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 want 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!
Leah’s First Line of the Year: “I was lost, it was already dusk, I had been driving for hours and was practically out of petrol.”
Book: Ice by Anna Kavan
Natalie’s First Line of the Year: “The shape of power is always the same; it is the shape of a tree.”
Book: The Power by Naomi Alderman
Emily’s First Line of the Year (this one is a bit unfair for guessing, as the book isn’t out yet): “It begins when a wizard cleaves an island from the mainland, in response to the king destroying her temple.”
Book: The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton
Molly’s First Line of the Year: “In a city swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war, a young man met a young woman in a classroom and did not speak to her.”
Book: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
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…)
The moon called it forth, the summons of blood.
Book: Child of a Mad God
Book: Polaris by Jack McDevitt
First line: “It no longer looked like a sun.”
Emily’s line sounds intriguing.
The book I just started reading is not out yet, either, so I am not sure that’s fair either.
“Skyline lights hovered in the hazy city night, glowing motes that lit the horizon.”
Jasmine Gower’s Moonshine
About 13.5 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being in what is known as the Big Bang.
Book: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Book: The Erstwhile by B. Catling
This is where the man-beast crawls, its once-virtuous body turned inside out, made raw and skinless, growing vines and sinews backwards through the flesh, stiff primordial feathers pluming in its lungs, thorns and rust knotted to barbed wire in its loins.
What? I have Emily’s book, on e-loan from my Canadian library (but it’s also at my UK library). So released on both sides of the pond, apparently.
Hmm, the first books I’m reading in 2018 are non-fiction titles: altering the question to the first novel, my TBR pile provides me with this:
“Late one night a long time ago – before you were even born, boy – a bodyguard stood on the verandah at the back of a big house in Moscow, smoking a cigarette.”
Book: Archangel by Robert Harris
However, as that book isn’t speculative fiction I also offer this line:
“It rained diamonds that day, but no one cared.”
Book: The Pirate Planet by James Goss and Douglas Adams
Pushing through the water, the massive steamship Olympic, sister of the lost Titanic, docked at New York City carrying passengers, thousands of sacks of mail, and the mind of the world’s greatest detective.
Book: Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City’s Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation, by Brad Ricca.
So, one of those nonfiction books where once you’ve read the subtitle you know the whole story already.
Book: The Secret History, Donna Tartt
As for reading goals, last year I set out to read 121, and managed 146. This year, my target is 134.
Kell wore a very peculiar coat.
Book: A Darker Shade of Magic, by V. E. Schwab
Book: The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks. (A bit obvious, I suppose!)
“Hubris it is, reader, to call one’s self the most anything in history: the most powerful, the most mistreated, the most alone.”
Book: The Will To Battle by Ada Palmer
A no-brainer for most: Eshonai had always told her sister that she was certain something wonderful lay over the next hill.
Book: Oathbringer
I know I’m hopelessly late with it, but I am a slow reader, take my time to enjoy it, and it took longer to reread the first two than expected. But I am practically finished with it now (unfortunately, since the Dreadful Wait awaits).
Setting out to read 2 full series this year: here’s the lines from the first books
“The storm had broken”
Book: Magician: Apprentice
“The Scopuli had been taken eight days ago.”
Book: Leviathan Wakes
And here’s the nonfiction I’m reading:
“The longsword, or Langes Schwert in German, is a medieval and early Renaissance weapon designed to be held with both hands, but light enough to be wielded with one if need be.”
Book: Fighting with the German Longsword
“This time there would be no witnesses.”
A reread since I binged the TV show over the holiday, but it’s been 25 years, or so, so it’s almost like reading it for the first time.
Finally rereading The Book of the New Sun, so …
It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.
@@.-@ tcgavel That’s The Bible, isn’t it?
I shut the door of the old Victorian behind me, and the stuffy atmosphere closed in: overheated, dry, and redolent of mothballs.
Mine (which, to be fair, I started reading on 12/24, but will be reading well into January, if not February):
When the year one thousand came, Thorkel Amundason was five years old, and hardly noticed how frightened everyone was.
Book: King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett.
“The ship didn’t even have a name.”
Book: Consider Phlebas, by Iain M. Banks. A more significant line than first-time readers know, given what we later learn about the naming of Culture ships.
“Going to Mood Fabrics is like going to The Library of Congress.”
“Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways.”
Book: PoA, of course.
The bells of St. Mark’s were ringing changes up on the mountain when Bud skated over to the mod parlor to upgrade his skull gun.
Book: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
I started that on 12/27, though. The first line to the first book I will entirely read in 2018 (though it’s not SFF) is:
It was midnight to the second with a full moon overhead when three women were being killed in three separate locations.
Book: I Shot the Buddha (Number 11 in the Dr. Siri series) by Colin Cotterill.
“Jane Bailey stood near the edge of a high, red cliff watching Alexander the Great’s tank division maneuver into a defensive position.”
Book: Doctor Strange: the Fate of Dreams by Devin Grayson. Yes, really.
“Mandalore Burned.”
Book: Ahsoka
I realize it’s technically YA, but I’ve been getting into the series’ where that character appeared, so the book seemed a logical extension. I just finished “Kenobi,” a book detailing the very early days of Obi Wan Kenobi’s exile on Tattooine.
The Surgeon’s appearance in the servants’ quarters caused a silence that rippled from the doorway outward.
Book: From Ruins, M.C.A. Hogarth
The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory.
Snow Crash
Logen plunged through the trees, bare feet slipping and sliding on the wet earth, the slush, the wet pine needles, breath rasping in his chest, blood thumping in his head.
(Finally getting to this series)
Book: The Blade Itself
Ah, it seems I have a misprint. I’ll get back to you folks. I’ve been too busy burning books to stay warm.
“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 beams.”
A re-read for me, of a series I find myself going back to and back to over and over. This one being, of course: Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
“Under a green sky and a yellow sun, on a black stallion with crimson-dyed mane and blue-dyed tail, Kickaha rode for his life.”
Book: A Private Cosmos (World of Tiers, vol. 3) by Philip José Farmer
I’m re-reading this series while waiting for the library to give me vol. 4 of The Expanse by James S.A. Corey, which I’m reading for the first time.
I’m reading the same book @15 snowkeep is reading, and for the same reason.
I’m going to skip the prologue, which gives the whole thing away, and instead give the first sentence from the first chapter:-
Book: Anvil of Stars, by Greg Bear.
By the way, what’s the source of the text in the lead photo?
[Addendum: Okay, I found it. But why is ‘centre’ misspelled?]
The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats.
Book: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
There was a man and he had eight sons.
Book: Sourcery by Terry Pratchett
My First Line of the Year: “Before I tell you what Charlie Fisher saw, the incredible and beautiful thing he witnessed, and how it would set into motion a series of events that would change his life in a very dramatic way for a very long time, I should first explain to you who Charlie was and how he came to be sitting there in the Place Jean Jaurès in Marseille, France, on a warm Tuesday morning in April 1961.”
Book: The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid, by Colin Meloy
It’s not SF, but here goes:
“In the captain’s cabin on HMS Tyger, Charles Dillon delicately plucked off his opponent’s stones and placed them in the centre of the backgammon board.”
Book: Persephone by Julian Stockwin
I re-read the Lord of the Rings every January, beginning on January the 1st (which I have been doing for over 40 years now!). The first line is: “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”
I’m reading the same book as Plessiez @12.
The smuggler held the bullet between thumb and forefinger, studying it in the weak light of the storeroom.
Book:
Charlotte was certain she was going to die.
Book: Weaver’s Lament
“Dear You,
The body you are wearing used to be mine.”
Book: The Rook
Technically already ready this, but it’s been 16 years and I don’t think I really “got” it the first time.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”
Book: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Onye Na-Agu Edemede A Muru Aku: Let the Reader Beware
Book:
#27: Snow Crash. All hail Hiro Protagonist! What do I win? :D
It’s non-fiction, not genre, but it has a great opening line:
“Why is there a glop of macaroni salad next to the Japanese chicken in my plate lunch?”
