What is the first sentence from the book you are currently reading?

Cafe Society
3031

The first thing the voice said to Jess was: *does your mother know you’re a pengkid?

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

I just wanted to say that this was an excellent book and I’d really recommend it if it’s up your alley. Basically a closeted and jobless young woman moves back to Malaysia with her parents and her dead grandmother started talking to her. And things go sideways from there. A fascinating glimpse into the country and religion.

*a term or a slang used in Malaysia to refer to lesbians in the butch category. *

3032

“The Texas sun reflected off the aircraft lined up on the flight line, and Hazel raised her hand to block the blinding glare.”

American Flygirl, by Susan Tate Ankeny

3033

“Working for paranoids isn’t the easiest or the safest way to make a living, but it paid well.”

The Company Man, by Edward M. Lerner

“Once there was and once there was not a poor stonecutter who lived on the faraway shores of the Black Sea, in a little town called Trabzon.”

The Stone of Destiny: Tales from Turkey, by Elspeth Tavaci

(Note that this is a story collection, and the above sentence is from the first story, “The Stone of Destiny”.)

3034

“Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic.”

– The Art of Rhetoric, by Aristotle

3035

“Now that I am approaching the final stages of life, I find myself thinking more and more about the kind of world we have made for our children.”

Around Distant Suns: Nine Stories Inspired by Research from the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science, edited by Emma Johanna Puranen

(Note: The above sentence is from the first story, “The Stripped Core”, by Colin Bramwell.)

3036

“It was 1699, on a Thursday in the second week of the coldest February Amsterdam had experienced for five or six years.”

Silk: A World History, by Aarathi Prasad

3037

“No one stays forever. On the morning of her disappearance Lilia woke early, and lay still for a moment on the bed.”

Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel

“The Big Sleep doesn’t. It never even nods.”

The Annotated Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, ed. by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson and Anthony Dean Rizzuto

“Franz Stigler buried his hands in the pockets of his long, tattered wool coat as he shuffled along the streets of the small, bombed-out city.”

A Higher Call by Adam Makos

“Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered.”

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

3038

“The heads of two vast, unblinking gorgons stare out between the stone columns of Istanbul’s palatial underground cistern.”

Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones, by Hettie Judah.

3039

“Fancy a pint?”

3 SheetsTo The Wind: One Man’s Quest For the Meaning of Beer, Pete Brown

3040

“I’ll know it’s working when he starts to scream.”

They Never Learn, by Layne Fargo

3041

“Movie stars!” he growls, and hurls the magazine across the office.

By Any Other Fame, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg. (Note: This is a collection of “What if?” stories about famous people who did something else in another universe. The quote is from “Farewell, My Buddy” by Barbara Delaplace, and is about Humphrey Bogart, PI.)

3042

“Let’s face it: humans are weird.”

First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human, by Jeremy DeSilva

3043

“When the Madison Railroad laid the tracks at the base of Prospect Hill, there were no roads cleaving the thickly forested slopes and no houses overlooking the distant river.”

The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill, by Rowenna Miller

3044

“The phone call came late one August afternoon as my older sister Gracie and I sat out on the back porch shucking the sweet corn into the big tin buckets.”

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen

3045

“There was a rising murmur of voices in the entranceway of Sagamore Hill’s great North Room. Theodore Roosevelt and his advisors ignored it.” Black Chamber, by S. M. Stirling

3046

Prologue:
On July 2, 1775, when George Washington rode into Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take command of the Continental Army, he expected to be attacked at any moment by the British soldiers camped across the Charles River in Boston and commanded by Gen. Thomas Gage.

Chap 1 (1763)
Upper Ohio Valley warriors took the Battle of the Monongahela as a signal to attack colonists everywhere west of the Appalachian Mountains, killing many, capturing still more, and chasing survivors back east into Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.

Liberty is Sweet, by Woody Holton


My heart beat something fierce as the bell on the door jingled.

Flipped for Murder, by Maddie Day

3047

“I’ll know it’s working when he starts to scream.”

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

3048

“I pull up the blind and the sunshine streams through the window.”

Existence is Elsewhen, by John Gribbin, Rhys Hughes, et al.

Note: The above book is a science fiction anthology. The sentence is from the first story, “Inside and Out (Trademark) V. 5” by J. R. Christy.

3049

“I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car.”

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, by Trevor Noah

3050

“Monday, October 9, 1933, began as a gray day in Seattle.”

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown