Tag Archives: first page

Great Opening Paragraph 98… ‘Armadillo’ #amreading #FirstPara

12 Replies

“In these times of ours – and we don’t need to be precise about the exact date – but, anyway, very early in the year, a young man not much over thirty, tall – six feet plus an inch or two – with ink-dark hair and a serious-looking, fine-featured but pallid face, went to keep a business appointment and discovered a hanged man.” William Boyd From ‘Armadillo’ by William Boyd 

Try this #FirstPara from A GOOD MAN IN AFRICA also by William Boyd.

Read my reviews of these other books by William Boyd:-
ANY HUMAN HEART
LOVE IS BLIND
NAT TATE: AN AMERICAN ARTIST 1928-1960
ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS
SWEET CARESS
THE BLUE AFTERNOON
THE DREAMS OF BETHANY MELLMOTH
TRIO
WAITING FOR SUNRISE

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘A Change of Climate’ by Hilary Mantel
‘Jack Maggs’ by Peter Carey
‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

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

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

2 Replies

“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

Great Opening Paragraph 96… ‘The Secret History’ #amreading #FirstPara

4 Replies

“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
Donna Tartt From ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt 

Read my review of THE GOLDFINCH by Donna Tartt.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Herzog’ by Saul Bellow
‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote
‘The Murder Room’ by PD James

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qp

Great Opening Paragraph 95… ‘Perfume’ #amreading #FirstPara

1 Reply

“In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages. His story will be told here. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name – in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations, de Sade’s, for instance, or Stain-Just’s, Fouché’s, Bonaparte’s, etc. – has been forgotten today, it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immortality, or, more succinctly, wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of smell.”
Patrick Süskind From ‘Perfume’ by Patrick Süskind 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Mara and Dann’ by Doris Lessing
‘A Bouquet of Barbed Wire’ by Andrea Newman
‘The Last Tycoon’ by F Scott Fitzgerald

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

Great Opening Paragraph 94… ‘Tipping the Velvet’ #amreading #FirstPara

4 Replies

“Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? If you have, you will remember it. Some quirk of the Kentish coastline makes Whitstable natives – as they are properly called – the largest and the juiciest, the savouriest yet the subtlest, oysters in the whole of England. Whitstable oysters are, quite rightly, famous. The French, who are known for their sensitive palates, regularly cross the Channel for them; they are shipping, in barrels of ice, to the dining-tables of Hamburg and Berlin. Why, the King himself, I heard, makes special trips to Whitstable with Mrs Keppel, to eat oyster suppers in a private hotel; and as for the old Queen – she dined on a native a day [or so they say] till the day she died.”
Sarah WatersFrom ‘Tipping the Velvet’ by Sarah Waters

Here are two more #FirstParas by Sarah Waters:-
AFFINITY
THE PAYING GUESTS

Read my review of THE PAYING GUESTS.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Mara and Dann’ by Doris Lessing
‘Lucky You’ by Carl Hiasson
‘Middlesex’ by Jeffrey Eugenides

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara TIPPING THE VELVET by Sarah Waters http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2lj via @SandraDanby 

Great Opening Paragraph 92… ‘Back When we were Grown-Ups’ #amreading #FirstPara

5 Replies

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

She was fifty-three years old by then – a grandmother. Wide and soft and dimpled, with two short wings of dry, fair hair flaring almost horizontally from a center part. Laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. A loose and colourful style of dress edging dangerously close to Bag Lady.

Give her credit: most people her age would say it was too late to make any changes. What’s done is done, they would say. No use trying to alter things at this late date.

It did occur to Rebecca to say that. But she didn’t.”
Anne TylerFrom ‘Back When We Were Grown-Ups’ by Anne Tyler

Here’s the #FirstPara of DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT, also by Anne Tyler.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Anne Tyler:-
A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD 
CLOCK DANCE
FRENCH BRAID
LADDER OF YEARS
REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
VINEGAR GIRL

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Couples’ by John Updike 
‘Jack Maggs’ by Peter Carey 
‘Norwegian Wood’ by Haruki Murakami 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWN-UPS by Anne Tyler http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Tg via @SandraDanby 

Great Opening Paragraph 91… ‘Before I Go to Sleep’ #amreading #FirstPara

Leave a reply

“The bedroom is strange. Unfamiliar. I don’t know where I am, how I came to be here. I don’t know how I’m going to get home.”
SJ WatsonFrom ‘Before I Go to Sleep’ by SJ Watson

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis 
‘Sea Glass’ by Anita Shreve 
‘I’ll Take You There’ by Joyce Carol Oates 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP by SJ Watson http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vw via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 90… ‘Queen Camilla’ #amreading #FirstPara

2 Replies

“Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, stood smoking a cheap cigarette on the back doorstep of Number Sixteen Hell Close. It was a cold afternoon in late summer. Occasionally she turned to watch her husband, Charles, the Prince of Wales, clattering the luncheon pots in the red washing-up bowl he’d bought on impulse that morning from the ‘Everything A Pound’ shop. He had borne the bowl home and presented it to her as though it were a precious religious artefact plundered from a sacked city.”
Sue Townsend From ‘Queen Camilla’ by Sue Townsend 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote 
‘The Collector’ by John Fowles 
‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara QUEEN CAMILLA by Sue Townsend #books http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vr via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 89… ‘The Children Act’ #amreading #FirstPara

4 Replies

“London. Trinity term one week old. Implacable June weather. Fiona Maye, a High Court judge, at home on Sunday evening, supine on a chaise longue, staring past her stockinged feet towards the end of the room, towards a partial view of recessed bookshelves by the fireplace and, to one side, by a tall window, a tiny Renoir lithograph of a bather, bought by her thirty years ago for fifty pounds. Probably a fake. Below it, centred on a round walnut table, a blue vase. No memory of how she came by it. Nor when she last put flowers in it. The fireplace not lit in a year. Blackened raindrops falling irregularly into the grate with a ticking sound against balled-up yellowing newsprint. A Bokhara rug spread on wide polished floorboards. Looming at the edge of vision, a baby grand piano bearing silver-framed family photos on its deep black whine. On the floor by the chaise lounge, within her reach, the draft of a judgment. And Fiona was on her back, wishing all this stuff at the bottom of the sea.”
Ian McEwan From ‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan 

Here’s my review of THE CHILDREN ACT and these other McEwan novels:-
MACHINES LIKE ME
NUTSHELL

And try two more McEwan #FirstParas:-
ENDURING LOVE
THE CEMENT GARDEN

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Sea, The Sea’ by Iris Murdoch 
‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins 
‘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 THE CHILDREN ACT by Ian McEwan http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vp via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 88… ‘To Have and Have Not’ #amreading #FirstPara

4 Replies

“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.”
Ernest HemingwayFrom ‘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