Tag Archives: first sentence

Great Opening Paragraph 113… ‘A Good Man in Africa’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“‘Good man,’ said Dalmire, gratefully accepting the gin Morgan Leafy offered him. ‘Oh good man.’ He presents his eager male friendship like a gift, thought Morgan; he’s like a dog who wants me to throw him a stick for him to chase. If he had a tail he’d be wagging it.”
William BoydFrom ‘A Good Man in Africa’ by William Boyd

Try this #FirstPara from ARMADILLO … and 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
GABRIEL’S MOON #1GABRIELDAX
THE PREDICAMENT #2GABRIELDAX
COLD SUNSET #3GABRIELDAX

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ by Helen Fielding
‘Super-Cannes’ by JG Ballard
‘Middlesex’ by Jeffrey Eugenides

And if you’d like to share a link:
#Books #FirstPara A GOOD MAN IN AFRICA by William Boyd http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2si via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 111… ‘Reading Turgenev’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“A woman, not yet fifty-seven, slight and seeming frail, eats carefully at a table in a corner. Her slices of buttered bread have been halved for her, her fried egg mashed, her bacon cut. ‘Well, this is happiness!’ she murmurs aloud, but none of the other women in the dining room replies because none of them is near enough to hear. She’s privileged, the others say, being permitted to occupy on her own the bare-topped table in the corner. She has her own salt and pepper.”
William Trevor
From ‘Reading Turgenev’, featured in ‘Two Lives’ by William Trevor

Here’s another #FirstPara by William Trevor:-
DEATH IN SUMMER

… and my review of LAST STORIES

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan
‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen
‘Dance Dance Dance’ by Haruki Murakami

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

Great Opening Paragraph 102… ‘The Cement Garden’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way. And but for the fact that it coincided with a landmark in my own physical growth, his death seemed insignificant compared with what followed. My sisters and I talked about him the week after he died, and Sue certainly cried when the ambulance men tucked him up in a bright-red blanket and carried him away. He was a frail, irascible, obsessive man with yellowish hands and face. I am only including the little story of his death to explain how my sisters and I came to have such a large quantity of cement at our disposal.”
Ian McEwan From ‘The Cement Garden’ 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:-
ENDURING LOVE
THE CHILDREN ACT

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Rebecca’ by Daphne du Maurier
‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ by Philippa Gregory
‘Freedom’ by Jonathan Franzen

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE CEMENT GARDEN by Ian McEwan http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2se via @SandraDanby

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

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“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
GABRIEL’S MOON #1GABRIELDAX
THE PREDICAMENT #2GABRIELDAX
COLD SUNSET #3GABRIELDAX

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 share a link:
#Books #FirstPara ARMADILLO by William Boyd http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qA via @SandraDanby

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

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“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 share a link:
#Books #FirstPara TIPPING THE VELVET by Sarah Waters http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2lj via @SandraDanby 

Great Opening Paragraph 93… ‘Death in Summer’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“After the funeral the hiatus that tragedy brought takes a different form. The suddenness of the death has gone, irrelevant now. Thaddeus has stood and knelt in the church of St Nicholas, has heard his wife called good, the word he himself gave to a clergyman he has known all his life. People were present in the church who were strangers to him, who afterwards, in the house, introduced themselves as a few of Letitia’s friends from the time before he knew her. ‘And where is Letitia now?’ an undertaker a week ago inquired, confusing Thaddeus, who for a moment wondered if the man knew why he had been summoned. ‘It’s Letitia who has died,’ he said, and answered, when the man explained, that Letitia was in the mortuary, where she’d been taken.”
William TrevorFrom ‘Death in Summer’ by William Trevor

Here’s another #FirstPara by William Trevor:-
READING TURGENEV, featured in ‘Two Lives’

… and my review of LAST STORIES

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers 
‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ by Clare Morrall 
‘The Crying of Lot 49’ by Thomas Pynchon 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara DEATH IN SUMMER by William Trevor via http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vz @SandraDanby

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
THREE DAYS IN JUNE
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 share a link:
#Books #FirstPara BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWN-UPS by Anne Tyler http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Tg 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 share a link:
#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
WHAT WE CAN KNOW

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 87… ‘Time Will Darken It’ #amreading #FirstPara

5 Replies

“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