Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“Three Lives & Company is a 650-square-foot bookshop on a corner in New York City’s West Village.” Evan Friss, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore.

“I wonder if there isn’t a lot of bunkum in higher education?” Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels.

“On the outskirts of Nashville, tucked between open pastures and suburban cul-de-sacs, stands a museum dedicated to the memory of Andrew Jackson.” Rebecca Nagle, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land.

“So you have decided to commit a murder.” Rupert Holmes, Murder Your Employer: McMasters Guide to Homicide.

“Benjamin Franklin, forty-six years old in June 1752, strode into a field just north of the burgeoning village of Philadelphia.” Richard Munson, Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist.

“Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said.” Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake.

“When I was a very young man and became very successful in the movies very quickly, I harbored a notion that I had not earned my accomplishments, that I hadn’t done the requisite work, that it was all merely a fluke, that I didn’t deserve it.” Andrew McCarthy, Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain.

“As requested, they had all assembled in the Library before dinner.” Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook: A Jackson Brodie Book.

“It is predawn in Macon, Georgia, and at four o’clock, the city does not move.” Ilyon Woo, Master Slave Husband Wife.

“Alice and Emma, the two ducks, sat on the bank and watched the breeze crinkle the surface of the duck pond into a sort of blue and silver carpet.” Walter R. Brooks, Freddy and the Perilous Adventure (illustrated by Kurt Wiese).

“Florie’s Papa had sent a letter.” Jon Grinspan, The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy.

“No. Nup. That wouldn’t do. It reeked of PhD. This was meant to be read by normal people.” Geraldine Brooks, Horse.

“It is worse, much worse, than you think.” David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. (Thanks to Steve Newman)

“I learned of Samuel’s death two days before Christmas while standing in the doorway of my mother’s new home.” Dinaw Mengestu, Someone Like Us.

“The House of the Vampire arrived in 1907, with a pinch of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a dash of Swinburne, and a major crush on Oscar Wilde.” Rachel Maddow, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“At the turn of the twentieth century, before Zionist colonization had much appreciable effect on Palestine, new ideas were spreading, modern education and literacy had begun to expand, and the integration of the country’s economy into the global capitalist order was proceeding apace.” Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.

“Had Ernst Simmel known he was to be the Axman’s second victim, he would no doubt have downed a few more drinks at The Blue Ship.” Hǻkan Nesser, Borkmann’s Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery.

“In the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 28, 1917, someone knocked on Khalil al-Sakakini’s front door and brought him great misfortune, indeed almost got him hanged.” Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (translated by Haim Watzman).

“We are the earth, the land.” Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.

“It was July 29, 2019—the worst day of my life., though I didn’t know that quite yet.” Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

“Whenever I woke up, night or day, I’d shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed.” Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

“In 1848 Will and Ellen Craft, an enslaved couple in Georgia, embarked upon a five-thousand-mile journey of self-emancipation across the world.” Ilyon Woo, Master Slave Husband Wife.

“My journal is a private affair, but as I cannot know the time of my coming death, and since I am not disposed, however unfortunately, to the serious consideration of self-termination, I am afraid that others will see these pages.” Percival Everett, Erasure.

“Mark Twain counted pockets among the most useful of inventions.” Hannah Carlson, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close.

“They were still traveling, into the dark.” Denise Mina, Field of Blood.

“It was a November afternoon in Queens and Jie Zou was looking for a parking spot.” Henry Grabar, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.

“From then on whenever he heard the song he thought of the death of Munson.” Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto.

“A little more than two hundred years ago, Europeans contemplated the Islamic countries of the Middle East from afar and imagined rare silks and spices, harems, and gold—yellow gold, not the underground sea of black gold that modern Westerners associate with the region.” Nina Burleigh, Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt.