First Paragraph

[Donna Moore]

Months ago I started a discussion asking what the first paragraph of your current read was (since have discovered some great books this way). I have been thinking for a wee while that I'd like to get some more and as I have just started a book with a cracking first paragraph I thought now might be a good time:

From Warren Ellis' CROOKED LITTLE VEIN

'I opened my eyes to see the rat taking a piss in my coffee mug. It was a huge brown bastard; had a body like a turd with legs and beady black eyes full of secret rat knowledge. Making a smug huffing sound, it threw itself from the table to the floor, and scuttled back into the hole in the wall where it had spent the last three months planning new ways to screw me around. I'd tried nailing wood over the gap in the wainscot, but it gnawed through it and spat the wet pieces into my shoes. After that, I spiked bait with warfarin, but the poison seemed to somehow cause it to evolve and become a super-rat. I nailed it across the eyes once with a lucky shot with the butt of my gun, but it got up again and shat in my telephone.'

Brilliant :o) No way I can't read on after that. Although I do wish I hadn't been eating lunch at the time.

[Tanja]

I'm currently reading Terry Pratchett's Hogfather so I'll give you two paragraphs, the first one and the one on the next page.

Everything must start somewhere, although many physicists disagree.
But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder aloud how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of the words. Yet there is the constant desire to find some point in the twisting, knotting, ravelling nets of space-time on which metaphorical finger can be put to indicate that here, here, is the point where it all began...


The senior wizards of Unseen University stood and looked at the door. There was no doubt that whoever had shut it wanted it to stay shut. Dozens of nails secured it to the door frame. Planks had been nailed right across. And finally it had, up until this morning, been hidden by a bookcase that had been put in front of it.
'And there's the sign, Ricdully', said the Dean. 'You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says "Do not under any circumstances, open this door"?'
'Of course I've read it', said Ridcully. 'Why d'yer think I want it opened?'
'Er... why?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'To see why they wanted it shut, of course.' [there's a footnote in this place saying: This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilization. At least, those bits of it that are now under sea, fenced off, or still smoking.]

I hope it makes you wanna read it... it's very funny. But I'm new around here, and I don't know who reads what, so I'm just gonna say, if you haven't read this one or any other Pratchett's book then I suggest reading some books that come before this one (those are even funnier) because that way some things will have more sense.

[Jack Getze]

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.


The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler

[JackBludis]

As good an opening as there's every been. I'd like to have a nickel for every time it's been quoted.

[Jude Hardin]

"The sky had gone black at sunset, and the storm had churned inland from the Gulf and drenched New Iberia and littered East Main with leaves and tree branches from the long canopy of oaks that covered the street from the old brick post office to the drawbridge over Bayou Teche at the edge of town. The air was cool now, laced with light rain, heavy with the smell of wet humus, night-blooming jasmine, roses, and new bamboo. I was about to stop my truck at Del’s and pick up three crawfish dinners to go when a lavender Cadillac fishtailed out of a side street, caromed off a curb, bounced a hubcap up on a sidewalk, and left long serpentine lines of tire prints through the glazed pools of yellow light from the street lamps."

In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, James Lee Burke

[Dennis Leppanen]

"They're still talking about this one down on Gallatin Street. Honey Boutrille was sitting at the piano for his regular man, who was down with the drip, hitting all the wrong keys because he couldn't read a note and had no ear (although he was convinced he did), when a customer from the West End mutilated one of Honey's whores in the back room of the House of Rest for Weary Boatmen. This much was agreed upon by witnesses. What followed is still in dispute as to some details.

Black Powder, White Smoke, Loren D. Estleman