New year, new books! New Years resolutions can be a pain, but tackling a reading pile feels oh-so satisfying. Do you have any goals? Number of books to read? A series you’ve been dying to tackle? An author you’d like to get to know?
And more importantly: what is the first line of the book you’re reading right now?
We’ll give you a few to start with—we’ve whited out the names of the books themselves, so that everyone can have a go at guessing them!
Natalie’s First Line of the Year: “The library at Osthorne Academy for Young Mages was silent save for the whisper of the books in the Theoretical Magic section.”
Book: Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
Leah’s First Line of the Year: “In the photographs, they don’t look like people who might make you want to change your life.”
Book: The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie
Emily’s First Line of the Year: “There was a girl who lived on the streets in a northern city. She was sixteen years old when she found God, and had just turned seventeen when God abandoned her.”
Book: Afterparty by Daryl Gregory
Molly’s First Line of the Year: “Some time ago—never mind how long precisely—I slipped off the map of the world.”
Book: Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg
Sarah’s First Line of the Year: “In a house, on a street, in a town ordinary enough in every aspect to cross over its own roots and become remarkable there lived a girl named Katherine Victoria Lundy.”
Book: In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
Tell us what your first line of the year is! (And remember to white out the name of the book if you want to make a game of it…)
Four Weeks Ago: “Hey look, a programming contest that’s open to anyone around the world! We should enter, Nancy! It says we can win ‘unspecified fabulous prizes!!!'”
Book: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 7: I’ve Been Waiting For A Squirrel Like You
Hello. We’re Round Peg/Round Hole Recruitment.
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.
(Kind of a gimme; but I’m going to start reading it with my daughter).
S
Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city .And three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the terrace above it.
Book: TThe Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath
I read the classics ;-)
A vampire is haunting Whitby; it’s traditional.
“On the day of the new president’s inauguration, when we worried that he might be murdered as he walked hand in hand with his exceptional wife among the cheering crowds, and when so many of us were close to economic ruin in the aftermath of the bursting of the mortgage bubble, and when Isis was still an Egyptian mother-goddess, an uncrowned seventy-something king from a faraway country arrived in New York City with his three motherless sons to take possession of the palace of his exile, behaving as if nothing was wrong with the country or the world or his own story.”
It’s a long one! But that might be a good clue…
Book: The Golden House, Salman Rushdie
The best fuckers are naked fuckers, and let me tell you, Three Buchal-Bemis was both naked and fucking.
Rawliston sprawls; from space it’s a grubby smudge, its smoke staining the glassy clarity of the atmosphere along fifty kilometres of coastline.
I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine’s father over the top of the Standard Oil sign.
It is difficult to critically question a way of life that seems normal.
On June 13, 1963, New York University welcomed a hundred scientists to the Conference on Education for Creativity in the Sciences.
As I cross the courtyard to the execution shed I pass a tangle of bloody feathers.
Book:The Labyrinth Index by Charles Strosss
It went wrong for me when they made Sethr an outcast.
Book: The Expert System’s Brother by Adrian Tchaikovsky
This really won’t be much of a challenge:
The Maesters of the Citadel who keep the histories of Westeros have used Aegon’s Conquest as their touchstone for the last three hundred years.
I’d always said that if and when the aliens actually landed, it would be a letdown.
I don’t know how to do the white-out…but the hint is, I’m in the middle of my annual re-read of my favorite Christmas short stories. Hey, it may be New Year’s Day, but it’s also the 8th Day of Christmas! Several more to go!
JDN and I are reading the same book, so I will use the first line of the story I’m reading.
The days which bracketed hurricanes were painful in their clarity.
After resting in a reading rut, I came across this:
“There were prodigies and portents enough, One-Eye says.”
..and I haven’t been able to put it down.
The twelve men congregated in the smoking room of the Crown Hotel gave the impression of a party accidentally met.
Book: The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
Once again, the first book I am reading in 2019 isn’t science fiction, so here’s the first line of what will be the first science fiction book:
“The idea was too big for the mind to grasp in all its implications at the first attempt.”
Book: Four-Sided Triangle by William F. Temple
@14: Your book was one of the last I read in 2018.
This one kind of gives away the title in the first line:
I’ll give the title in white anyway: Voyage of the Basilisk, by Marie Brennan
My first book was the same as JamesPadraicR (comment 13) and a lot of (bleak) fun it was too!
“As I cross the courtyard to the execution shed I pass a tangle of bloody feathers.”
Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we?
You’d have guessed from the size of his shadow that Clay Cooper was a bigger man than he was.
There is a tradition in our kingdom, one all castes of demon and human follow.
