Book website with minimalist design. Gives you the first page from a random book without the title or author so you can read with no preconceptions.

I went through 5 different books and came to appreciate this idea. It would be great to have a filter or be able to select what genre​ you want the books to come from. Throw a random button in there as well and this would be fantastic.

from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called, nay we call ourselves, and write our name Crusoe, and so my companions always called me.

I wonder what book this is

Thank you for posting OP! I made this site and shared it a while ago to r/internetisbeautiful and you guys crashed it! But I'm ready this time around.

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive..."

Pulled up one that had "hobbit" in the first sentence.

3 guesses!

I got The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the paragraph about the random lady reminds me of the beginning of To Be a Cat, making me realise the latter book was homaging it.

I like this idea. Too many adjectives give me headaches. First four left me nauseous. Fifth one I couldn't stop reading: The Sleeper and the Spindle, by Neil Gaiman, and nearly five stars on Amazon. Thanks OP!

"You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"

Too easy

This seems like a fun idea, let's try it out.

click

click

read "Where's Papa going with that ax?"

sigh

[deleted]

"Call me Ishmael."

Huh. Never heard that line before.

It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?

Who the hell wrote this?! 100 monkeys at typewriters!?!

Where's Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

“Out to the hoghouse,” replied Mrs. Arable. “Some pigs were born last night.”

“I don’t see why he needs an ax,” continued Fern, who was only eight.

“Well,” said her mother, “one of the pigs is a runt. It’s very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it.”

Nope

I learned the word nonconformist in fourth grade and immediately announced that I would grow up to become one.

Nick Offerman is a funny man.

E: Going through all the covers, the only ones I have read are Frankenstein, Of Mice and Men, [most of] Slaughterhouse Five, The Hobbit, [some of] 1984, H2G2, Ender's Game, Night Watch, Harry Potter (GoF).
I wish I had read more widely when I was younger, rather than just every Discworld book a billion times. It's something that I need to make more time for- and I will.
I've been working on turning 'soons' into 'nows' of late, so come Tuesday (when I am finished with university probably) I'm going to pick up For Whom the Bell Tolls.

I got one that sounded fairly intereating- it was the narrator's birthday, and she was directly addressing her birthday present. It was unclear at first what the present was at first, so I kept reading. It turned out to be the Diary of Anne Frank, which I haven't actually read before.

Damn, what a novel idea

"I'm pretty much fucked."

Welp, time to read The Martian again...

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Good Idea, but a few filters would be nice.
Not really all that interested in non-fiction books.

I got Slaughterhouse 5. Was able to recognize it fairly quickly, but only because I re-read it early this year for the first time in 15+ years.

'So it goes.'

This is awesome. I read, for the first time in my life, the first page of 20k leagues under the sea, which I never would have picked up on my own.

I love it! I bookmarked it and plan to add to my current methods of finding new stuff to read.

I riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Finnegan's Wake right out of the box. Yeah, no thanks.

Of course I got Finnegans Wake...

I find myself still scrolling straight to the bottom to judge the book by its title and cover

Welp, I know how the rest of my day will go, clicking for new books over and over again.

“Who is John Galt?”

Gee, I wonder what book this could be. Who could possibly have written this?!

This is a pretty cool idea. Not only is it good for finding books based on the first page, but I had fun trying to see if I could guess what the book was based on the first page.

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends. People were always asking, did I know Tyler Durden. The barrel of the gun pressed to the back of my throat, Tyler says, "We really won't die."

Oh yeah smarty pantses, guess this start:

One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.

Howards End,

Tuesday.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

I just can't quite figure this one out!

This would be very cool if every 1/20 books or so was from a completely unknown author. Perhaps as a filter (like other's are suggesting) so not everybody gets these options. But it could be a great way to help lesser known authors get publicity based at least to an extent on the merit of their craft.

I clicked it out of interest and got Phantom Tollbooth. I'm happy.

I got 1984, WINSTON SMITH.

A truly great book.

Christ, I got Sputnik Sweetheart -- a book I've never read or previously heard of, mind you -- and I instantly knew it was Murakami halfway through the first paragraph.

An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains – flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything[.]

Though in retrospect, the main character's Japanese name might've put the seed in there.

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number fo.....

Hmmmm, I wonder.....