Book: Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
“It was predictable, in hindsight.”
Book: The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
I’ve had my brother’s copies of this series for months. Finally getting to them. He’ll be glad to get them back, I’m sure.
“Home again.”
Book:
being reread in preparation for the book that had better be arriving Thursday.
“There were five of us — Carruthers and the new recruit and myself, and Mr. Spivens and the verger.”
Book:
Being reread because it’s just such a great, funny book.
@33, Re: lead photo book–probably because it’s the North American edition. It’s spelled the same way in my copy (I’m Canadian, so it’s a coin flip which spelling it would go with). I was planning on reading this first thing this year, it didn’t work out, but Jordan was a dead giveaway for me.
The book I started last week and am currently reading begins with “Enoch rounds the corner just as the executioner raises the noose above the woman’s head.” Book: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson.
@15, @32, Is that a Shannara book? ‘Cause I’m trying to think of which book/series older than 25 years has a (recent) tv show.
“Twenty years after I saw her, I still remember the young woman across the aisle from me on a train through a snowstorm in Pennsylvania.”
Train
Tom Zoellner
The mountain wore a mirrored mask.
Book: The Stone in the Skull by Elizabeth Bear
“Edward was explaining to Carl about margins”
Book:
@49 thThompson: No, not a Shannara book. It is Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.
Two children had Tinwelint then, Dairon and Tinúviel, and Tinúviel was a maiden, and the most beautiful of all the maidens of the hidden elves, and indeed few have been so fair, for her mother was a fay, a daughter of the Gods; but Dairon was then a boy strong and merry, and above all things he delighted to play upon a pipe of reeds or other woodland instruments, and he is named now among the three most magic players of the elves, and the others are Tinfang Warble and Ivárë who plays beside the sea.
He was leaning against the side of an autocab by the curb as I walked through the door and atmosphere curtain of the New Pallas Towers into the chilly manhattan night air.
Book: Night Train to Rigel by Timothy Zahn
James P.@25:
Don’t get too attached to the Kenobi book. It was the last one published in the old Legends continuity. And Disney announced a Kenobi movie December 13th. I quite enjoyed the book, and hope they do a Kenobi movie as a western, like that one. That would be awesome. But it won’t be that book.
He sat before the mirror of the second-floor bedroom sketching his lean cheeks with their high bone ridges, the flat broad forehead, and ears too far back on the head, the dark hair curling forward in the thatches, the amber-colored eyes wide-set but not heavy-lidded.
Book: The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
@56 – ah, yes, that one did just squeak in! I didn’t realize that was literally the last one that made it, though. I know they also had a set of books, one for Han, one for Leia and one for Luke, and I think halfway through Luke’s got set in the ‘new’ canon. I think that’s also what happened to JJM’s ‘Rebels’ book as well.
Anyway, I love this game, although I’m a little sad that I only recognized a few of them (Harry Potter/LotR/Oathbringer) even though I have read the Sparrow.
And as it turns out, since one of my reading resolution is to finally finish reading the Legends EU (that’s one good thing about it being finished, I guess – there is now an end in sight!) here’s mine (technically started on December 31):
“The light star cruiser looked deceptively insignificant against the backdrop of the galaxy.”
Book: Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance by Sean Williams
40, 47, 52, you may have messed up your posts, as your books are not present in the posts.
Finally finished the last book I started reading before the new year, so I’ll give its last line:
Book: The Long War by Pratchett and Baxter.
Anthony Pero @@@@@ 56 – Yeah, I could tell from the Copyright that it was probably under the Legends Canon. I just meant that I liked the story. And while I liked the story as a tale of the early days of his exile, I didn’t expect that to be the basis for the Kenobi anthology movie. While I myself would like a Kenobi anthology movie to dig into his time as a padawan (I’m more curious than I probably should be about his prior relationship with Satine), I suspect that post-RotS is a more likely timeframe for the movie, and I would like to see a canonical story detailing his time on Tattooine.
