Friday Firsts

Wendy of We Read hosts Friday Firsts. Today she shares a list from Nancy Pearle's Book Lust

Sometimes, Pearle says, great first lines ‘promise much but deliver little’. She makes a promise, when she lists eight books with enticing first lines that they are also ‘perfectly wonderful all the way to the last line.’ Check out the 8 books here.

I am currently reading The Elephant Keeper by Christopher Nicholson that has a very long first sentence,

"It was six days ago that Lord Bidborough, accompanied by another gentleman, came to the Elephant House and, after making the usual inquiries about my charge, who was, at that moment, quietly eating hay, asked whether it was true that, as he has heard, I was able to read."

I am enjoying this story of Tom and the elephants, "in Tom's own words, moves from the green fields and woods of the English countryside to the dark streets and alleys of late-eighteenth century London, reflecting both the beauty and the violence of the age."