I got "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

Sounds like a good book.

LOVE THIS!!!! I got Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as my first one, a book on darwinism, The Stranger, and Les Miserable's. I couldn't stand The Stranger when I read in high school and now I want to read it again.

This is a neat idea! I was hoping that it'd be books I'd never heard of, or authors I'd never heard of. What's the point if my preconceptions are biased towards being positive in the first place?

Edit: I may have not given it much of a chance—I got James and the Giant Peach at first, and this comment thread was filled with people mentioning famous authors.

Call me Ishmael

I got "Paddle your own canoe". I already do and am quite sufficient at it. Don't need to read a book on it. Like the site though.

Awesome. I got hooked on the first couple pages of The Godfather so I ended up ordering it off amazon.

"Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov..."

First book, lol.

Can this be a thing for music? It would get rid of a lot of snobbery.

Does this also show books that are in a series? It would be very annoying to get the second, third or fourth book in a series an not have it be the first!

Fantastic Idea. I would love if you could "like" books or "dislike" books so you would see more books pertaining to what you like.

Nice idea. Dude must be rolling in that sweet amazon affiliate moneyz.

The first book I got was Tuesdays With Morrie, so I rage-quit

I like the idea.

When I clicked on the link it gave me the first page of "The Godfather" I read that book within the last year and was able to identify it easily.

This is actually really cool. I always thought a site like this would be an interesting idea and Im happy there is a functioning one.

Now, allow the user to type in keywords (with weights?) to allow tuning your results (e.g., "sci-fi only", "Italian language only", etc) and it would be even more useful!

I got the original Winnie The Pooh, I like this site

LOL I got Hamlet! Crazy

Commenting so I can come back to this later. I went through a few and found it pretty neat. I could see it helping people get started on books they've never heard of, or books they aren't sure if they want to check out or not.

This one was real hard to figure out

Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.

Late to the party, but...

I got the Princess Bride. The first line is "The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette. " I didn't have to read any further to know what it was.

From the list on this thread, I'm a little upset that all of the books seem to be fairly well-known. I'd love to see more lesser known books...

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

Me: clicks and reads "Who is John Galt?" Followed immediately by my internal monologue: "Oh, for fuck's sake."

This is a great idea. Saving for later

So pretty much like the saying. "Never judge a book by its author"

clicked on the link, and the first recommendation was the book I last read: Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro. I thought it was a great book, so I recommend it to everybody!

When you're reading a lovely story about a girls happy birthday and it's revealed to be Anne Frank's diary...

I clicked and it starts "Sam Vimes" and after a quick skim I knew it was Night Watch. Fantastic :) Should start at the first Discworld Guards book though imo.

First one i got was the first harry potter xD im guessing the website isnt one for recommending obscure gems

A ship sailing into Marseille with a crowd at the pier... Hmmmm

thisis amazing

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!'

Hmm, what could this be?

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" gee I wonder who wrote this

My first three were Lord of the Flies, Robinson Crusoe and Life of Pi...and I picked them all out before finishing the page.

Huh.

This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable...

I recognize this from somewhere...

Hmmm, I wonder how many protagonists are named "Ender."

"There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy’s stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming." Hmm.... I wonder...

And reddit has hugged another site to death. :/ That or I got the most boring book ever:

503 Service Temporarily Unavailable nginx/1.11.10

Very irritating. I like to randomly highlight books as I read, which makes it move onto the next. If anybody recognises the book where the first pages begins with asking somebody about an unusual opinion they hold for a job interview, with examples of bad replies being" there's no god" and "america is unexceptional" and the education system is broken, I'd like to find it.

Full of amazon affiliate links

Saving this!

Ohhh wow

Bookmarked!

Great idea. Poor mobile site

My first book "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." Closed tab....

"Who is John Galt?"

Great idea! Clicked through 20 books and only knew half of them (the first 3 were all disappointing because I had read them, but finally got a book I hadn't read on the 4th one and it went up from there). Bookmarking for sure.

/r/internetisbeautiful

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed

But I need the preconceptions to irrationally make a knee jerk decision to start something im not totally behind!

Once I stumbled upon 3k books collection when I have got my first iPad 1st gen. It was fascinating to look at the covers in iBooks library app, I do remember I read a few based on the rating not on the quality of the cover design.

