Category Archives: #FirstParas

Great Opening Paragraph 125… ‘Beloved’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had runaway by the time they were thirteen years old – as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the doorsill.”
Toni MorrisonFrom ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Ashes of London’ by Andrew Taylor 
‘The Garden of Evening Mists’ by Tan Twan Eng 
‘Queen Camilla’ by Sue Townsend

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara BELOVED by Toni Morrison https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4ec via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 124… ‘The Camomile Lawn’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Helena Cuthbertson picked up the crumpled Times by her sleeping husband and went to the flower room to iron it.”
Mary WesleyFrom ‘The Camomile Lawn’ by Mary Wesley

Read my reviews of these novels by Mary Wesley:-
JUMPING THE QUEUE
THE CAMOMILE LAWN

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ by Ernest Hemingway 
‘A Month in the Country’ by JL Carr
‘Back When We Were Grown-Ups’ by Anne Tyler 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE CAMOMILE LAWN by Mary Wesley https://wp.me/p5gEM4-48b via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 123… ‘The Ashes of London’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The noise was the worst. Not the crackling of the flames, not the explosions and the clatter of falling buildings, not the shouting and the endless beating of drums and the groans and cries of the crowd: it was the howling of the fire. It roared its rage. It was the voice of the Great Beast itself.”
Andrew TaylorFrom ‘The Ashes of London’ by Andrew Taylor #1FIREOFLONDON

Read my reviews of the books in this series:
THE ASHES OF LONDON #1FIREOFLONDON
THE FIRE COURT #2FIREOFLONDON
THE KING’S EVIL #3FIREOFLONDON
THE LAST PROTECTOR #4FIREOFLONDON
THE ROYAL SECRET #5FIREOFLONDON
THE SHADOWS OF LONDON #6FIREOFLONDON

And a World War Two novel by the same author:-
THE SECOND MIDNIGHT

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Personal’ by Lee Child
‘Back When We Were Grown Ups’ by Anne Tyler 
‘The Sense of an Ending’ by Julian Barnes 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE ASHES OF LONDON by @AndrewJRTaylor https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Jn via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 122… ‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’ #amreading #FirstPara

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‘Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoleague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore.’ John BoyneFrom ‘The Heart’s Invisible Furies’ by John Boyne

Here’s my review of THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES…
… and read my reviews of these other novels by John Boyne:-
A HISTORY OF LONELINESS
A LADDER TO THE SKY
A TRAVELLER AT THE GATES OF WISDOM
ALL THE BROKEN PLACES
STAY WHERE YOU ARE & THEN LEAVE
WATER #1ELEMENTS
EARTH #2ELEMENTS

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Garden of Evening Mists’ by Tan Twan Eng 
‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan
‘Couples’ by John Updike

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES by @JohnBoyneBooks https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Jk via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 121… ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road and far down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream and the falling water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight.”
Ernest HemingwayFrom ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ by Ernest Hemingway

And here are the #FirstParas from other novels by Hemingway:-
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Queen Camilla’ by Sue Townsend
‘Sacred Hearts’ by Sarah Dunant
‘Jack Maggs’ by Peter Carey

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS by Ernest Hemingway https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3JG  via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 120… ‘The Pursuit of Love’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“There is a photograph in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh. The table is situated, as it was, is now, and ever shall be, in the hall, in front of a huge open fire of logs. Over the chimney-piece plainly visible in the photograph hangs an entrenching tool, with which, in 1915, Uncle Matthew had whacked to death eight Germans one by one as they crawled out of a dug-out. It is still covered with blood and hairs, an object of fascination to us as children. In the photograph Aunt Sadie’s face, always beautiful, appears strangely round, her hair strangely fluffy, and her clothes strangely dowdy, but it is unmistakably she who sits there with Robin, in oceans of lace, lolling in on knee. She seems uncertain what to do with his head, and the presence of Nanny waiting to take him away is felt though not seen. The other children, between Louisa’s eleven and Matt’s two years, sit around the table in party dresses or frilly bibs, holding cups or mugs according to age, all of them gazing at the camera with large eyes opened wide by the flash, and all looking as if butter would not melt in their round pursed-up mouths. There they are, held like flies, in the amber of that moment – click goes the camera and on goes life; the minutes, the days, the years, the decades, taking them further and further from that happiness and promise of youth, from the hopes Aunt Sadie must have had for them, and from the dreams they dreamed for themselves. I often think there is nothing quite so poignantly sad as old family groups.” Nancy MitfordFrom ‘The Pursuit of Love’ by Nancy Mitford

