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First Sentences

“In 1976, even boxes of fried chicken celebrated the American Revolution.” Sarah M.S. Pearsall, Freedom Round the Globe: A World History of the American Revolution (2026).

“In all of Ray Carney’s years as a fence—he had been a reluctant fence and a ruthless fence, at times imperiled by his choices and at others the embodiment of crooked intelligence—there was only one occasion when he participated in the theft itself, and that was in the summer of 1981 when Uncle Rich came back to town.” Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine (2026).

“I have lived for twenty years in the county of Lancaster, where my neighbors on all sides are ‘Pennsylvania Dutch.’” Phebe Earle Gibbons, “Pennsylvania Dutch” and Other Essays (1882).

“On 20 May 2119 I took the overnight ferry from Port Marlborough and arrived in the late afternoon at the small quay near Maentwrog-under-Sea that serves the Bodleian Snowdonia Library.” Ian McEwan, What We Can Know (2025).

“When I was six, my father took me to Grand Central Terminal in New York to see the imposing bronze statue of my great-great-great-grandfather ‘Commodore’ Cornelius Vanderbilt.” Anderson Cooper, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty (2021).

“Fran sat with her eyes closed.” Ann Cleeves, Blue Lightning (2010).

“I take my kids to church every week—well, usually.” JD Vance, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith (2026).

“Twenty past one in the morning on New Year’s Day.” Ann Cleeves, Raven Black (2006).

“As Lord Randolph Churchill lay dying in the final stages of syphilis, his mind slowly but inexorably slipping into madness, his wife Jennie wrote letters from the Bay of Bengal to her sisters.” Elisabeth Kehoe, The Titled Americans: Three American Sisters and the British Aristocratic World into Which They Married (2006).

“Ann opened her eyes and saw a pair of hands, streaked and shiny with blood.” Ann Cleeves, Red Bones (2009).

“William Cody was not always an icon of historical memory.” Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (2000).

“The Logia de Cerchi stood in the heart of old Florence, within a labyrinth of narrow streets behind the Badia, now rarely threaded by the stranger, unless in a dubious search for a certain severe doorplate bearing this inscription, QUI NACQUE IL DIVINO POETA.” George Eliot, Romola (1863).

“On the morning of September 26, 1792, several days of cold English rain came to an end, a light wind picked up from the north, and the HMS Lion, a sixty-four-gun ship of the line unfurled its sails and weighed anchor, to depart the harbor in Spithead.” Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“At high tide on the clear morning of January 10, 1926, to the squalling of circling gulls, the Prinz Valdemar, a five-masted steel-hulled barkentine, weighed anchor.” Christopher Knowlton, Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression (2021).

“With eyes fixed thoughtfully on the slow-moving muddy stream of the River Darling, William Clair lounged in the golden light of the setting sun.” Arthur W. Upfield, The Barrakee Mystery (1929): An Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte Mystery.

“‘Save Your Soul, Turn Back Now’ proclaimed a protest sign at the entrance of the pop-up vaccination clinic at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on January 30, 2021.” Kira Ganga Kieffer, Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America (2026).

“Her feet were as purple as calf liver.” Douglas Stuart, John of John (2026).

“The brothers smoothed a map on the table in front of them.” Nathalia Holt, The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers’ Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda (2025).

“When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one.” Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (1985).

“On Wednesday, July 20, 1910, as a light fog drifted along the River Scheldt, Capt. Henry George Kendall prepared his ship, the SS Montrose, for what should have been the most routine of voyages, from Antwerp direct to Quebec City, Canada.” Erik Larson, Thunderstruck (2006).

“Vera Stanhope climbed out of Hector’s ancient Land Rover and felt the inevitable strain on her knees.” Ann Cleeves, The Glass Room (2012).

“No one had any doubt that the bombers would come.” Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (2020).

“The city was hers for a single hour, just the one magic hour, only hers.” Robert Crais, The Watchman: A Joe Pike Novel (2007).

“The year my sister Amy was invited to play Mrs. Claus in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was the same year Hugh had his hip replaced.” David Sedaris, The Land and Its People (2026).

“It was a city within a city, a textile mill to weave the gossamer of fantasy on looping looms of celluloid.” Elizabeth Letts, Finding Dorothy (2019).

“Huie Kin grew up in Wing Ning, a tiny village of about seventy people, all from the same clan, tucked away in the hell of Taishan, an impoverished, mountainous county in the Pearl River Delta.” Michael Luo, Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America (2025).

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Snippets

I was surprised to read in the New Yorker the phrase “from whence.” I was surprised to read in the New York Times the word “snuck.”

 Old joke: He: “I never mince words.” She: “You should; it makes them easier to eat later on.”

How do used books get to where they are? My Brooklyn neighborhood has a couple of those leave-a-book-take-a-book birdhouse-looking structures, and I have begun utilizing them to cut down the books on my shelves. My intention is to deposit two or three volumes and to take one. Sometimes I take two or three, but never more than I brought. My net exchange has slightly decreased the burdens on my bookcases. Two weeks back I picked up a hardcover copy of Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves. The front cover has a picture of a stone, spartan structure with the roof missing settled in a stark landscape. The publisher has placed an emblem that proclaims, “Now the Hit TV Series Shetland.” I admire that series, and I grabbed the book. The book also contained stickers that the book came from the Hagen Ranch Road Branch of the Palm Beach County Library System in Delray Beach, Florida. This was not surprising. I have seen many used books that were apparently originally owned by libraries. (I was a bit surprised, however, that the book had been let go by the library when I saw the book was copyrighted in 2018. Expendable library books are usually much older.) Often books get into private hands through library sales, but this volume also had a sticker: “Ollies: Their Price $19.99; Our Price $3.99.” (The price listed on the dust jacket is $26.99.) Ollies, I later learned, is a chain of stores that sells remaindered goods, and I was surprised that I did not know of it before because I am devoted to remaindering stores. I found that Ollies had outlets near Delray Beach.) I liked Wild Fire very much, but I also am curious about how the copy I read got to a tiny kiosk in front of a rowhouse on Adelphi Street, Brooklyn, New York. Is it a story worth knowing?

The sign in the establishment: “Courteous and efficient self-service.”

 The man pointed at my chest and laughingly asked, “Is that true?” My tee read: “BEST. DAD. EVER.” I said, “It might be true if I didn’t have to buy the shirt for myself.”

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you knew how seldom they do.” Olin Miller

Sometimes when I am feeling a bit depressed, I cheer myself up by remembering I can go to Costco.

“He who is sorrowful can force himself to smile, but he who is glad cannot weep.” Selma Lagerlof.

“Some men have acted courage who had it not; but no man can act wit.” Marquis of Halifax.