Book: Girls of Paper and Fire, by Natasha Ngan
“Welcome to the 2019 gardener’s almanac.”
It is a little formulaic, everything seems to happen so linearly.
I’m probably not going to be reading as much this year. I want to read more, but publishers have to meet me halfway on this and publish books I want to read.
“Eshonai had always told her sister that she was certain something wonderful lay over the next hill.”
Book: Oathbringer
The Dog’s Teeth pub was an ugly atrocity of lumber and plaster wedged in the empty space between the row houses at the intersection of Cole and Hester.
The phone was ringing. Again.
Well, I’m starting 2019 partway through two books, so I’ll go with them.
1. “You ain’t gonna like what I have to tell you, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I’m one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It’s French, so Beatrice tells me.”
Book: Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
2. “It was William Withers who first generated the myth of the Australian goldfields as an exclusively masculine domain. In his popular History of Ballarat, first published in 1870, Withers made arresting statements like this: the diggers were young and wifeless for the most part, to see a woman was an absolute phenomenon, the diggings were womanless fields. But Withers’ unequivocal descriptions referred to the earliest days of the gold rush, that is, late 1851 and early 1852. It is a historical nicety conveniently overlooked by subsequent historians, eager to romanticise the digging life as one of unparalleled freedom and independence.”
Book: The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright
“Dusk at the end of winter, and two men crossed the dooryard of a palace scarred by fire.”
“Every inch of wall space is covered by a bookcase”.
”I am warm and safe in the den, with my two siblings.”
Snow was falling on Riverside, great white feather-puffs that veiled the cracks in the facades of its ruined houses, slowly softening the harsh contours of jagged roof and fallen beam.
“Just why Peter Samson was wandering around in Building 26 in the middle of the night is a matter that he would find difficult to explain.”
Book: Hackers – Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy
Re-reading an old favourite that seems more relevant now than it did when it was written:
Up a goddamn mountain. So that ignorant, thick-lipped, evil, whorehopping editor phones me up and says “Does the word contract mean anything to you, Jerusalem?”
Book: Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis with Darick Robertson’s art.
Reading two books at the moment, fiction and non-fiction.
Fiction: “The Red Union had been attacking the headquarters of the April Twenty-eighth brigade for two days.”
Non: ” ‘The outcome of war,’ wrote William Ludwig of Nassau to his cousin Maurice in 1614, ‘depends on fortune as in a game of dice.’ ”
@16 good one! Adding to re-read pile. This time of year I need all the comfort re-reads.
Currently rereading this cozy Christmas mystery fantasy. It’s like a warm fuzzy blanket.
“There is a right way to do things and a wrong way, if you’re going to run a hotel in a smugglers’ town.”
Book:
Greenglass House by Kate Milford
“When the murderer Gary Cobalt trotted into the Bitter Blossom, he nearly gave himself away as half-unicorn within thirty seconds.”
Book: “Space Unicorn Blues”, by T. J. Berry
“‘That’s torn it!’ said Lord Peter Wimsey.”
Silver, gold, diamond.
@3, I’m hoping to get to that one some time this year.
What I’m currently reading starts: “In a landscape torn with grief, the carcasses of six dragons lay strewn in a ragged row reaching a thousand or more paces across the plain, flesh split apart, broken bones jutting, jaws gaping and eyes brittle-dry.” Reaper’s Gale
@32, I feel like I’ve read that one, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
The one I am currently reading is obscure, and the first sentence is no clue at all, so I’ll just give the answer.
“He will take up his pen to make notes.”
This is from “A Fond Farewell to Dying” by Syd Logsdon (1981).
Jeremiah was black. He could feel it. The way the sun beat down hard and hot on his skin in the summer. Sometimes it felt like he sweated black beads of oil. He felt warm inside his skin, protected.
—
Anyone else participating in John Green’s Life’s Library club? You’ll know what this is, of course.
Title: If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
One day, Raven was bored.
An oldie but new to me:
IN THE YOUTH of the world, the evil God Torak stole the Orb of Aldur and fled, seeking dominion.
“There has to be a way to reverse it,” said Gully desperately.
Book: Inkspice, Kaitlin Bellamy, a sequel in the Mapweaver Chronicles
Not genre, but interesting nonetheless, and so far, very entertaining:
The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken.
Book: Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
Book and explanation: OK, it’s not SF. In fact, it’s not even fiction. The first book I’m reading in 2019 is Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire, edited by Patricia A. McAnany & Norman Yoffee. It’s a response (rebuttal?) to Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
I trusted one person in the entire world.
“In the Shadow the man who called himself Bors, at least in this place, sneered at the low murmuring that rolled around the vaulted chamber like the soft gabble of geese.”
Book: The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan
“The Salinas Valley is in Northern California!”
