# 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:** 81
**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:** [May 30, 2021, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1608 "2021-05-30T00:37:09Z")
_**September, 1633 Grantville**_ “Okay,” said Mike Stearns, “we’ve thrashed out what can and can’t be done right now in terms of trade with the Ottomans, the Mughals, and even the Venetians.” _1636: The China Venture_, by Eric Flint and Iver P Cooper ---
**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:** [May 30, 2021, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1609 "2021-05-30T02:29:05Z")
“Sheridan Street in Jamaica Plain goes uphill from Center Street for about two hundred yards, crests, and heads down toward Chestnut Avenue. It’s a narrow street, lined with two- and three-family clapboard houses.” _Crimson Joy_ by Robert B. Parker ---
**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:** [May 30, 2021, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1610 "2021-05-30T13:01:38Z")
“Howard Phillips Lovecraft of Providence (1890-1937) was a man endowed with proofs that he was undesirable.” _Benchmarks Continued: F&SF “Books” Columns 1975-1982_, by Algis Budrys ---
**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 1, 2021, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1611 "2021-06-01T04:00:13Z")
“On a dreary summer’s day, Colonel Aleksandr Tretetsky of the Soviet Military Prosecutor’s Office arrived at his latest worksite: a series of mass graves in a birch forest twenty miles outside of the city of Kalinin. He and his assistants began the morning digging, searching the earth for artifacts of the totalitarian regime: bullet-shattered skulls, worm-eaten boots, scraps of Polish military uniforms.” _Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire_ by David Remnick “My first personal contact with _Star Trek_ was in August, 1966. At the time I was employed by an advertising agency in Phoenix, Arizona.” _The Making of Star Trek_ by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry “I have often reflected upon the strange series of circumstances that led me to my long association with one of the most singular and remarkable figures of my age.” _The House of Silk_ by Anthony Horwitz ---
**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 1, 2021, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1612 "2021-06-01T23:05:18Z")
“My name is Robinette Broadhead, in spite of which I am male.” _Gateway_, by Frederik Pohl ---
**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, 2021, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1613 "2021-06-03T20:49:52Z")
“Lenses do not appear to have been in widespread use as magnifiers or vision aids in the ancient world.” _How the Ray Gun Got Its Zap: Odd Excursions Into Optics_, by Stephen R. Wilk ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2021, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1614 "2021-06-05T13:15:25Z")
“Trailing blood in the snow, the largely shoeless army marched to the boats at night in the midst of the storm as sleet pelted their bodies.” \*_The Indispensables - The Diverse Soldier-Mariners Who Shaped the Country, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delaware_ (Patrick K. O’Donnell) ---
**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, 2021, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1615 "2021-06-05T19:13:30Z")
“This was Mrs. Peterkin.” _The Peterkin Papers_ by Lucretia P. Hale ---
**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 6, 2021, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1616 "2021-06-06T05:13:45Z")
“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing; – that not only the production of a rational Being was concern’d in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind; – and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: – Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, – I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.” – _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_, by Laurence Sterne ---
**Author:** ![MikeF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MikeF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeF)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2021, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1617 "2021-06-06T12:47:00Z")
“Our meeting was not contrived.” _Agent Running in the Field_ - John Le Carre, one of my favorite authors. ---
**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 6, 2021, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1618 "2021-06-06T14:31:06Z")
“Amy Powers, a young lyricist at the start of a promising career, picked up the New York Times on September 20, 1991, and went straight to reporter Alex Witchel’s influential Friday theater column.” _Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway_, by Michael Riedel ---
**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:** [June 6, 2021, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1619 "2021-06-06T19:49:07Z")
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cole, this has nothing to do with you.” The Monkey’s Raincoat, by Robert Crais ---
**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 7, 2021, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1621 "2021-06-07T16:29:05Z")
_**Factory in Poltz, Russia February 1636**_ Stefan Andreevich wiped off the sweat, then motioned for Nestor to turn the crank. _1637: The Volga Rules_ , by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff, and Paula Goodlett ---
**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 8, 2021, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1622 "2021-06-08T23:22:16Z")
“Libby picks up the letter off the doormat.” _The Family Upstairs_, by Lisa Jewell ---
**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, 2021, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1623 "2021-06-09T18:40:59Z")
“I play with Grand Central Corporation.” _Prince: The Last Interview, and Other Conversations_, by Prince et al. ---
**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 9, 2021, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1624 "2021-06-09T19:59:53Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > “I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing; – that not only the production of a rational Being was concern’d in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind; – and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: – Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, – I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.” > > – _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_, by Laurence Sterne Now _that’s_ an opening sentence… which could easily have been four or five! ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2021, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1625 "2021-06-09T21:48:41Z")
“Plush dolls of Pinky and the Brain overhung Charlie’s monitor, their bottoms fixed in place with Velcro tabs, toes dangling over the video screen.” _This Is Not a Game_ by Walter Jon Williams ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2021, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1626 "2021-06-10T06:07:02Z")
“In retrospect, it seemed an odd way to start a war.” _Debt of Honor_, Tom Clancy. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2021, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1627 "2021-06-10T06:10:42Z")
“All the sheep were chewing cud when it happened.” ---
**Author:** ![MikeF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MikeF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeF)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2021, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1628 "2021-06-10T17:56:58Z")
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