Tag Archives: first page

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
WHAT WE CAN KNOW

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

#Books Great Opening paragraph 44… ‘The Hunger Games’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course she did. This is the day of the reaping.” Suzanne CollinsFrom ‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins

Read my reviews of the five books of the Underland Chronicles, also by Suzanne Collins:-
GREGOR THE OVERLANDER #1UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE PROPHECY OF BANE #2UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE CURSE OF THE WARMBLOODS #3UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE MARKS OF SECRET #4UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE CODE OF CLAW #5UNDERLANDCHRONICLES

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Brighton Rock’ by Graham Greene
‘The Last Tycoon’ by F Scott Fitzgerald
‘Tipping the Velvet’ by Sarah Waters

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4bk via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 43… ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed, executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. Oedipa stood in the living-room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible. But this did not work. She thought of a hotel room in Mazatlán whose door had just been slammed, it seemed forever, waking up two hundred birds down in the lobby, a sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west; a dry, disconsolate tune from the fourth movement of the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra; a whitewashed bust of Jay Gould that Pierce kept over the bed on a shelf so narrow for it she’d always had the hovering fear it would someday topple on them. Was that how he’d died, she wondered, among dreams, crushed by the only icon in the house? That only made her laugh, out loud and helpless: You’re so sick, Oedipa, she told herself, or the room, which knew.”
Thomas PynchonFrom ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ by Thomas Pynchon

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The English Patient’ by Michael Ondaatje
‘The Secret Agent’ by Joseph Conrad
‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ by Haruki Murakami

And if you’d like to share a link:
#Books #FirstPara THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pynchon https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4bl via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 42… ‘The English Patient’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill towards the house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the house.
In the kitchen she doesn’t pause but goes through it and climbs the stairs which are in darkness and then continues along the long hall, at the end of which is a wedge of light from an open door.
She turns into the room which is another garden – this one made up of trees and bowers painted over its walls and ceiling. The man lies on the bed, his body exposed to the breeze, and he turns his head slowly towards her as she enters.”
Michael Ondaatje From ‘The English Patient’ by Michael Ondaatje 

Read the #FirstPara of DIVISADERO, also by Michael Ondaatje.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘A Change of Climate’ by Hilary Mantel
‘A Farewell to Arms’ by Ernest Hemingway
‘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 ENGLISH PATIENT by Michael Ondaatje http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mS via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 41… ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Early every morning they would come out from the house where they lived and walk arm in arm down the street to work. The two friends were very different. The one who always steered the way was an obese and dreamy Greek. In the summer he would come out wearing a yellow or green polo shirt stuffed sloppily into his trousers in front and hanging loose behind. When it was colder he wore over this a shapeless grey sweater. His face was round and oily, with half-closed eyelids and lips that curved in a gently, stupid smile. The other mute was tall. His eyes had a quick, intelligent expression. He was always immaculate and very soberly dressed.”
Carson McCullers From ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant’ by Anne Tyler
‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ by Clare Morrall
‘Sacred Hearts’ by Sarah Dunant

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4b9 via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph 40… ‘Norwegian Wood’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“I was 37 then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to Hamburg airport. Cold November rains drenched the earth, lending everything the gloomy air of a Flemish landscape: the ground crew in waterproofs, a flag atop a squat airport building, a BMW billboard. So – Germany again.”
Haruki Murakami From ‘Norwegian Wood’ by Haruki Murakami 

Read these #FirstParas from other books by Haruki Murakami:-
DANCE DANCE DANCE
HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD
THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Room’ by Emma Donoghue
‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov
‘A Passage to India’ by EM Forster

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara NORWEGIAN WOOD by Haruki Murakami #books https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4b8 via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 39… ‘The God of Small Things’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.”
Arundhati RoyFrom ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Spies’ by Michael Frayn
‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ by Thomas Hardy
‘American Psycho’ by Brett Easton Ellis

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS by Arundhati Roy https://wp.me/p5gEM4-n7 via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 38… ‘A Severed Head’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“’You’re sure she doesn’t know?’ said Georgie.
‘Antonia? About us? Certain.’
Georgie was silent for a moment and then said, ‘Good.’ That curt ‘Good’ was characteristic of her, typical of a toughness which had, to my mind, more to do with honesty than with ruthlessness. I liked the dry way in which she accepted our relationship. Only with a person so eminently sensible could I have deceived my wife.”
Iris Murdoch From ‘A Severed Head’ by Iris Murdoch 

Try these other #FirstParas by Iris Murdoch:-
‘The Sea The Sea’
‘The Philosopher’s Pupil’

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Nineteen Minutes’ by Jodi Picoult
‘1984’ by George Orwell
‘The Cement Garden’ by Ian McEwan

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara A SEVERED HEAD by Iris Murdoch https://wp.me/p5gEM4-ml via @SandraDanby