Tag Archives: am reading

Great Opening Paragraph 108… ‘The Corrections’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after guest of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of the gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat.”
Jonathan FranzenFrom ‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen

Read my review of PURITY, also by Jonathan Franzen.
And here’s the #FirstPara of FREEDOM.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Collector’ by John Fowles
‘Room’ by Emma Donoghue
‘The Crying of Lot 49’ by Thomas Pynchon

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE CORRECTIONS by Jonathan Franzen http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2xx via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 106… ‘A Month in the Country’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“When the train stopped I stumbled out, nudging and kicking the kitbag before me. Back down the platform someone was calling despairingly, ‘Oxgodby… Oxgodby.’ No-one offered a hand, so I climbed back into the compartment, stumbling over ankles and feet to get at the fish-bass (on the rack) and my folding camp-bed (under the seat). If this was a fair sample of northerners, then this was enemy country so I wasn’t too careful where I put my boots. I heard one chap draw in his breath and another grunt: neither spoke.’
JL CarrFrom ‘A Month in the Country’ by JL Carr

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Before I Go To Sleep’ by SJ Watson
‘Spies’ by Michael Frayn
‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY by JL Carr via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2xo

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Great Opening Paragraph 105… ‘The Long Drop’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Monday 2 December. He knows too much to be an honest man but says he wants to help. He says he can get the gun for them. William Watt is keen to meet him. Laurence Dowdall has already met Peter Manuel several times. He never wants to see him again.”
Denise MinaFrom ‘The Long Drop’ by Denise Mina

Read my review of THE LONG DROP.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy 
‘American Psycho’ by Brett Easton Ellis
‘Dance Dance Dance’ by Haruki Murakami

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE LONG DROP by Denise Mina via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2pN

Great Opening Paragraph 104… ‘The Rainmaker’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“My decision to become a lawyer was irrevocably sealed when I realized by father hated the legal profession. I was a young teenager, clumsy, embarrassed by my awkwardness, frustrated with life, horrified of puberty, about to be shipped off to a military school by my father for insubordination. He was an ex-Marine who believed boys should live by the crack of the whip. I’d developed a quick tongue and an aversion to discipline, and his solution was simply to send me away. It was years before I forgave him.”
John Grisham From ‘The Rainmaker’ by John Grisham 

Read these #FirstParas also by John Grisham:-
THE LAST JUROR
THE PELICAN BRIEF

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Death in Summer’ by William Trevor
‘Lord Jim’ by Joseph Conrad
‘A Severed Head’ by Iris Murdoch

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE RAINMAKER by @JohnGrisham http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vd via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 103… ‘The Guest Cat’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“At first it looked like low-lying ribbons of clouds just floating there, but then the clouds would be blown a little bit to the right and next to the left.”
Takashi Hiraide From ‘The Guest Cat’ by Takashi Hiraide 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Couples’ by John Updike
‘Queen Camilla’ by Sue Townsend
‘Jamrach’s Menagerie’ by Carol Birch

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE GUEST CAT by Takashi Hiraide http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2xk via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 102… ‘The Cement Garden’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way. And but for the fact that it coincided with a landmark in my own physical growth, his death seemed insignificant compared with what followed. My sisters and I talked about him the week after he died, and Sue certainly cried when the ambulance men tucked him up in a bright-red blanket and carried him away. He was a frail, irascible, obsessive man with yellowish hands and face. I am only including the little story of his death to explain how my sisters and I came to have such a large quantity of cement at our disposal.”
Ian McEwan From ‘The Cement Garden’ 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:-
ENDURING LOVE
THE CHILDREN ACT

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Rebecca’ by Daphne du Maurier
‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ by Philippa Gregory
‘Freedom’ by Jonathan Franzen

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE CEMENT GARDEN by Ian McEwan http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2se via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 101… ‘A Farewell to Arms’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterwards the road bare and white except for the leaves.”
Ernest Hemingway From ‘A Farewell to Arms’ by Ernest Hemingway 

And here are the #FirstParas from other novels by Hemingway:-
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Jamrach’s Menagerie’ by Carol Birch
‘Slaughterhouse 5’ by Kurt Vonnegut Jr
‘Sacred Hearts’ by Sarah Dunant

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2s3 via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 100… ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly – Tom’s Aunt Polly , she is – and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.”
Mark TwainFrom ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ by Mark Twain

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Diary of an Ordinary Woman’ by Margaret Forster
‘A Passage to India’ by EM Forster
‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ by Clare Morrall

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qJ via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 99… ‘Couples’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“‘What did you make of the new couple?’
The Hanemas, Piet and Angela, were undressing. Their bed-chamber was a low-ceilinged colonial room whose woodwork was painted the shade of off-white commercially called eggshell. A spring midnight pressed on the cold windows.”
John Updike From ‘Couples’ by John Updike 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Go-Between’ by LP Hartley
‘Vanishing Acts’ by Jodi Picoult
‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara COUPLES by John Updike http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qE via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 97… ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.”
Mark Haddon From ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by Mark Haddon 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Brighton Rock’ by Graham Greene
‘Spies’ by Michael Frayn
‘Bel Canto’ by Anne Patchett

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME by Mark Haddon http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qu via @SandraDanby