“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.”
From ‘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

“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.”
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

“You know how it is there early in the morning in Havana with the bums still asleep against the walls of the buildings; before even the ice wagons come by with ice for the bars? Well, we came across the square from the dock to the Pearl of San Francisco Café to get coffee and there was only one beggar awake in the square and he was getting a drink out of the fountain. But when we got inside the café and sat down, there were three of them waiting for us.”
From ‘To Have and Have Not’ by Ernest Hemingway

And here are the #FirstParas from other novels by Hemingway:-
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell 
‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding 
‘Possession’ by AS Byatt 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT by Ernest Hemingway http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vm via @SandraDanby

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream, and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.”
From ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Ernest Hemingway

And here are the #FirstParas from other novels by Hemingway:
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘I’ll Take You There’ by Joyce Carol Oates
‘The Impressionist’ by Hari Kunzru
‘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 THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Ernest Hemingway http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Us via @SandraDanby