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Best opening line of any book you read


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Showing 1-25 of 49 posts in this discussion
Initial post: 25 Apr 2012 20:24:52 BDT
A. Pennanen says:
"Call me Ishmael," Moby-Dick begins, in one of the most recognizable opening lines in Western literature.
I find it sometimes the first sentence gives me goosebumps, and garantees a good book.
What is your favourite and why?
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Posted on 25 Apr 2012 21:19:46 BDT
[Deleted by the author on 25 Apr 2012 21:34:22 BDT]
In reply to an earlier post on 1 May 2012 12:32:10 BDT
LEP says:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife". Pride and Prejudice. A wonderful bit of cynical wittysism by Miss Austen.
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Posted on 1 May 2012 14:15:29 BDT
Scott J Robinson says:
Antarctica, first you fall in love with it, then it breaks your heart.
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Posted on 1 May 2012 14:30:29 BDT
DaveOz says:
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.
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Posted on 1 May 2012 17:30:11 BDT
Babel-Fish says:
...................................................Tale of Two Cities
....................................................by Charles Dickens

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair....
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Posted on 1 May 2012 18:30:40 BDT
David J. Ferguson says:
"Once there was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." Voyage of the Dawn Treader, CS Lewis
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Posted on 1 May 2012 19:17:09 BDT
Last edited by the author on 13 May 2012 20:20:30 BDT
Ryan Williams says:
"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
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Posted on 1 May 2012 20:32:10 BDT
willie wit says:
'The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.'

George Orwell - Coming up for air.

:o)
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In reply to an earlier post on 2 May 2012 13:09:15 BDT
LEP says:
"I have never before felt this sort of irresistible attraction. Either this love, or the fish I ate last night was very bad indeed." Julia Quinn

I'm cheating here as the above is not actually the opening line. However, it just struck my funny bone.
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In reply to an earlier post on 3 May 2012 00:35:07 BDT
Last edited by the author on 3 May 2012 00:36:19 BDT
Eleanor Black says:
Honey, you got it! Without a doubt there are no opening lines to any book ever written (even my own), that come even close to the introduction of Nabokov's masterpiece. I could listen to that first page over and over again, and never get bored!
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Posted on 3 May 2012 10:55:55 BDT
JVRobson says:
I have three all-time favourites and can never choose between them
Brighton Rock - 'Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him'. Who are 'they'? Who is Hale? And so many 'why's? Who wouldn't want to read on after that?
1984 - 'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen'. Very homely, very English and very, very unsettling.
One Hundred Years Of Solitude - 'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice'. The essence of a rich, chaotic, occasionally overblown masterpiece in one sentence. Keep reading, if only to find the twist in the colonel's tale.
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Posted on 3 May 2012 16:37:24 BDT
David A. Simpson says:
"The sky was the colour of TV set tuned to a dead channel" from Neuromancer by William Gibson
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Posted on 3 May 2012 16:49:51 BDT
Dr says:
From memory, so there may be slight inaccuracy, but how's this for a killer opening sentence: 'As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning, from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed, in his bed, into a gigantic insect.' Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka.
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Posted on 4 May 2012 10:39:23 BDT
Deirdre L. Thain says:
last night I dreamed I went to Mandalay again.Rebecca Daphne du Maurier
the past is a foreign country they do things differently there The go between LP Hartley
(not sure if these are the opening lines,if so the go-between would be my first choice )
dee
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Posted on 4 May 2012 10:45:18 BDT
Edmond says:
I did two things on my seventy-fifth day. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.

From Old Man's War by John Scalzi.
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In reply to an earlier post on 4 May 2012 12:30:53 BDT
JVRobson says:
That is a cracker! And the only one from a book I'd never heard of, which is always good in pointing one in the right reading direction.

Diving into a forum like this always gets you thinking immediately of other possible candidates, too. I can't believe this didn't make my top three, looking back:

'I am Legend' by Richard Matheson - 'On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back'.

A world of paranoia, fear and desolate isolation in less than 25 words. And the rest is just as tight, compelling and chilling. One of the great horror/sci-fi books. And, if someone ever adapted it FAITHFULLY (shame on you, Will Smith) one of the great horror/sci-fi films too.
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Posted on 4 May 2012 12:33:08 BDT
Last edited by the author on 4 May 2012 12:33:58 BDT
Lindsey Brooks says:
"The last camel died this morning."
I'm afraid I can't remember the title of the book or its author, but I have never forgotten the opening line.
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Posted on 4 May 2012 14:45:46 BDT
David Morris says:
"We were just outside Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold". Hunter S. Thompson "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas".

Now that's what I call dropping the reader into the middle of the action!
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Posted on 4 May 2012 16:03:42 BDT
RavenFaery says:
"We move in spasms"

A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirrilli
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In reply to an earlier post on 4 May 2012 22:23:02 BDT
princesspeach says:
I agree Dierdre I love the openeing line to Rebecca.
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Posted on 9 May 2012 10:54:29 BDT
VCBF (Val) says:
You already have some of my favourites, but not this one:
"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
Scaramouche, Raphael Sabatini
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Posted on 13 May 2012 08:43:37 BDT
B. Cooper says:
"William Connor was standing outside a disused cattleshed on a bright Highland summer's morning, ankle-deep in cowshit, liquidised mercenery raining splashily down about his head from the crisp blue sky above."

from One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night by Christopher Brookmyre

The first time I read this I had to stop, blink and go back to read it again... thats when I knew I was going to love the book!
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Posted on 13 May 2012 11:46:08 BDT
Last edited by the author on 13 May 2012 11:47:08 BDT
Tony Mynard says:
"I was never so amazed in my life as when the Sniffer drew his concealed weapon from its case and struck me to the ground, stone dead." - Murther & Walking Spirits by Robertson Davies
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Posted on 13 May 2012 18:45:17 BDT
R Grossmith says:
No one has mentioned this classic:

"Mother died today. Or perhaps yesterday, I can't be sure." Albert Camus, L'Etranger. The confusion arises because the news comes in a telegram, but it introduces the novel's dominant tone of detachment and alienation. Brilliant!
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      Discussion in:  fiction forum
      Participants:  42
      Total posts:  49
      Initial post:  25 Apr 2012
      Latest post:  25 May 2012
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