Tag Archives: first paragraph

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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

Great Opening Paragraph 87… ‘Time Will Darken It’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“In order to pay off an old debt that someone else had contracted, Austin King had said yes when he knew that he ought to have said no, and now at five o’clock of a July afternoon he saw the grinning face of trouble everywhere he turned. The house was full of strangers from Mississippi; within an hour, friends and neighbours invited to an evening party would begin ringing the doorbell; and his wife (whom he loved) was not speaking to him.” William MaxwellFrom ‘Time Will Darken It’ by William Maxwell

Here’s my review of TIME WILL DARKEN IT.

Sample the #FirstPara of THE CHATEAU.

And read my reviews of these other novels by William Maxwell:-
BRIGHT CENTER OF HEAVEN
THE FOLDED LEAF
THEY CAME LIKE SWALLOWS

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Such a Long Journey’ by Rohinton Mistry 
‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by Mark Haddon 
‘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 TIME WILL DARKEN IT by William Maxwell http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vh via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 86… ‘The Ghost’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The moment I heard how McAra died I should have walked away. I can see that now. I should have said, ‘Rick, I’m sorry, this isn’t for me, I don’t like the sound of it,’ finished my drink and left. But he was such a good storyteller, Rick – I often thought he should have been the writer and I the literary agent – that once he’d started talking there was never any question I wouldn’t listen, and by the time he had finished, I was hooked.”
Robert HarrisFrom ‘The Ghost’ by Robert Harris

Read my reviews of these other thrillers, also by Robert Harris:-
AN OFFICER AND A SPY
MUNICH
V2

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ by Thomas Hardy 
‘That They May Face the Rising Sun’ by John McGahern 
‘Bel Canto’ by Ann Patchett 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE GHOST by Robert Harris #books via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1V9

Great Opening Paragraph 85… ‘The Pelican Brief’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“He seemed incapable of creating such chaos, but much of what he saw below could be blamed on him. And that was fine. He was ninety-one, paralyzed, strapped in a wheelchair and hooked to oxygen. His second stroke seven years ago had almost finished him off, but Abraham Rosenberg was still alive and even with tubes in his nose his legal stick was bigger than the other eight. He was the only legend remaining on the Court, and the fact that he was still breathing irritated most of the mob below.”
John Grisham From ‘The Pelican Brief’ by John Grisham 

Read these #FirstParas also by John Grisham:-
THE LAST JUROR
THE RAINMAKER

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Diary of an Ordinary Woman’ by Margaret Forster
‘To Have and Have Not’ by Ernest Hemingway
‘Bel Canto’ by Ann Patchett

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE PELICAN BRIEF by @JohnGrisham http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1V5 via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 84… ‘Lucky You’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“On the afternoon of November 25, a woman named JoLayne Lucks drove to the Grab N’Go minimart in Grange, Florida, and purchased spearmint Certs, unwaxed dental floss and one ticket for the state Lotto.
JoLayne Lucks played the same numbers she’d played every Saturday for five years: 17-19-22-14-27-30.”
Carl Hiaasen From ‘Lucky You’ by Carl Hiaasen

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘These Foolish Things’ by Deborah Moggach
‘Super-Cannes’ by JG Ballard
‘Herzog’ by Saul Bellow

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara LUCKY YOU by Carl Hiaasen https://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Uw via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 83… ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“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.”
Ernest Hemingway 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