I really like to look at the first sentences of books. It is wonderful when one sentence is enough to make you want to read the whole book. Here I share the first words of all of the books I started this month to see if the first line alone is enough to make you want to read them. I will be using the first sentence from the first chapter and not from an introduction or prologue.
This month I read a lot of novels in verse so some of them are formatted differently then they would be in the book. Also one is a collection of short stories so it is the first line from the first story.
The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan
The Wheels on the suitcase break before we’ve even left Gdansk Glowny.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites.
Beach Read by Emily Henry
I have a fatal flaw.
May B by Caroline Starr Rose
I won’t go.
Somewhere Among by Annie Donwerth-Chikamatsu
Not enough room for me to give Mom space, I crouch in my corner fold clothes for three seasons into my suitcase slide pencil case, supplies box, assignments, notebooks, and textbooks into my schoolbag and slip my NASA pen into my pocket.
On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves
I was thirty years old when the seaplane TJ Callahan and I were travelling on crash-landed in the Indian Ocean.
Am I Blue edited by Marion Dane Bauer
It started the day Butch Carrigan decided I was interested in jumping his bones.
The Way the Light Bends by Cordelia Jensen
With a click and a breath I capture branches squirrels pigeons two girls skipping in time everything alive, pulsing-the park the heartbeat of Manhattan, of who we used to be.
It Rained Warm Bread by Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet
It matters which side of the street I walk on to get home.
Sold by Patricia McCormick
One more rainy season and our roof will be gone, says Ama.
Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
As summer wheat came ripe, so did I, born at home, on the kitchen floor.
Inside the Whale by Joseph G. Peterson
he was jim an irishman a rogue first generation american though once or twice he faked it with a brogue
Darlington’s Fall by Brad Leithauser
The hand hungers: the jewel of the world, and his for the taking.
The Secrets of Me by Meg Kearney
I was five months old by the time I arrived.
The Wherewithal by Philip Schultz
Upstairs, it’s San Francisco 1968 April 17 and every day the world spins faster on its axis, a little more off-kilter, a little less in its right mind, bursting at its seams with desire for variation, while everyone everywhere around me appears to be fornicating in doorways and on rooftops…(this keeps going for almost two pages before I find the first period).
Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai
Today is Tet, the first day of the lunar calendar.
Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
Flora Belle Buckman was in her room at her desk.
Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi
They weathered brutal winters, suffered diseases, and learned to cope with the resisting Native Americans.
Of these 17 opening lines, how many intrigue you enough to want to pick them up?