There has of yet to my knowledge been no official announcement of a Kenobi spinoff film, though the book is certainly Legends, and they are probably doing a Kenobi film at some point.
(Oddly, it has a Canon-FACPOV followup in the recent From a Certain Point of View anthology.)
JJM’s Rebels book was always going to be canon, though, since it was meant as an intro to the New Canon’s first big TV series.
My first book started in 2018 opens with this line:
“As the Cantonican Dream dropped out of hyperspace, Kedpin Shoklop sneezed loudly and blew his nose-slits, then smiled apologetically, blinking his big single eye in what he hoped his seat mate would understand was a placating gesture.”
Book: Canto Bight
My next starts with:
“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”
Book: Middlemarch
“The Red Union had been attacking the headquarters of the April Twenty-eight Brigade for two days.”
Book: The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
@61:
You’re correct, it hasn’t been officially announced, but negotiations with a director for that movie were confirmed, along with a production start date.
Victor readjusted the shovels on his shoulder and stepped gingerly over an old, half-sunken grave.
Book:
“Gongratulations, you old hag!”
Book: “Easy Choices” by Triinu Meres
(It’s not available in the English language, though I do hope they’d translate it – it’s good enough to become a hit, imo)
Also, I have to ask – is the screenshot a first page?
I recognized Jordan College on the Thames – is it one of Pullman’s His Dark Materials books?
Lisamarie @@@@@ 66 – Your guess is exactly what mine would have been, that being that the screenshot is the opening page of The Golden Compass (Northern Lights for the non-Americans), but I’m not accessible to my copy of the books right now, so I can’t confirm.
Edited to add: a Google search of a distinctive phrase on that page (“the misty levels of Port Meadow”) leads to a new book by Philip Pullman called The Book of Dust Vol. 1: La Belle Sauvage. So not His Dark Materials, but at least we had the right author.
@66 & 67: It’s the first page of Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage.
@53 Tessuna, I see, thanks. Haven’t read the book, loved the first season of the show though. Haven’t been able to get hold of the second season yet, not available where I am.
I have been sitting on this book for a while, it just happened to come to the top of my backlog as the new year came upon us. Side note: I have had a terrible new years. Some kind of infection (though what kind exactly the medical professionals cannot say) has caused awful nerve pain in my face. The kind of jump out of your chair, start punching the walls and writhing on the floor pain that really makes you question your own sanity because surly if you are in this much pain there should be some kind of gaping wound or suppurating hole in your body. Then when it just turns off like a light switch you really start to wonder what the hell is wrong with you. I’ve felt pain like this only twice and the other time was worse, I truly wished I was dead in the moment, but this time was almost as bad.
I say all of this because when I would crawl out of my pain induced stupor, I would find myself unable to bear bright lights or screens and lacking the coordination to draw or write. So I settled into an involving book, and I had forgotten just how healing that could be, the way they can transport you out of your current troubles while not changing anything about your circumstance. Anyways, here’s the first line of that book, and boy is it a big one.
” The Palace is as large as a good sized town, for through the centuries its outbuildings, its lodges, its guest houses, the mansions of its lords and ladies in waiting have been linked by covered ways, and those covered ways roofed, in turn, so that here and there we find corridors within corridors, like conduits in a tunnel, houses within rooms, those rooms within castles, those castles within artificial caverns, the whole roofed again with tiles of gold and platinum and silver, marble and mother-of-pearl, so that the palace glares with a thousand colours in the sunlight, shimmers in the moonlight, its walls appearing to undulate, its roofs to rise and fall like a glamorous tide, its towers and minarets lifting like the masts and hulks of sinking ships.”
BOOK: Gloriana Or, The Unfulfill’d Queen by Michael Moorcock
Book
It was close on midnight when a man crossed the Place de la Concorde.
“If you had met my father, you would never, not for an instant, have thought he was an assassin.”
Book: Reckoning by Magda Szubanski
‘Many people underestimate how difficult scientific writing is’.