I usually read three books at once. Here’s the first three:
Book: Homer’s The Odyssey (tr. W. H. D. Rouse)
Book: Clarel by Herman Melville
Book: Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
“When Patricia was six years old, she found a wounded bird.”
Book: All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
“Do you see what I see?”
And since it is so awfully generic, I’ll put the next two sentences, too, just for good measure.
What normal person doesn’t look up at that? Not that I’m entirely normal, but at least Griffin’s question snaps me from unpleasant thoughts of giant metallic birds, Cyclopes, fire, and blood.
Book: “Heart on Fire” by Amanda Bouchet (the last in her Kingmaker Trilogy)
“In Control’s dreams it is early morning, the sky deep blue with just a twinge of light.”
There is so much blood.
The thing always appeared in the hour between sunset and full dark.
Book: Alif the Unseen.
“And the moral of the story: never call a two-star general a bastard to his face”.
Book: The Better Part of Valor, by Tanya Huff
“When exactly did I stop saying ‘what a drag’…?”
Book: Shikamaru Hiden: A Cloud Drifting in the Silent Darkness.
This one is a re-read, and it is a few years old:
Fawn came to the well-house a little before noon.
Book: The Sharing Knife: Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold
Only fools climbed to the surface.
There was a new light in the night sky.
Book: A Voice out of Ramah
My first line: Dudley landed one last kick on Harry’s chest. “There,”, he said with deep satisfaction, “Next time you’ll think twice before snitching to the clerk I snuck that lady’s fiver from her purse, won’t you?”.
Yes, its a fanfic. Now, how to white-out?
“If wishes were ponies“
Side note grumble: My account on baenbooks does not work here. Grumble.
Side note 2: creating an account does not lose this message. Reloading the page does not lose this message. But logging in after creating the account *does*. So glad I’ve gotten into the habbit of copy/pasting the whole message before trying that.
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.
It was November.
_The Thirteenth Tale_ by Diane Setterfield
“The glass in the French window shattered.”
Book: Cocaine Blues (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) by Kerry Greenwood
Reading goals? At last 50 books. :D *points @@@@@ Popsugar Reading Challenge 2019*
By the time Duane Chapman died on the Hilketa field, his head had already been torn off twice.
Head On, Scalzi
The old factory was the kind of place you only find in the very worst parts of big cities.
“Sasha had once found Dusty’s signature scowl endearing—the way her pillowy lips pursed, dimples forming in her round cheeks.”
First line of first book read/reviewed this year[posted 1 hour ago] Wolfwater- book three of the Travelers series, by Alia Hess.
The coyote knew the devil was behind the headlights.
“As Sancia Grado lay facedown in the mud, stuffed underneath the wooden deck next to the old stone wall, she reflected that this evening was not going at all as she had wanted.”
– Foundryside, Robert Jackson Bennett
Not to be dumb, but what book is featured in the photo?
I have the worst luck with bot-driven transport.
The copter set down in the front yard of the dragon nursery under a burning sun.
Book: Dragon’s Heart
I’m reading two books:
Faerie was not how I remembered it.
book: Prince Of Dreams by Pippa DaCosta
A dolphin lay sprawled on the sand.
book: Dolphin Spirit by Kimberli Bindschatel
Memories surfaced like waves as he slept, cresting and curling and retreating.
Book: The Shattered Sun by Rachel Dunne
“Jasnah Kholin pretended to enjoy the party, giving no indication that she intended to have one of the guests killed.”
Book: Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
The Snubbing Post, down by the river in Vauxhall, was a useful sort of place when the whole of London was looking for you.
The door had barely opened into the yellow-lemon infirmary before Nurse Dan was hurrying over to help him onto a cot, resignation clear on his round, pink face, the skunk of weed thick as always.
Lucas Priest, Sergeant Major, United States Army Temporal Corps, was trying to figure out how to stop a charging bull elephant with nothing but a Roman short sword.
Francesca Bassington sat in the drawing-room of her house in Blue Street, W., regaling herself and her estimable brother Henry with China tea and small cress sandwiches.
The Unbearable Bassington
Saki, 1913
“In the hamlet of Affery, folk cherished the plague.”
— Wayfarer, K. M. Wyland
Crying and laughing, Charlie put his S&W Model 5946 between his teeth, squeezed the trigger, and excused himself from life.
mad props to anyone who correctly guesses this one:
A man runs.
Captain Owen McClaren was extremely tense, although a casual observer would never have thought so.
“His name was Richard Williams and he worked in public relations.”
From the book The Red Knight by Miles Cameron. The Captain of Albinkirk forced himself to stop staring out his narrow, glazed window and do some work.
