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Stole this idea from another group....

What is the opening paragraph of the book you are reading?? Include the title and author...

this could help everyone find some really good books!!!

I am including the 1st paragraph of the intro and the 1st chapter....

Intro: "One November morning in 2004, Theo van Gogh got up to go to work at his film production company in Amsterdam. He took out his old black bicycle and headed down a main road. Waiting in the doorway was a Moroccan man with a handgun and two butcher knives."

Chapter 1:
"Who are you
I am Ayaan, the daughter of Hirsi, the son of Magan
I am sitting with my grandmother on a grass mat under the talal tree. Behind us is our house, and the branches of the talal tree are all that shields us from the sun blazing down on the white sand.
Go on, my grandmother says, glaring at me.

Infidel.... Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"Skyler help me Skyler I am so lonely in this place Skyler I am so afraid I hurt so Skyler you won't leave me in this terrible place will you Skyler?" (Spaces and lack of punctuation by author).

My Sister, My Love...Joyce Carol Oates

maybe some of you can guess this one without looking at my list...

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possesion of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

that's the first paragraph! (hint: it's a classic.)

It was November. Although it was not yet late, the sky was dark when i turned into Laundress Passage. Father had finished for the day, switched off the shop lights and closed the shutters; but so I would not come home to darkness he had left on the light over the stairs to the flat. Through the glass in the door it cast a foolscap rectangle of paleness onto the wet pavement,and it was while I was standing in that rectangle, about to turn my key in the door, that I first saw the letter. Another white rectangle, it was on the fifth step from the bottom, where I couldn't miss it.

The Thirteenth Tale~~~Diane Setterfield

"So that's settled, then; we bury her alive in the iron bridle. That'll keep her tongue still."
The innkeeper folded his arms, relieved that they had finally agreed on that much at least. "Iron'll counter any curses she makes. Stop anything, iron will. One of the most powerful things can get to work against evil, 'cept the host and holy water. 'Course, it'd be better if we had some of that, but we don't, not with things being the way they are. But iron'll do just as well."

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

"The day begins in the middle of the night. I am not paying attention to anything but the bass in my hand, the noise in my ears. Dev is screaming, Thom is flailing, and I am the clockwork, I am the one who takes this thing called music and lines it up with this called time. I am the ticking, I am the pulsing, I am underneath every part of this moment..."

There's more, but it's a really long paragraph.

"Nick & Norah's Infinate Playlist" by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan.

I saw the movie, and loved it, so thought the book would be a nice light read.

Ashley, you are correct!

Linda wrote: ""The day begins in the middle of the night. I am not paying attention to anything but the bass in my hand, the noise in my ears. Dev is screaming, Thom is flailing, and I am the clockwork, I am t..."

I loved Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist. I didn't see the movie, but I will catch it when it comes out on DVD.

With thanks to Amazon where I found the english translation of the book I am reading:

The first ten years of my life I was not black. I was in many ways different from those around me, but not darker. That much I know. Then came the day when I became aware that my colour had deepened. Later, once I was black, I paled again.

The two hearts of Kwasi Boachi by Arthur Japin

Well I have the editor's preface - "I wrote a book with Santa Claus. Not too many people can say that. In fact, I'm the only one I know of."

The Forward - "You're right to belive in me."

Chapter One - "I live at the snowy North Pole now, but my life began surrounded by sand..."

Have your pick! :)

The Autobiography of Santa Claus as told to Jeff Guinn

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

CHAPTER ONE:

The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

Fair O'Nelli lay completely still inside a closed, wooden box, dark, shallow and wide. For all intents and purposes she had been dead for nine years. Other than that, she had a wonderful childhood—except for a certain bitterness that had taken root in a far off reach of her heart.

She opened her eyes. Two round pools of blue appeared to float in the coffin-like space, and she began to hum a little tune to herself. Very quietly.

(Since it's been mentioned here before in CoL, I'll admit that this is the opening to Secret Speakers.)

Karey Shane wrote: "Fair O'Nelli lay completely still inside a closed, wooden box, dark, shallow and wide. For all intents and purposes she had been dead for nine years. Other than that, she had a wonderful childhood�..."

Karey, I already have your book on my to-read list. After reading this opening, I will have to purchase it and read it very soon.

Awesome Karey....I can't wait until it comes out :)

I say the same thing as Holli; can't wait!

We called it the Land of Mango Sunsets. None of the old islanders knew what we meant by that, as they had only ever heard of mangoes. Bottled chutney perhaps, but that was about the sum total of their experience with a food that was so foreign. But I knew all about the romance of them from my earliest memories of anything at all. My parents had honeymooned in the South Pacific, which in those days was considered a little reckless, certainly titillating, and above all, highly exotic. Every morning they left their beds, still half dreaming, to find a tray outside the door of their bungalow. They would bring it behind the curtains of mosquito netting and into their bed. Still in their nightclothes, my mother's hair cascading in tendrils and my father's young beard stubble scratching her young complexion, they would burn away the sour taste of morning breath with a plate of sliced mangoes, dripping with fleshy sweetness, a pot of strong tea, and a rack of toast. From then on, mangoes were equated with love, tenderness, and hopeful beginnings, and we spent our lives looking everywhere for other examples of them.