"Log Entry: I AM FUCKED"

The Martian again. Great.

What an amazing business idea.

So I got my favourite book ever written right off the bat.

I was amazed how many books i didn't like. Even books i had read and whose first few lines i did not remember (the golden notebook, which i loved) I did not care for much.

Guessing​ the book is pretty fun. My best is only a few words in I saw Yossarian and instantly knew it was Catch 22. Fantastic book. Fantastic site.

I don't consider myself particularly well read. But I've seen The Green Mile and recognized the opening page. What a fun game!

I got The Color Purple. Jesus Christ. Was not prepared for that shit to completely alter the mood of my day.

I love the idea and it's a fun concept...but I went through 10 and they all sucked ;p

Mine was Wuthering Heights, somehow I remembered the beginning and I remember hating the book when I had to read it in high school has anyone read it and liked it maybe I was missing something at the time.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit"... sounds good.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I was instantly hooked, so rather than settle for reading one page off an eye-straining screen, I walked to my bookshelf and opened up my personal copy of the trilogy, to read once again.

I stumbled upon Jules Renard's Journal and I want it NOW! What a fabulous read! How come I haven't read it before?!

Laughed my ass off when I got Fight Club

The 4th one I tried piqued my curiosity:

Ann Pratchett, State of Wonder: A Novel.

I've not heard of it or her, but I added it to goodreads to consider later as a palate cleanser between my preferred fantasy/sci-fi books.

I wish this was done for movies

Imagine that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. One day long ago the Martians, looking through their telescopes, discovered the Venusians. Just glimpsing the Venusians awakened feelings they had never known. They fell in love and quickly invented space travel and flew to Venus.

Hmm i wonder which book this is

Somehow i think it might be that really controversial book on gender and relationships...yep it is!

Great find

I like that the first book I find starts talking about how you don't know the character, but you have read Huck Finn, and that was by Mark Twain, and he mostly wrote truth, stretched a bit, but true...

I find it ironic that the first two lines are the title of a book, and an author....

Just clicked the link out of curiosity, and felt an actual jolt of recognition as the first sentence that appeared began like this: "Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall..."

The Golden Compass. Philip Pullman. My absolute favorite book/series of all time. Darn coincidences reaffirming my sense of personal connection to works of fiction!!

I got Battle Royale! One of my favorite books.

I like the idea here, but without the ability to filter for genre I can't see myself ever getting any use out of it. I don't want to have to read through the first page of 20 books to find one fantasy title.

Clever affiliate site. Nice job to the creator.

I happened to get my favorite book! Brought a big smile to my face, thanks.

First time on the website and I get this:

Then, one day, James’s mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.

Oh boy, oh my...

The long-haired man at the teacher’s lectern continued with a broad smile, “All right, all right, all right, okay, I’ll explain. First off, my name is Kinpatsu Sakamochi, and I’m your new instructor.”

Battle Royale has such an innocuous opening.

"how to win friends and influence people" :( owwie.

The first book it presented me is an old favorite: The Phantom Tollbooth!

Interesting idea, although if I only had the first page to go by then I wouldn't have read some of my favorite books.

I got the hobbit first try.

First book was fight club. Didn't even have to reveal the details. Felt a little bit like a typical reddit book/movie discussion sub. "DAE Underrated Gem Fight Club?"

It's really nice they included the classics, but I wish we can choose the genre of the random page. Getting them reminded me of the seemingly endless book reports back in school. Lol

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.

Huh, I wonder what book and author this could be

My first page was from Moby Dick.

I somehow managed to get Finnegans Wake on my first try.

I've never been inclined to start watching GoT because I know "Westfalia" is a brand of RV. My loss probably.

My first 3 were pride and prejudice, king Lear, and Enders game. What are the odds I get 3 books I knew the author within like 4 sentences.

This is an amazing idea!

Oh nice, thank you for this find. Bookmarked and already read through a dozen or more first pages.

I got Maya Angelou - I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. This is awesome. I love this idea!!

Pride and Prejudice, The Northern Lights, and Outlander were the first three. Interesting how it pulls some well known ones and then some bargain bin $2 paperbacks.

Thank you very much! Bookmarked!

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him."

Nice.

Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning.

