Category Archives: #FirstParas

Great Opening Paragraph 54… ‘The Great Fortune’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Somewhere near Venice, Guy began talking with a heavy, elderly man, a refugee from Germany on his way to Trieste. Guy asked questions. The refugee eagerly replied. Neither seemed aware when the train stopped. In the confusion of a newly created war, the train was stopping every twenty minutes or so. Harriet looked out and saw girders, darker than the twilit darkness, holding an upper rail. Between the girders a couple fumbled and struggled, every now and then thrusting a foot or an elbow out into the light that fell from the carriage windows. Beyond the girders water glinted, reflecting the phosphorescent globes lighting the high rail.”
Oliva ManningFrom ‘The Great Fortune’ by Olivia Manning #1BalkanTrilogy

Try one of these 1st paras & discover a new author:-
‘I’ll Take You There’ by Joyce Carol Oates
‘A Severed Head’ by Iris Murdoch
‘The Bell Jar’ by Sylvia Plath

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE GREAT FORTUNE by Olivia Manning http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mx via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph 53… ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn’t moving at all. But let’s assume it was going up. Merely a guess. Maybe I’d gone up twelve stories, then down three. Maybe I’d circled the globe. How would I know?”
Haruki MurakamiFrom ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ by Haruki Murakami

Read these #FirstParas from other books by Haruki Murakami:-
DANCE DANCE DANCE
NORWEGIAN WOOD
THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Mara and Dann’ by Doris Lessing
‘The Ghost Road’ by Pat Barker
‘The L-Shaped Room’ by Lynn Reid Banks

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD by Haruki Murakami http://wp.me/p5gEM4-m9 via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph 52… ‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“At 3.15 every weekday afternoon, I become anonymous in a crowd of parents and child-minders congregating outside the school gates. To me, waiting for children to come out of school is a quintessential act of motherhood. I see the mums – and the occasional dads – as yellow people. Yellow as the sun, a daffodil, the submarine. But why do we teach children to paint the sun yellow? It’s a deception. The sun is white-hot, brilliant, impossible to see with the naked eye, so why do we confuse brightness with yellow?” Clare MorrallFrom ‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ by Clare Morrall

Read my reviews of these other novels by Clare Morrall:-
AFTER THE BOMBING
NATURAL FLIGHTS OF THE HUMAN MIND
THE LANGUAGE OF OTHERS
THE LAST OF THE GREENWOODS
THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED
THE ROUNDABOUT MAN

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Tipping the Velvet’ by Sarah Waters
‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt
‘Queen Camilla’ by Sue Townsend

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR by Clare Morrall http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mc via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph 51… ‘The Sea, The Sea’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The sea which lies before me as I write glows rather than sparkles in the bland May sunshine. With the tide turning, it leans quietly against the land, almost unflecked by ripples or by foam. Near to the horizon it is a luxurious purple, spotted with regular lines of emerald green. AT the horizon it is indigo. Near to the shore, where my view is framed by rising heaps of humpy yellow rock, there is a band of lighter green, icy and pure, less radiant, opaque however, not transparent. We are in the north, and the bright sunshine cannot penetrate the sea. Where the gentle water taps the rocks there is still a surface skin of colour. The cloudless sky is very pale at the indigo horizon which it lightly pencils in with silver. Its blue gains towards the zenith and vibrates there. But the sky looks cold, even the sun looks cold.”
Iris Murdoch From ‘The Sea, The Sea’ by Iris Murdoch 

Read these other #FirstParas by Iris Murdoch:-
A SEVERED HEAD
THE PHILOSOPHER’S PUPIL

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Impressionist’ by Hari Kunzru
‘These Foolish Things’ by Deborah Moggach
‘Sophie’s World’ by Jostein Gaarder

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE SEA THE SEA by Iris Murdoch http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mi via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph 50… ‘These Foolish Things’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Muriel Donnelly, an old girl in her seventies, was left in a hospital cubicle for forty-eight hours. She had taken a tumble in Peckham High Street and was admitted with cuts, bruises and suspected concussion. Two days she lay in A&E, untended, the blood stiffening on her clothes.” Deborah Moggach From ‘These Foolish Things’ by Deborah Moggach  [now published as ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’]

Read my review of these other novels by Deborah Moggach:-
SOMETHING TO HIDE
THE BLACK DRESS
THE CARER
TULIP FEVER

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘A Farewell to Arms’ by Ernest Hemingway
‘Back When We Were Grown Ups’ by Anne Tyler
‘Time Will Darken It’ by William Maxwell

