# 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:** 70
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2021, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1387 "2021-01-11T18:45:08Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Title, author and year, **digs**? Let’s see… (I’m sitting at the kitchen counter reading it as we speak, trying for some escapism to a more optimistic era) _Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #66,_ cover date January, 1963. Author and artist: Generic silver-age “Supes team” (probably Leo Dorfman and Kurt Schaffenberger) > Thanks! No problem… made me feel all literate, like I was reading a real book! ---
**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:** [January 12, 2021, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1388 "2021-01-12T22:14:24Z")
“People can’t jump very high.” _How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems_, by Randall Munroe ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2021, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1389 "2021-01-13T18:47:09Z")
“A strikingly handsome young man in his late twenties swung his big frame down from the stagecoach platform to the wooden sidewalk before Albany’s famed Delevan House.” _Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President_, by Robert J. Rayback ---
**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:** [January 14, 2021, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1390 "2021-01-14T05:21:48Z")
“‘Daddy, I’m tired,’ the little girl in the red pants and the green blouse said fretfully. ‘Can’t we stop?’” _Firestarter_ by Stephen King ---
**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:** [January 15, 2021, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1391 "2021-01-15T01:56:24Z")
“When I was seven, I found a door.” _The Ten Thousand Days of January_, by Alix E. Harrow ---
**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:** [January 17, 2021, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1392 "2021-01-17T06:37:48Z")
“The man in the house was going to kill himself.” – _Hostage_, by Robert Crais ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2021, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1393 "2021-01-17T16:14:46Z")
“His name was Dave Farkus, and he’d recently taken up fly-fishing as a way to meet girls. So far, it hadn’t worked out very well.” _Force of Nature_, by C.J. Box. Joe Pickett series #12. ---
**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:** [January 17, 2021, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1394 "2021-01-17T20:00:34Z")
“It was a hot late-summer morning, a month into my first year as a Duke medical student.” _Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine_, by Damon Tweedy, M.D. ---
**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:** [January 18, 2021, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1395 "2021-01-18T01:28:01Z")
_The comet swam out of the dark. Its light bathed the planet ahead, reflecting from a hemisphere that gleamed a lifeless bone-white._ _Stone Spring_, by Stephen Baxter (italics in the original) ---
**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:** [January 19, 2021, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1396 "2021-01-19T20:08:06Z")
“Look out!” _The Diploids: Eight Science Fiction Stories_ by Katherine MacLean (Note that this sentence is the first in the first story, which is “The Diploids”, a/k/a “Six Fingers”.) ---
**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:** [January 21, 2021, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1397 "2021-01-21T19:18:48Z")
“I have two diaries now.” _Shadow Tag_, by Louise Erdrich ---
**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:** [January 21, 2021, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1398 "2021-01-21T19:38:15Z")
_Once the ice had covered continents. The silence of the world had been profound._ _Bronze Summer_, by Stephen Baxter (italics in the original.) ---
**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:** [January 23, 2021, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1399 "2021-01-23T20:46:54Z")
“Gilbert Roberts, a retired British naval officer turned game designer, stepped onto the gangway leading up to the ocean liner, then immediately stopped.” _A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II_, by Simon Parkin ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2021, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1400 "2021-01-23T21:40:46Z")
“The lights go out.” _The Guest List_, by Lucy Foley ---
**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:** [January 24, 2021, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1401 "2021-01-24T05:01:40Z")
“Beakman and Trenchard could smell the fire – it was still a mile away, but a sick desert wind carried the promise of Hell.” – _Chasing Darkness_, 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:** [January 26, 2021, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1402 "2021-01-26T21:45:46Z")
“My friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, while possessed of one of the most vigorous minds of our generation, and while capable of displaying tremendous feats of physical activity when the situation required it, could nevertheless remain in his armchair perfectly motionless longer than any other human being I have ever encountered.” The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Lyndsay Faye (The sentence is from the first story, “The Case of Colonel Warburton’s Madness”.) ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1403 "2021-01-26T22:46:24Z")
“The rain had just stopped when the convenience store clerk asked the customer not to heat up his urine in the microwave.” -_Tropic of Stupid_, Tim Dorsey (Serge Storms #24) ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2021, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1404 "2021-01-28T14:54:02Z")
“Washington, D.C., March 4, 1857: A slender man in black suit, wearing black gloves with black crepe wrapped around his silk hat anxiously awaits the signal from the White House doorman that his carriage has arrived.” -_The Expatriation of Franklin Pierce - The Story of a President and the Civil War_, by Garry Boulard ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2021, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1405 "2021-01-29T01:13:23Z")
“On a trip to Baltimore in 1919 when Pauli Murray was eight, her aunt, namesake, and foster mother, Pauline Fitzgerald Dame, took advantage of being in a big city to buy her a winter outfit.” _Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray_, by Rosalind Rosenberg. ---
**Author:** ![AKAChristopher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/71e660/32.png) [@AKAChristopher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AKAChristopher)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2021, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1406 "2021-01-29T06:13:29Z")
From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that—a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=69) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=71)