Currently using this to play a game of "guess the book" with myself. I've been doing pretty well with about a third being books I've read and another half being recognizable just from character mentions I know through cultural osmosis.

Lol first book it recommended to me was the book I most recently read (1984)

This is fun.

TIL Most people can't write for shit

I love this! I skipped the first 4 or so that I got (didn't even bother to reveal the title and author) but I eventually landed on one I liked for its writing. It turned out to be a book I had already bought a year ago and had on my bookshelf to read someday.

It was Nabokov's "Lolita."

saving for future use

Going to have to come back to this occasionally.

Huh the very first story: "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." I wonder what book that could be?

"As I stepped out..." I knew it from these four words...

This was not a children’s candy store. This was Sweet Heaven, an upscale, gourmet candy store. No cheap lollipops or chalky chocolate kisses, but the kind of place you went to buy expensive, imported truffles for your boss’s wife because you felt guilty for fucking him when you were both at a conference in Milwaukee.

It gets worse:

He held out his hand. When I took it, he pulled me closer, step by hesitant step, until he could lean close and whisper in my ear. His hot breath gusted along my skin, and I shivered. “Do you like licorice?”

I'm out.

Turns out that is " Dirty", by Megan Hart. Sounds and looks like something I'd skip regardless.

TIL that the Clockwork Orange is also a book.

This site makes me truly realize how picky I am about the books I like...

And the first to books were Hamlet and metamorphosis. I recognized then instantly ha.

Lol I got Atlas Shrugged

Commenting, mainly to save this post. I need to read more and my current sources aren't interesting...

Great website!

I love this, but would like to see it sortable by genre. I think I pretty much read fantasy exclusively, so nearly anything else isn't going to work. Other than that, fantastic idea.

I got the very first page of the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone. Laughed a little, like, "Gee, wonder what book starts with talk about some people named the Dursley's?"

One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.

Howards End,

Lol

The third book I got I managed to recognize, even though it's been 10+ years since I read it. (Number the Stars)

However, I wonder what their sample size is? I've hit the button ten times and already got the same book twice

Thank you for this! I love it!

Brilliant! Thank you for this!

I guess this is only for books in the public domain? I.e. This is a classics finder?

I wish this was an app

They also have a section where you literally judge books by their covers

http://www.recommendmeabook.com/covers

[deleted]

This is amazing

This is an excellent idea.

Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about—he wasn’t no home-run hitter or a fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock.

I certainly didn't recognize mine.

Edit: But the next was obvious within 4 words:

“Who is John Galt?”

The Shining by Stephen King is my favorite book ever, but if I'd just judged it by the first page that's all I'd have read. I think it needs to find a really interesting part and post that.

I decided to keep clicking until I got a book I recognize. Fifth book was Hitchhiker's Guide, I recognized it without having actually known the first words, it just immediately came to mind that it was one of the Douglas Adams books.

Saves on papercuts!

Awesome, I love this so much. I'm so biased when it comes to picking out books to read. I let the title, author, book cover art, etc. make a huge impression on me when picking out a book and I hate it! This is really going to help me, thanks so much.

Cool concept. Got into a book which I though was science fiction but was actually a example from a teenager "birds and bees" book. ☹️

ये तो काफी रोचक उपाय है ।

---

This is a pretty interesting idea.

I rediscovered a story I read in high school (Flowers for Algernon) after a few clickings and am officially in love with this site. Thank you OP!

I got My Name Is Red, very cool.

Looks nice, wanna try

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert...

I've heard this somewhere before.

After a long while it looped back to the first ones, and there had even been repeats in there, anyways! It was fun seeing if I could identify the book after a three to five second skim, I was actually quite good at it. Only once was there a book I knew that I didn't recognize, and many more that I recognized but never read (or watched the movie version of!). Books I recognized but never read were: Dune, Gone with the Wind, Three Musketeers, Hamlet, Fight Club, The Stand, Catcher in the Rye, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Moby Dick, Go Set a Watchman, The Old Man and the Sea, The Grapes of Wrath, Watership Down, Winnie the Pooh, The Repulic, Princess Bride, the Martian, Tale of Two Cities, Clockwork Orange, Velveteen Rabbit, and The Prince. They all had an immediately identifiable feature (former 15) or a famous opening line (latter 6).

Honestly I though pretty much every opening I read absolutely sucked. I'm going to have to write my own damn book because god were they shite.

