Tag Archives: first paragraph

Great Opening paragraph 49… ‘A Bouquet of Barbed Wire’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“It began to rain as he entered the park, but not hard enough to make him look round for a taxi. Emerging from the station, he had been tempted by a pale gleam of sunshine, sufficient to convince him of the physical benefits of walking. He needed exercise, he had decided, just as he needed fewer cigarettes and less alcohol: it was pathetic how the habits of sloth and self-indulgence crept up unnoticed, along with middle age, that unbecoming state which you did not even recognize until events brought it sharply and unkindly home to you. And now the fine spring rain, for her first day back. He pictured her with painful tenderness, suntanned and shivering, getting ready for college in the unfamiliar flat. Was he too late? Would she still be there by the time he was able to phone? He had left home an hour ahead, under Cassie’s indulgent eyes, to catch an earlier train, feeling he could only telephone properly from the office, yet not knowing what he could possibly find to say that would be sufficiently casual when he finally heard her voice.”
Andrea NewmanFrom ‘A Bouquet of Barbed Wire’ by Andrea Newman

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy 
‘Notes on a Scandal’ by Zoe Heller
‘Armadillo’ by William Boyd

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara A BOUQUET OF BARBED WIRE by Andrea Newman http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mG via @SandraDanby

Great Opening paragraph 48… ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair. Ugwu’s aunty said this in a low voice as they walked on the path. ‘But he is a good man,’ she added. ‘And as long as you work well, you will eat well. You will even eat meat every day.’ She stopped to spit; the saliva left her mouth with a sucking sound and landed on the grass.”
Chimamanda Ngozi AdicheFrom ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Lucky You’ by Carl Hiassen
‘After You’d Gone’ by Maggie O’Farrell
‘Family Album’ by Penelope Lively

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara HALF OF A YELLOW SUN by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mJ via @SandraDanby

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

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 BY SUZANNE COLLINS #4THEUNDERLANDCHRONICLES
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 1st paras & 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 tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pynchon  http://wp.me/p5gEM4-m6 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 37… ‘I’ll Take You There’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“In those days in the early Sixties we were not women yet but girls. This was, without irony, perceived as our advantage.”
Joyce Carol OatesFrom ‘I’ll Take You There’ by Joyce Carol Oates

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘A Farewell to Arms’ by Ernest Hemingway 
‘Tipping the Velvet’ by Sarah Waters 
‘The Collector’ by John Fowles 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara I’LL TAKE YOU THERE by Joyce Carol Oates https://wp.me/p5gEM4-mM via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph…33

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julian barnes - the sense of an ending 30-4-13“I remember, in no particular order:
– a shiny inner wrist;
– steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;
– gouts of sperm circling a plughole before being sluiced own the full length of a tall house;
– a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing torchbeams;
– another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface;
– bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door.
This last isn’t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.”
‘The Sense of an Ending’ by Julian Barnes