“Kora and Nova had never seen a Mesarthim, but they knew all about them.”
“In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three.”
– Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
(Technically carrying it over from 2018.)
A bit of a cheat, since I finished it just before the new year (I tend to binge-read, don’t judge!), but:
“You will criticize me, Reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I describe, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described.”
Book: Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
The handsome dining room of the Hotel Wessex, with its gilded plaster shields and the mural depicting the Green Mountains, had been reserved for the Ladies’ Night Dinner of the Fort Beulah Rotary Club. It Can’t Happen Here – Sinclair Lewis
“Richard Strickland reads the brief from General Hoyt.”
Book: The Shape of Water by Daniel Kraus and Guillermo del Toro
CHAPTER ONE
Her Majesty, Queen Porenn of Drasnia, was in a pensive mood.
From “The Sorceress of Darshiva” by David Eddings. Last book of “The Mallorean” which is the sequel series to “The Belgariad” series.
Those books need to be done as good TV series.
Line: On the three-hundredth anniversary of my birth, I finally managed to conquer the world. The entire world. It had made for a rather memorable birthday present, though admittedly I’d been placed into this world with the intention and expectation that I’d someday rule it.
Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson
“The twilight hours conceal many sins, but anyone could see that the driver of the pale yellow pick-up truck swerving and zigzagging around the mall parking lot was drunk.”
~ Force of Chaos by Lin Senchaid
“Larch often thought that if it had not been for his newborn son, he never would have survived his wife Mikra’s death.”
@@@@@ 52 Alif the Unseen, by G Willow Wilson. I know because it’s the first book I am reading this year
“Rűsul traveled to meet his death.”
“A cold wind was whipping the torches into fiery tails.”
Book: The Forests of Avalon (aka The Forest House)
@94 – Haven’t got there yet. Spoiler, but mine above @47 is Book 2 of the Belgariad. Might as well starting giving answers for those who lack white out skills….
Nice to see I was able to identify at least some of those above, including the various Sandersons, Wizard of Earthsea, Wheel of Time, Sharing Knife, the Odyssey and, of course, Karen Memory.
Memetic incursion in progress: estimated tale type 312 (“Bluebeard”)
Status: UNRESOLVED/IN ABEYANCE
Ciara Bloomfield squinted at her reflection.
BOOK: Indexing: Reflections by Seanan McGuire
“I’m pretty much fucked.”
Book: The Martian, Andy Weir
The dead continued to sing.
Book:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a human assassin in possession of an important mission must be in want of a target.” – Vlad Taltos, Vallista, by Steven Brust
There was a monster in Greta Helsing’s hotel bathroom sink.
Book: Dreadful Company (A Dr. Greta Helsing Novel Book 2)
Your end is a dead blue wren.
Book (not spec fic!): Boy Swallows Universe
From first Spec Fic book:
In the early morning Toby climbs up to the rooftop to watch the sunrise.
Book: The Year of the Flood
An entire world hummed and bustled beyond the dark ramparts of the mountains, yet to Lindsey Harrison the night seemed empty, as hollow as the vacant chambers of a cold, dead heart.
Hideaway~Dean Koontz
“Twenty million countrymen died in the Great Patriotic War and his whole family were among them.”
Not a single sentence, but I didn’t have the heart to cut out the whole monologue.
On the whole, we’re a murderous race.
According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain’s brother Abel probably never saw it coming.
As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding.
For freaking Cain.
“NOVEMBER 2: I’ve been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way.”
Book: “The savage detectives”, Roberto Bolaño
“Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles… How the epithets pile up.”
Book: The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker
“On November 11, 1918, at precisely 11am, Paris time, the Armistice which terminated World War I went into effect.
Headlines throughout the world announced that the war to end all wars was over, but sadly enough there was a contradictory epilogue already in the making–a bloody continuation of the conflict which had ravaged Europe for four frightful years.”
I don’t have the book I was reading on New Year’s with me at the moment (plus I had started reading it in December). So, this is first line of the first thing I started this year:
There were two kinds of darkness, and Tacenda feared the second far more than the first
//Chidren of the Nameless, Brandon Sanderson//
I know 45!! It’s If You Come Softly! I read that book in high school and loved it (and the poem) although at the time, the concerns it ultimately discusesd were so far from my mind…in a way the book is even more applicable now. Or maybe it’s just that there’s a lot more attention paid to it now…
I knew 52 as well, naturally :) And a few of the others which referenced Words of Radience/Oathbringer. Otherwise, it’s kind of fun to see how many books there are that I DON’T know.
@32 ““Every inch of wall space is covered by a bookcase”. Don’t know what book this is, or what the general tone is, but just that sentence sounds lovely :)