flower in a weedy field: make it a poppy.” _Mother Love: Poems_, by Rita Dove ---
**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:** [March 3, 2020, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/990 "2020-03-03T14:30:08Z")
“The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats.” _Annihilation_, by Jeff VanderMeer ---
**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:** [March 4, 2020, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/991 "2020-03-04T21:01:09Z")
“Eleanor West was fond of saying–inasmuch as she was fond of saying anything predictable, sensible, or more than once–that her school had no graduates, only students who found somewhere else to do their learning for a time.” _Come Tumbling Down_, 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:** [March 5, 2020, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/992 "2020-03-05T03:38:45Z")
“Raylan Givens was holding a federal warrant to serve on a man in the marijuana trade known as Angel Arenas, forty-seven, born in the U.S. but 100 percent of him Hispanic.” _Raylan_ by Elmore Leonard (2012) ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2020, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/993 "2020-03-05T15:14:41Z")
“Fabian was sitting in a cafe, by name Spalteholz, reading the headlines of the evening papers: English Airship Disaster near Beauvais, Strychnine Stored with Lentils, Girl of Nine Jumps from Window, Election of Premier — Another Fiasco, Murder in Lainz Zoo, Scandal of Municipal Purchasing Board, Artificial Voice in Waistcoat Pocket, Ruhr Coal Sales Falling, Elephants on Pavement, Coffee Markets Uncertain, Clara Bow Scandal, Expected Strike of 140,000 Metal Workers, Chicago Underworld Drama, Revolt of Starhemberg Troops. The usual thing. Nothing special.” — Erich Kastner; **Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist** (1931) “The long-term tendencies in American poetry reflect the major influences that went to form the culture as a whole and these in turn the ethnic and national groups who have made up the American people.” — Kenneth Rexroth; **American Poetry in the Twentieth Century** (1971) ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2020, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/994 "2020-03-05T15:16:43Z")
I cheated a little with the Kastner novel, but the wee second and third sentences are what make the first paragraph so splendid. ---
**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:** [March 6, 2020, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/995 "2020-03-06T00:00:39Z")
"Six years after the fact, Dr. Paul Edward Farmer reminded me, “We met because of a beheading, of all things.” _Mountains Beyond Mountains_, by Tracy Kidder ---
**Author:** ![Casparlatete](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/casparlatete/32/3377_2.png) [@Casparlatete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Casparlatete)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2020, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/996 "2020-03-06T15:28:36Z")
I sing of arms and the man, fated to be an exile, who long since left the land of Troy and came to Italy to the shores of Lavinium; and a great pounding he took by land and sea at the hands of the heavenly gods because of the fierce and unforgetting anger of Juno. _The Aeneid,_ Virgil ---
**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:** [March 7, 2020, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/997 "2020-03-07T06:00:50Z")
“He rode into the dark of the woods and dismounted.” – _The Killer Angels_, by Michael Shaara ---
**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:** [March 8, 2020, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/998 "2020-03-08T21:37:11Z")
“The redheaded homicide detective stepped through the door at 7:30 A.M. and out into the August head that already had reached 88 degrees.” _Briarpatch_, by Ross Thomas ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/999 "2020-03-08T22:48:14Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > “The redheaded homicide detective stepped through the door at 7:30 A.M. and out into the August head that already had reached 88 degrees.” > > _Briarpatch_, by Ross Thomas Great book! One of his best opening chapters, too. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2020, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1000 "2020-03-08T23:37:51Z")
Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice’s Lenten fast in the desert. _A Canticle for Leibowitz_, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2020, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1001 "2020-03-09T00:11:51Z")
“The last gleaming silver of Komarr’s true-sun melted out of sight beyond the low hills on the western horizon.” —Lois McMaster Bujold, _Komarr_ ---
**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:** [March 9, 2020, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1002 "2020-03-09T03:53:54Z")
“There are certain idiosyncratic notions that you quietly come to accept when you live for a long time in Britain.” _Notes from a Small Island_ by Bill Bryson [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=49) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=51)