Do people really not know how to write the opening of a book anymore?

How large is the variety of books? It seemed small to me as out of the books it gave me I instantly recognized and had read 9/10 I tried. Seems a great idea and I'll do more testing but I'm hoping it has a larger selection that what I've seen so far.

This is certainly a good idea. I recently learned how preconceptions can affect one's entire reading experience.

"Something something Maine", surprised my girlfriend by predicting it was a Stephen King book.

I clicked the link and immediately recognized the first page I got as an excerpt from To Kill A Mockingbird. Lol

This is great for me. I'm horrible at judging stuff without giving it a chance

In my family, whoevers birthday it was got to pick the movie we all saw. One year my mom picked the Johnny Cash movie. I loved it, and would have never saw it otherwise.

Same with Bob's Burgers. I thought it sounded and looked so stupid. GF put it on one night. I LOVE that show.

Three Murakami books in twenty swipes - not exactly random.

"Call me Ishmael." Hmmm

Recognized HP before the end of the first 5 words

Good. Reading a random page to judge a book is also suggested by prof Donald E Knuth in one of his books.

Anyone else get Farenheit 451?

I knew what my very first one was. It talked about drugs and bags. Then mentioned Las Vegas lmao. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Never read the book but saw part of the movie.

I got 2 John Green books, first Paper Towns, then An Abundance of Katherines.

This isn't going to work without Javascript :'( Please enable it in your browser.

Pretty interesting book. Does anyone know the title of it?

Browsed for little while and got three books I've read before. I didn't recognize any of them. Hurr durr...

"You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly." This one was a give away

I got A Tale of Two Cities in my first go! sick I've been meaning to read it but have been putting it off for ages definitely going to pick up a copy now!

First book I got was Wonder and I guessed it as soon as I read the first paragraph. Amazing book and I highly recommend it!

First book I get is Ender's Game. Fascinating.

The second book it showed me was The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. I had to read it in highschool and enjoyed the first half of it. Sadly I did not finish the second half. I think Ill book mark this site and share it. Thank you for posting it.

hmm, I'd like to be able to read the blurb, it's what I usually use to decide whether I want to read it.

Just leaving a comment for later consumption. Random book website. Get to read first page.

Don't think I'll be reading the book I was given:

One crisp September day Broccoli and I were on our way home from Violet Hill Elementary School.

“Hey, Molly, I gotta take a leak, wanna see me?”

“Sure, Broc.”

He stepped behind the bushes and pulled down his zipper with a flourish.

“Broccoli, what’s all that skin hanging around your dick?”

“My mom says I haven’t had it cut up yet.”

“Whaddaya mean, cut up?”

“She says that some people get this operation and the skin comes off and it has somethin’ to do with Jesus.”

“Well, I’m glad no one’s gonna cut up on me.”

“That’s what you think. My Aunt Louise got her tit cut off.”

“I ain’t got tits.”

“You will. You’ll get big floppy ones just like my mom. They hang down below her waist and wobble when she walks.”

“Not me, I ain’t gonna look like that.”

“Oh yes you are. All girls look like that.”

“You shut up or I’ll knock your lips down your throat, Broccoli Detwiler.”

“I’ll shut up if you don’t tell anyone I showed you my thing.”

“What’s there to tell? All you got is a wad of pink wrinkles hangin’ around it. It’s ugly.”

“It is not ugly.”

“Ha. It looks awful. You think it’s not ugly because it’s yours. No one else has a dick like that. My cousin Leroy, Ted, no one. I bet you got the only one in the world. We oughta make some money off it.”

“Money? How we gonna make money off my dick?”

“After school we can take the kids back here and show you off, and we charge a nickel apiece.”

“No. I ain’t showing people my thing if they’re gonna laugh at it.”

“Look, Broc, money is money. What do you care if they laugh? You’ll have money then you can laugh at them. And we split it fifty-fifty.”

I got the Martian, which I've read already.