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THESE FOOLISH THINGS by Deborah Moggach http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mA via @SandraDanby

Great Opening paragraph 49… ‘A Bouquet of Barbed Wire’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“It began to rain as he entered the park, but not hard enough to make him look round for a taxi. Emerging from the station, he had been tempted by a pale gleam of sunshine, sufficient to convince him of the physical benefits of walking. He needed exercise, he had decided, just as he needed fewer cigarettes and less alcohol: it was pathetic how the habits of sloth and self-indulgence crept up unnoticed, along with middle age, that unbecoming state which you did not even recognize until events brought it sharply and unkindly home to you. And now the fine spring rain, for her first day back. He pictured her with painful tenderness, suntanned and shivering, getting ready for college in the unfamiliar flat. Was he too late? Would she still be there by the time he was able to phone? He had left home an hour ahead, under Cassie’s indulgent eyes, to catch an earlier train, feeling he could only telephone properly from the office, yet not knowing what he could possibly find to say that would be sufficiently casual when he finally heard her voice.”
Andrea NewmanFrom ‘A Bouquet of Barbed Wire’ by Andrea Newman

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy 
‘Notes on a Scandal’ by Zoe Heller
‘Armadillo’ by William Boyd

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara A BOUQUET OF BARBED WIRE by Andrea Newman http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mG via @SandraDanby

Great Opening paragraph 48… ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair. Ugwu’s aunty said this in a low voice as they walked on the path. ‘But he is a good man,’ she added. ‘And as long as you work well, you will eat well. You will even eat meat every day.’ She stopped to spit; the saliva left her mouth with a sucking sound and landed on the grass.”
Chimamanda Ngozi AdicheFrom ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Lucky You’ by Carl Hiassen
‘After You’d Gone’ by Maggie O’Farrell
‘Family Album’ by Penelope Lively

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara HALF OF A YELLOW SUN by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mJ via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 47… ‘Enduring Love’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The beginning is simple to mark. We were in sunlight under a turkey oak, partly protected from a strong, gusty wind. I was kneeling on the grass with a corkscrew in my hand, and Clarissa was passing me the bottle – a 1987 Daumas Gassac. This was the moment, this was the pinprick on the time map: I was stretching out my hand, and as the cool neck and the black foil touched my palm, we heard a man’s shout. We turned to look across the field and saw the danger. Next thing, I was running towards it. The transformation was absolute: I don’t recall dropping the corkscrew, or getting to my feet, or making a decision, or hearing the caution Clarissa called after me. What idiocy, to be racing into this story and its labyrinths, sprinting away from our happiness among the fresh spring grasses by the oak. There was the shout again, and a child’s cry, enfeebled by the wind that roared in the tall trees along the hedgerows. I ran faster. And there, suddenly, from different points around the field, four other men were converging on the scene, running like me.”
Ian McEwanFrom ‘Enduring Love’ by Ian McEwan

Read my reviews of these other novels by McEwan:-
MACHINES LIKE ME
NUTSHELL
THE CHILDREN ACT

And try two more McEwan #FirstParas:-
THE CEMENT GARDEN
THE CHILDREN ACT

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Divisadero’ by Michael Ondaatje
‘Possession’ by AS Byatt
‘That They May Face The Rising Sun’ by John McGahern

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara ENDURING LOVE by Ian McEwan http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mr via @SandraDanby

#Books Great opening paragraph 46… ‘After You’d Gone’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The day she would try to kill herself, she realised winter was coming again. She had been lying on her side, her knees drawn up; she’d sighed. And the heat of her breath had vaporised in the cold air of the bedroom. She pushed the air out of her lungs again, watching. Then she did it again, and again. Then she wrenched back the covers and got up. Alice hated winter.” Maggie O’FarrellFrom ‘After You’d Gone’ by Maggie O’Farrell

Here’s my review of THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US also by Maggie O’Farrell

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Collector’ by John Fowles 
‘The Sense of an Ending’ by Julian Barnes 
‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara AFTER YOU’D GONE by Maggie O’Farrell http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mP via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph 45… ‘The Secret Agent’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law. It could be done, because there was very little business at any time, and practically none at all before the evening. Mr Verloc cared but little about his ostensible business. And moreover, his wife was in charge of his brother-in-law.”
Joseph Conrad From ‘The Secret Agent’ by Joseph Conrad 

Here’s the #FirstPara of LORD JIM, also by Joseph Conrad.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Jack Maggs’ by Peter Carey
‘Original Sin’ by PD James
‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad http://wp.me/p5gEM4-eE via @SandraDanby