"By the time Professor Richard Lovell found his way through Canton’s narrow alleys to the faded address in his diary, the boy was the only one in the house left alive."
-- R. F Kuang, _Babel_
"The server brings over two bowls of hot udon. I look at my daughter as she grabs chopsticks and spoons from the box of utensils. She looks tired, or thinner, or older."
-- Kim Hye-jin, _Concerning My Daughter_
"It was the first time that an oil drum had washed up on the scattered pebbles of the island shore. Other items had arrived over the years--ragged shirts, bits of rope, . . . There had been bodies, too, as there was today. The length of it stretched out beside the drum, one hand reaching forward as though to indicate that they had made the journey together and did not now wish to be parted."
-- Karen Jennings, _An Island_
Kelp was the key to America.
-- Pekka Hamalainen, _Indigenous Continent_
On a warm and breezy night in August 1834, a group of white men, nearly one hundred strong, gathered on Seventh Street, between Shippen and Fitzwater, in Philadelphia.
-- Kerri Greenidge, _The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family_
The revolution began quietly, with an awkward note sent between near strangers on June 7, 1897.
-- Isaac Butler, _The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act_
#FridayReads #FirstLineFriday #books #cosobooks
I ANSWERED THE PHONE, AND THERE WAS A WOMAN’S VOICE on the other end, a voice that I didn’t recognize. “Is this Frances Budge?” she asked, and I was certain it was a telemarketer, because nobody called me Frances. In the living room, my seven-year-old daughter had made her own set of drums, including a tin plate for a cymbal, so it was loud as hell in the house, with this ting-bang-ting-ting-bang rhythm she had going on.
If you ask six different monks the question of which godly domain robot consciousness belongs to, you’ll get seven different answers.
-- Becky Chambers, _A Psalm for the Wild-Built_
"It was said, or so he had been told: Fatima, beloved daughter of the Prophet, had not felt the heat of the fire as she stirred a pot of simmering halva with her hand. She didn't feel the burning sugar climbing her arm, darkening to the color of her skin, such was her grief."
-- Aamina Ahmad, _The Return of Faraz Ali_
"Two decades and change into her beef, Carlotta Mercedes braced herself for audition number five with the New York State Board of Parole."
-- James Hannaham, _Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta_
First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they've always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let's just say out of it.
-- Barbara Kingsolver, _Demon Copperhead_
She stood before us, without notes, books, or nerves. The lectern was occupied by her handbag. She looked around, smiled, was still, and began.
Julian Barnes, _Elizabeth Finch_