TODAY it seems to me providential that Fate should have chosen Braunau on the Inn as my birthplace. For this little town lies on the boundary between two German states which we of the younger generation at least have made it our life work to reunite by every means at our disposal. German-Austria must return to the great German mother country, and not because of any economic considerations. No, and again no: even if such a union were unimportant from an economic point of view; yes, even if it were harmful, it must nevertheless take place. One blood demands one Reich. Never will the German nation possess the moral right to engage in colonial politics until, at least, it embraces its own sons within a single state. Only when the Reich borders include the very last German, but can no longer guarantee his daily bread, will the moral right to acquire foreign soil arise from the distress of our own people. Their sword will become our plow, and from the tears of war the daily bread of future generations will grow. And so this little city on the border seems to me the symbol of a great mission. And in another respect as well, it looms as an admonition to the present day. More than a hundred years ago, this insignificant place had the distinction of being immortalized in the annals at least of German history, for it was the scene of a tragic catastrophe which gripped the entire German nation. At the time of our fatherland's deepest humiliation, Johannes Palm of Nuremberg, burgher, bookseller, uncompromising nationalist and French hater, died there for the Germany which he loved so passionately even in her misfortune. He had stubbornly refused to denounce his accomplices who were in fact his superiors. In thus he resembled Leo Schlageter. And like him, he was denounced to the French by a representative of his government An Augsburg police chief won this unenviable fame, thus furnishing an example for our modern German officials in Herr Severing's Reich.

In hindsight, it seems pretty obvious now that I actually read it.

"Don't judge a book by it's cover." judges book

Thus, after years of uninterrupted work, I was afforded for the first time an opportunity to embark on a task insisted upon by many and felt to be serviceable to the movement by myself. Therefore, I resolved not only to set forth, in two volumes, the object of our movement, but also to draw a picture of its development. From this more can be learned than from any purely doctrinary treatise.

Nice! I got A Passage to India. I've been meaning to read this for a while.

Cool idea.

"Don't judge a book by it's first page"

I own that copy of Perks of Being a Wallflower.

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I went through maybe ten different first paragraphs and every pretty much every story was about a working class man. There was one female protagonist and she was the daughter of a pig farmer.

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?'

This makes sense since there are only 7 plots and so you'll like any book that fits them.

I got the first Harry Potter

I read through 6 of them. All were terribly written, including a poorly written rape scene on page one.... finally, the 7th entry was decent. And it was none other than the Velveteen rabbit. Lol

We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a ‘new fellow,’ not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work.

This one I have never read. Any ideas?

Got "A Clockwork Orange" on the first click. It's amazing how easily you pick up Anthony Burgess' lingo right away.

The first one I got I actually recognized as something I had read, but I couldn't place it. It was "A Brief History of Time" ...

I think there is something wrong here.

I've been getting mystery books, apparently it knows what I like. Though, I do agree with the filters.

This is a great way to get people reading, I'll be sure to share the site!

I got a bit talking about painters and Sir Henry Wooton and Basil Hallward. As soon as I got to Basil I knew exactly which book it was. :)

Because you can deffinetly tell if a book will be good after reading one page....

Fantastic site! Thank you so much for sharing it!

I love this, each page that grips me turns out to be something I've always wanted to read, or from an author that I already like. It's a weird sort of validation.

And now I have some books to buy.

This is extremely legit.

One Hundred Years of Nope

I got the first chapter of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

I never read the book, only watched the movie. After that one chapter I was shocked, to say the least, to discover which book it was.

With only one chapter I was sad to discover what would befall on that mischievous boy.

I guess that's what good writing looks like.

Thanks for sharing that website.

Great idea. But does anyone know of something similar in other languages?

This is a cool idea but the problem with readers like me is I really only like a couple specific genres so this is gonna be really hit or miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss with me.

Those don't seem like first pages. Many seem to start mid-sentence.

That's a great idea. I hope to see my work there one day. How do you choose what to put on the site?

My preconceptions are generally well formed though. Some authors suck, and some genres don't interest me. It's a cool idea for finding new books, but ultimately not as good as just going to goodreads and seeing what it recommends, or what people who like similar things read.

Ive been playing a game with this web-sight I call "guess the book" Ive guessed 5 books surprisingly out of about 20 swipes

First thing that came up for me was the first page of Finnegan's Wake... No thank you. Not now, not ever.

yall too cultured I don't know a lot of these hahaha

I went there and clicked "next book" ONCE and this is what I got:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.

PASS.

Conclusive proof that most books are utter shit.

The title of a book is important, isnt it?

That's so annoying.