# 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:** 55
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2020, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1083 "2020-05-31T22:04:16Z")
Woof, woof, woof, _woof_! Henry Miller, Nexus ---
**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:** [June 1, 2020, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1084 "2020-06-01T01:27:18Z")
Although in my old age I, Allan Quatermain, have taken to writing—after a fashion—never yet have I set down a single word of the tale of my first love and of the adventures that are grouped around her beautiful and tragic history. _Marie_, by H Rider Haggard ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1085 "2020-06-02T03:03:09Z")
“When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.” With everything going on int he world lately, I needed something comfy and familiar to lose myself in. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2020, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1086 "2020-06-02T03:06:38Z")
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” “The Catcher in the Rye,” J. D. Salinger. Never read it before now; how did this find a publisher in 1951???!!!??? ---
**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:** [June 3, 2020, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1087 "2020-06-03T20:33:45Z")
“This is how I feel every single day of my life, like I’m falling without a parachute.” _New Kid_, by Jerry Craft ---
**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:** [June 5, 2020, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1088 "2020-06-05T22:58:42Z")
“Any piece of verbal art–be it a joke, or a folktale or an anecdote–is the sum of its parts.” _Foxfire Story: Oral Tradition in Southern Appalachia_, edited by T. J. Smith ---
**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:** [June 6, 2020, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1089 "2020-06-06T18:08:57Z")
“I hadn’t had lunch with Patricia Utley since the last time the Red Sox won the pennant. That seems like another way to say _never_, but in fact it had been ten years.” _Taming a Sea-Horse_ by Robert Parker > [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”… Ah, yes. I remember the first time I read Axel Phartuccio’s _One Summer in Blawnox_, too. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2020, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1090 "2020-06-06T20:35:44Z")
“Once upon a time, a man came from the sky and killed my wife.” \*Golden Son, \*by Pierce Brown ---
**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:** [June 7, 2020, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1091 "2020-06-07T21:54:26Z")
“On the second day of January, windswept and bright, a Seminole named Sammy Tigertail dumped a dead body in the Lostmans River.” _Nature Girl_, by Carl Hiaasen ---
**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:** [June 9, 2020, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1092 "2020-06-09T21:45:47Z")
“What does Marie Antoinette have to do with ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’?” _The Greatest Music Stories Never Told: 100 Tales from Music History to Astonish, Bewilder, and Stupefy_, by Rick Beyer. This is one of the best opening lines I’ve read so far this year. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1093 "2020-06-10T01:48:31Z")
“We’d been adrift for eight days when the ninny tried to eat the monkey. I lay in the bow of the boat, under the moonlight, slowly expiring from thirst and heartbreak, while the great beef-brained boy, Drool, made bumbling snatches for the monkey, who was perched on the bowsprit behind my head, screeching and clawing at my jester’s hat, and jingling his bells in a festive manner.” – Christopher Moore _Shakespeare for Squirrels_ Just published last month ---
**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:** [June 10, 2020, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1094 "2020-06-10T03:33:50Z")
It was hot in the cabin of the freighter _Asiatic Dream_. _The Golden Skull_, by John Blaine On March 14, 1954, a young Ethiopian in a rural village lay badly injured. _The Man Called Brown Condor_, by Thomas E Simmons ---
**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:** [June 10, 2020, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1095 "2020-06-10T17:22:42Z")
“There was once a man who got his living by working in the fields.” _Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales_, edited by Gordon Jarvie. (Note that the sentence is from from the story “The Milk-White Dove” by Elizabeth Grierson.) ---
**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:** [June 11, 2020, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1096 "2020-06-11T21:54:30Z")
“When Ned Sweeney leaves the apartment on West Fourth Street it’s about 8:30p.m.” _Receptor_ by Alan Glynn ---
**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:** [June 11, 2020, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1097 "2020-06-11T21:56:24Z")
“The largest horse auction east of the Mississippi was held every Monday deep in Pennsylvania Amish Country.” _The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, The Horse That Inspired a Nation_, by Elizabeth Letts ---
**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:** [June 13, 2020, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1098 "2020-06-13T23:24:07Z")
“A door slammed so hard that the glass prisms on the hall light clashed in alarm.” _Secrecy_, by Belva Plain ---
**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:** [June 14, 2020, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1099 "2020-06-14T06:38:55Z")
“She liked his car.” – _Fair Warning_, by Michael Connelly ---
**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:** [June 14, 2020, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1100 "2020-06-14T21:24:26Z")
“It was a splendid funeral.” _A Curate for All Seasons_, by Fred Secombe ---
**Author:** ![DZedNConfused](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dzednconfused/32/15991_2.png) [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2020, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1101 "2020-06-15T04:46:09Z")
“When Felicia Patterson decided to become a florist, she had no idea she’d end up working with dildos.” —The Vampire’s Last Dance by Deanna Chase ---
**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:** [June 15, 2020, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1103 "2020-06-15T21:14:12Z")
“Gan Brightblade’s last thoughts before his neck was broken were about how happy he was.” _Dragon Precinct_ by Keith R. A. DeCandido [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=54) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=56)