Tag Archives: first page

Great opening paragraph 67… ‘American Psycho’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Abandon all hope ye who enter here is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Misérables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn’t seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, “Be My Baby” on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.”
Bret Easton Ellis From ‘American Psycho’ by Brett Easton Ellis

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘After You’d Gone’ by Maggie O’Farrell
‘To Have and Have Not’ by Ernest Hemingway
‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara AMERICAN PSYCHO by Brett Easton Ellis via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-10w

 

Great Opening Paragraph 66… ‘Animal Farm’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Mr Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicking off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs Jones was already snoring.”
George OrwellFrom ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell

Read this #FirstPara from 1984, also by George Orwell.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Queen Camilla’ by Sue Townsend
‘Middlesex’ by Jeffrey Eugenides
‘Herzog’ by Saul Bellow

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-kL

Great opening paragraph 65… ‘A Passage to India’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Except for the Marabar Caves – and they are twenty miles off – the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary. Edged rather than washed by the River Ganges, it trails for a couple of miles along the bank, scarcely distinguishable from the rubbish it deposits so freely. There are no bathing-steps on the river front, as the Ganges happens not to be holy here; indeed there is no river front, and bazaars shut out the wide and shifting panorama of the stream. The streets are mean, the temples ineffective, and though a few fine houses exist they are hidden away in gardens or down alleys whose filth deters all but the invited guest. Chandrapore was never large or beautiful, but two hundred years ago it lay on the road between Upper India, then imperial, and the sea, and the fine houses date from that period. The zest for decoration stopped in the eighteenth century, nor was it ever democratic. In the bazaars there is no painting and scarcely any carving. The very wood seems made of mud, the inhabitants of mud moving. So abased, so monotonous is everything that meets the eye, that when the Ganges comes down it might be expected to wash the excrescence back into the soil. Houses do fall, people are drowned and left rotting, but the general outline of the town persists, swelling here, shrinking there, like some low but indestructible form of life.”
EM Forster From ‘A Passage to India’ by EM Forster 

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind
‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan
‘Time Will Darken It’ by William Maxwell

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara A PASSAGE TO INDIA by EM Forster via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-7p

 

Great opening paragraph 64… ‘True Grit’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.”
Charles PortisFrom ‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Big Sleep’ by Raymond Chandler
‘Brighton Rock’ by Graham Greene
‘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 TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-eB

Great opening paragraph 63… ‘Pride and Prejudice’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” jane austenFrom ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen

Learn about the first edition of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, first published in 1813.

Read more about Austen in Claire Tomalin’s biography, JANE AUSTEN: A LIFE.

If you’re a Jane Austen fan, try these two ‘extension’ novels by Molly Greeley:-
THE CLERGYMAN’S WIFE
THE HEIRESS

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ by Rachel Joyce
‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers
‘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:
#FirstPara PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by #JaneAusten http://wp.me/p5gEM4-8t via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph 62… ‘The Impressionist’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“One afternoon, three years after the beginning of the new century, red dust which was once rich mountain soil quivers in the air. It falls on a rider who is making slow progress through the ravines which score the plains south of the mountains, drying his throat, filming his clothes, clogging the pores of his pink perspiring English face.”
Hari KunzruFrom ‘The Impressionist’ by Hari Kunzru

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Sacred Hearts’ by Sarah Dunant
‘Possession’ by AS Byatt
‘Death in Summer’ by William Trevor

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

Great opening paragraph 61… ‘Dance Dance Dance’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel.
In these dreams, I’m there, implicated in some kind of ongoing circumstance. All indications are that I belong to this dream continuity.
The Dolphin Hotel is distorted, much too narrow. It seems more like a long, covered bridge. A bridge stretching endlessly through time. And there I am, in the middle of it. Someone else is there too, crying.
The hotel envelops me. I can feel its pulse, its heat. In dreams, I am part of the hotel.”
Haruki Murakami From ‘Dance Dance Dance’ by Haruki Murakami

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

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Armadillo’ by William Boyd
‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind
‘Couples’ by John Updike

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara DANCE DANCE DANCE by Haruki Murakami http://wp.me/p5gEM4-m3 via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph 60… ‘Lord Jim’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular.”
Joseph ConradFrom ‘Lord Jim’ by Joseph Conrad

Here’s the #FirstPara of THE SECRET AGENT, also by Joseph Conrad.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Diary of an Ordinary Woman’ by Margaret Forster
‘The Big Sleep’ by Raymond Chandler
‘Before I Go To Sleep’ by SJ Watson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad http://wp.me/p5gEM4-f3 via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 59… ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday. It was an ordinary morning in mid-April that smelt of clean washing and grass cuttings. Harold Fry sat at the breakfast table, freshly shaved, in a clean shirt and tie, with  slice of toast that he wasn’t eating. He gazed beyond the kitchen window at the clipped lawn, which was spiked in the middle by Maureen’s telescopic washing line, and trapped on all three sides by the neighbours’ closeboard fencing.”
Rachel JoyceFrom ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ by Rachel Joyce

Read my reviews of these novels by Rachel Joyce:-
MAUREEN FRY AND THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH
MISS BENSON’S BEETLE … and here’s the #FIRSTPARA
PERFECT
THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

Try a #FirstPara & discover a new author:-
‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind
‘Original Sin’ by PD James
‘Illywhacker’ by Peter Carey

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY by Rachel Joyce http://wp.me/p5gEM4-kt via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph 58… ‘Possession’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The book was thick and black and covered with dust. Its boards were bowed and creaking; it had been maltreated in its own time. Its spine was missing, or rather protruded from amongst the leaves like a bulky marker. It was bandaged about and about with dirty white tape, tied in a neat bow. The librarian handed it to Roland Michell, who was sitting waiting for it in the Reading Room of the London Library. It had been exhumed from Locked Safe no.5 where it usually stood between Pranks of Priapus and The Grecian Way of Love. It was ten in the morning, one day in September 1986. Roland had the small single table he liked best, behind a square pillar, with the clock over the fireplace nevertheless in full view. To his right, was a high sunny window, through which you could see the high green leaves of St James’s Square.”
From ‘Possession’ by AS ByattAS Byatt

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Philosopher’s Pupil’ by Iris Murdoch
‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ by Clare Morrall
‘Room’ by Emma Donoghue

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara POSSESSION by AS Byatt https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4cs via @SandraDanby