From: "The Land of Mango Sunsets" by Dorothea Benton Frank Sorry the first paragraph is so long! Kind of makes the book sound like a romance but it isn't. I'm on page 196 and actually stayed up late last night reading. I love it when I find a book that I'm so 'into'!

It was rainy and cold outside, miserable weather, and though I had not left my boardinghouse determined to die, things were now different. After consuming far more than my share of that frontier delicacy Monongahela rye, a calm resolution had come over me. A very angry man named Nathan Dorland was looking for me, asking for me at every inn, chophouse, and tavern in the city and making no secret of his intention to murder me. Perhaps he would find me tonight and, if not, tomorrow or the next day. Not any later than that. It was inevitable only because I was determined not to fight against the tide of popular opinion -- that is to say, that I ought to be killed. It was my decision to submit, and I have long believed in keeping true to a plan once it has been cast in earnest.

"The Whiskey Rebels" by David Liss

Kathy wrote: "Linda wrote: ""The day begins in the middle of the night. I am not paying attention to anything but the bass in my hand, the noise in my ears. Dev is screaming, Thom is flailing, and I am the clo..."

I am loving "Nick & Norah" so far. It's absolutely wonderful!

Hey, thanks girls!

Hey, thanks girls!

Since no one has listed it yet even though it's December's book:

"When the write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT...."

The History of Love - Nicole Krauss

I love the whole first paragraph...heck I love everything I've read in the book so far!

"Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Artic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost."

The Call of the Wild - Jack London.

Infidel.... Ayaan Hirsi Ali


Oh I have that book I am really looking forward to reading it now!

"This new world weighs a yatto-gram.
But everything is trial-size; tread-on-me tiny or blurred-out-of-focus huge. There are leaves that have grown as big as cities, and there are birds that nest in cockleshells. On the white sand there are long-toed clawprints deep as nightmares, and there are rock pools in hand-hollows finned by invisible fish.
Trees like skyscrapers, and housing as many. Grass the height of hedges, nuts the swell of pumpkins. Sardines that would take two men to land them. Eggs, pale-blue-shelled, each the weight of a breaking universe."

The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson-
-excerpt taken from her web site.

His coming into our classroom that morning was the only new thing. Everything else was the same way it's always been. The snow coming down. Ms.Johnson looking out the window, then after a moment,nodding. The class cheering because she was going to let us go out into the school yard at lunchtime.

"feathers" by Jacqueline Woodson

"The single unit air consitioner wheezed its neverending battle against the Singapore humidity. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The store was in an unremarable two-story white stucco building on a narrow street off Lor Liput in Holland Village. On the corner of the plate-glass window, small gilt letters spelled CURIOS....."

It goes on from there, a rather lengthy paragraph from 'Death Walked In' by Carolyn Hart

Who wouldn't be skeptical when a man claims to have spent an entire weekend with God, in a shack no less? And this was the shack - Forward of The Shack by WM Paul Young.

Hot, thought the Parisians. The warm air of spring. It was night, they were at war and there was an air raid. But dawn was near and the war far away. The first to hear the hum of the siren were those who couldn't sleep--the ill and the bedridden, mothers with sons at the front, women crying for the men they loved. To them it began as a long breath, like air being forced into a deep sigh. It wasn't long before its wailing filled the sky. It came from afar, from beyond the horizon, slowly, almost lazily. Those still asleep dreamed of waves breaking over pebbles, a March storm whipping the woods, a herd of cows trampling the ground with their hooves, until finally sleep was shaken off and they struggled to open their eyes, murmuring, "Is it an air raid?"

From Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky

"Along Elena's smooth white back is an ancient scar that cuts downward in grotesque beauty like a long, graceful snake. It begins at the joint of her right shoulder and sails south across her shoulder blade, then her spine, swoops around the lower edge of her left ribs and across the unguarded softness where vital organs once lived, and finally ends deep in her left buttock. In places, it looks like a rope, dark pink and angry; in others, it submerges beneath the flesh, showing only a slight white scratch above the skin."

From The Lost Recipe for Happiness

"When you have to kill he same terrorist twice in one week, then there's either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there's nothing wrong with my skills."

Patient Zero A Joe Ledger Novel by Jonathan Maberry

"Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town."

A Walk in the Woods Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson

I'm loving it! God bless anyone that attempts to hike the Appalachian Trail - not this girl!

I love 'A Walk in the Woods', Bill Bryson is hilarious!

Lynlee4 wrote: "I'm loving it! God bless anyone that attempts to hike the Appalachian Trail - not this girl! "

I knew an amazing lady who at the age of 80 had hiked that trail almost every year for 50 years!

Some people who were there say that during the last days of the trial of Maurice Papon, in Bordeaux, the police prevented a man dressed like Coco the clown, but badly made up and in a very tattered costume, from entering the courtroom. Apparently he waited outside until the accused left and then just looked at him from a distance, not making ay attempt to speak...He held a battered old briefcase on his lap, which he patted from time to time. When the verdict was delivered, a court official remembers hearing him say: "Without truth, how can there be hope?"

From In Our Strange Gardens a very short book about WWII.