Read my reviews of these novels by Nancy Mitford:-
CHRISTMAS PUDDING
HIGHLAND FLING
LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE
PIGEON PIE
THE BLESSING
THE PURSUIT OF LOVE
WIGS ON THE GREEN

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Long Drop’ by Louisa Mina 
‘Original Sin’ by PD James 
‘Lucky You’ by Carl Hiassen 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE PURSUIT OF LOVE by Nancy Mitford https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3JC via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 119… ‘Peter Pan’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up. And the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!” This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.”
JM BarrieFrom ‘Peter Pan’ by JM Barrie

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘A Month in the Country’ by JL Carr 
‘These Foolish Things’ by Deborah Moggach 
‘I Capture the Castle’ by Dodie Smith

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara PETER PAN by JM Barrie https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Jw via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 118… ‘The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“In the middle of the lonesome town, at the back of John Street, in the third house from the end, there is a little room. For this small bracket in the long paragraph of the street’s history, it belongs to Eneas McNulty. All about him the century has just begun, a century some of which he will endure, but none of which will belong to him. There are all the broken continents of the earth, there is the town park named after Father Moran, with its forlorn roses – all equal to Eneas at five, and nothing his own, but that temporary little room. The dark linoleum curls at the edge where it meets the dark wall. There is a pewter jug on the bedside table that likes to hoard the sun and moon on its curve. There is a tall skinny wardrobe with an ancient hatbox on top, dusty, with or without a hat, he does not know. A room perfectly attuned to him, perfectly tempered, with the long spinning of time perfect and patterned in the bright windowframe, the sleeping of sunlight on the dirty leaves of the maple, the wars of the sparrows and the blue tits for the net of suet his mother ties in the tree, the angry rain that puts its narrow fingers in through the putty, the powerful sudden seaside snow that never sits, the lurch of the dark and the utter merriment of mornings.”
Sebastian BarryFrom ‘The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty’ by Sebastian Barry

Read my reviews of these novels by Sebastian Barry:-
A LONG LONG WAY
A THOUSAND MOONS
DAYS WITHOUT END
OLD GOD’S TIME
THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton
‘Such a Long Journey’ by Rohinton Mistry
‘Sea Glass’ by Anita Shreve

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY by Sebastian Barry  https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Js via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 116… ‘The Slaves of Solitude’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“London, the crouching monster, like every other monster has to breathe, and breathe it does in its own obscure, malignant way. Its vital oxygen is composed of suburban working men and women of all kinds, who every morning are sucked up through an infinitely complicated respiratory apparatus of trains and termini into the mighty congested lungs, held there for a number of hours, and then, in the evening, exhaled violently through the same channels.”
Patrick HamiltonFrom ‘The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton

Read my reviews of THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE and HANGOVER SQUARE, both by Patrick Hamilton.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Reading Turgenev’ by William Trevor
‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan
‘The Ghost Road’ by Pat Barker

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE SLAVES OF SOLITUDE by Patrick Hamilton via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2AD

Great Opening Paragraph 115… ‘The Garden of Evening Mists’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Not many people would have known of him before the war, but I did. He had left his home on the rim of the sunrise to come to the central highlands of Malaya. I was seventeen years old when my sister first told me about him. A decade would pass before I travelled up to the mountains to see him.”
Tan Twan EngFrom ‘The Garden of Evening Mists’ by Tan Twan Eng

Read my reviews of these novels by Tan Twan Eng:-
THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS
THE GIFT OF RAIN
THE HOUSE OF DOORS

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Armadillo’ by William Boyd
‘To Have and Have Not’ by Ernest Hemingway
‘Super-Cannes’ by JG Ballard

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #First Para THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS by Tan Twan Eng via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2AL