On another thread, I realized how many great openers there are in books. It wouldn't be the appropriate place to discuss other openings on the "Coraline" thread, so let's restart it here.

What books do you think have the greatest opening lines?


My list is:

1)Coraline
2) the Hobbit
3) The book of swords

I'll try to get the quotes of each so you all can see them!

What are your favorites?

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1) 1984, George Orwell - "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen"

2) Vellum, Hal Duncan - "A burning map. Every epic,my friend Jack used to say, should start with a burning map." (ok, that's two lines. come and get me!)

3) Holes, Louis Satcher - "There is no lake at Camp Green Lake"

*moving to Other Writers*

I don't notice opening lines or paragraphs all that much. I do remember beginnings.

I remember All the King's Men started with a newly paved highway (public works) followed by Willie Stark's car barreling down it (political corruption), which I always thought was a nice visual to open on.

I honestly thought the introduction to Wonder Boys was the author's foreword until I was half finished with it. I think I found it endearing because I'd seen the movie first, and the introduction was one of the elements not in the movie, so it was new to me.

The opening story from Neil Simon's memoir, which was about briefly working for Jerry Lewis was probably the only part of that book worth reading.

Similarly, I've always thought the beginning of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was the best bit in the book.

Mostly, all I require from a beginning is that it interest me enough to get me to read the rest of the book.

A Tale of Two Cities. Yeah, it's been parodied to death and stuffed down all our throats by English teachers, but if you can look at it with fresh eyes, it really is a remarkably good opening paragraph:

quote:

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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Argh! I need to be home with my books to answer this one, my brain doesn't work so good lately. *waits* *plots*

"It was love at first sight.
The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."

Catch- 22. With an opening like that you just know the whole book is going to be something crazy and brilliant.

Of course, for the intro to end all intro's you have to go back to the very birth of literature itself...

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Zeus fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another."

The Iliad. Even the plainest of translations can still send shivers down your spine!

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"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
anna karenina

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Although this isn't the opening line of the book, the second paragraph of Perfume by Patrick Suskind is absolutely brilliant:

"In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulfu rose from chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes form the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer bvery young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease.The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the preist, the apprentice as did his master's wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, and so there was no human activity, either constructive or destructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench."

Phwew.

I just realized both of my favorite openings have to do with te power of aroma. i suppose that is because books are powerful enough to evoke the scents discribed from mere ink on a page.

Lovely.

"His name was Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
-Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis

Still love that.

"This is how it happened."
-"The Mist," by Stephen King

"Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactoy day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse. He had attended a surprisingly easy calving, lanced one abscess, extricated a molar, dosed one lady of easy virtue with Salvarsan, performed an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enima, and had produced a miracle by a feat of medical prestidigitation."
Opening paragraph of "Captain Correlli's Mandolin" - Louis de Bernieres. Just made me chuckle.

Alaura--have you read The Emperor of Scent? Non-fiction but fascinating. You can get it way cheap at Daedalus (salebooks.com).

My fave opener(posted long ago in another thread), for my favorite book of all time:

A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

And others (cheated on these & looked at a list to remind myself):

All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

You better not never tell nobody but God. —Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. —Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)

Oh, sigh. I love the first sentence of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It makes me happy happy happy.

I counter it with Finnegans Wake (JJ):
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.

I always feel like singing the first part.