Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“Everyone has an opinion about Elon Musk.” Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed (2026).

“Twilight arrived early in the Crimean mountains, with dusk falling at four thirty and darkness shortly thereafter.” Giles Milton, Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World. (2021).

“At last on Monday around ten or half past, Sybil Van Antwerp carries the mug of Irish breakfast tea with milk to her desk.” Virginia Evans, The Correspondent (2025).

“If historians were asked to identify the greatest human tragedies of all time, the Holocaust would probably top the list, for reasons both powerful and plausible.” Joseph J. Ellis, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding (2025).

“This is the story of three girls who were born in one world and sent, by forces beyond their comprehension, to grow up in an entirely different one.” Janice P. Nimura, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back.

“‘Do you know, when I was a child, it was the lavatory to which I retired for quiet meditation.’” Amanda Chapman, Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library (2025).

“Maralyn looked out at emptiness.” Sophie Elmhirst, A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck (2025).

“It was a muggy late-summer day in 1979 when I stepped out of the Shanghai heat into the cool marble lobby of the Peace Hotel.” Jonathan Kaufman, The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Dynasties that Helped Create Modern China (2020).

“This is what happened in Faha over the Christmas of 1962, in what became known in the parish as the time of the child.” Niall Williams, Time of the Child (2024).

“After Donald Trump won his first presidential election, I had one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had as a writer.” Michael Lewis, ed, Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service (2025).

“Our story starts, appropriately enough, with a bang: the whizz of shells, the crack of gunfire.” Jeremy Dauber, American Comics: A History (2022).

“A person can lose everything in an instant. A fortune, a family, the sun.” Karen Russell, The Antidote (2025).

 “At some point in the afternoon of 17 July 1937, a tall, round-faced Ukrainian in his late thirties, whose bright eyes contrasted vividly with his smooth black hair, sat down in a hotel room in Paris to write a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Part of the Soviet Union.” Josh Ireland, The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin’s Greatest Enemy (2026).

“When John Foster Dulles died on May 24, 1959, a bereft nation mourned more intensely that it had since the death of Franklin Roosevelt fourteen years before.” Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

I have read that David Thoreau, hero of live-simply-and-off-the-grid, periodically went home so his mother could do his laundry. Is that true?

The young man was wearing what appeared to be a tiny flask on a chain around his neck. I asked, “Does it contain a magic potion?” “No,” he replied, “some ashes from my dead dog.”

Class notes from my college alumni magazine reported on an alum who had retired after four decades in the medical sales field. He said that he was now doing what he always wanted to, play Santa Claus. Besides telling us about his Santa company, he also proudly reported that he had been inducted into the International Santa Claus Hall of Fame. Who knew?

Who first said “boots on the ground”? I hope that I will soon know the last to use the cliché. Boots don’t kill. Boots don’t get killed. Boots don’t lose a leg, an arm, an eye. Boots don’t get PTSD. Boots don’t leave loved ones behind. People do. Let’s talk about people in combat, not footwear.

What does it take to get into heaven? If it is not doing harm to others, I may stand a chance. If it is how much good is done to others, I am not so sure. If it is the amount of sycophantic praying to an Almighty, I won’t make it.

The local library asked me: “Please tell us about a favorite book, that provided inspiration, guidance, laughter.” I responded:

I have no favorite book. At different times, different books have been meaningful or touching or captivating. What was important at eight or thirteen would not be now. At one point, I read Huckleberry Finn every year. I no longer do. At one point, I read a Charles Dickens book every summer. I no longer do. When I first read Moby Dick, I just saw it as boring. Several decades later, I thought that it was marvelous. I thought Bleak House was wonderful when I first read it. When I picked it up again thirty years later, I could not finish it. However, I have read The Great Gatsby three or four times and each time I was awed by it. Nonfiction has also been important. Especially influential to me and many others is John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. There are many books that have added to my life. I hope that there are more to come.

Amanda Chapman writes in the Acknowledgements to Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library, “Someone once said that any author who claims they don’t write in their bathrobe is a damn liar.” I decided long ago that you don’t need to know what I wear and don’t wear when I write for the blog.

Often when I hear a group singing “Sweet Caroline,” I realize that it is an overwhelmingly white group some of whom are at least slightly inebriated and who feel that they are meaningfully bonding into some sort of community through their singing. And given the chance, they will soon be singing about a long-lost shaker of salt.