Mogwai Posted July 4, 2018 Report Share Posted July 4, 2018 What are your favourite or most memorable opening lines from books? I'll go with.... "The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm." It's from 'Something Wicked this way comes' by Ray Bradbury. It's a line I've always remembered. I just found it very evocative. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuncanEwart Posted August 11, 2018 Report Share Posted August 11, 2018 This is a bit of a longer opening line than your choice @Mogwai (the brevity of which I really like btw): "On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide- it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese- the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope." The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides. A haunting opening line in a haunting novel. How could you not read on? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuncanEwart Posted August 11, 2018 Report Share Posted August 11, 2018 Just to match the brevity of your choice @Mogwai: "Call me Ishmael". Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I love the fact it isn't "My name is Ishmael"...it puts you on your guard right away. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 "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." Earthly Powers, Antony Burgess. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathematics Posted August 20, 2018 Report Share Posted August 20, 2018 The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuncanEwart Posted August 25, 2018 Report Share Posted August 25, 2018 " 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". Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lroy Posted August 25, 2018 Report Share Posted August 25, 2018 I'm pretty much f**ked. That's my considered opinion. f**ked. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuncanEwart Posted November 8, 2018 Report Share Posted November 8, 2018 I started reading "Nightwoods" by Charles Frazier this week and thought this was as strong an opening to a novel as I've read: " Luce's new stranger children were small and beautiful and violent. She learned early that it wasn't smart to leave them unattended in the yard with the chickens. Later she'd find feathers, a scaled yellow foot with its toes clenched. " I'm a big fan of this writer and can also strongly recommend his books "Cold Mountain" and "Thirteen Moons". 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
historyman Posted November 17, 2018 Report Share Posted November 17, 2018 First line of The Lovely Bones was great - but not so great that I can quote it without a copy of the book. 'Martha was surrounded by death' is the first line of The Dead Beat by Doug Johnstone. He's written a few good books. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuncanEwart Posted November 18, 2018 Report Share Posted November 18, 2018 11 hours ago, historyman said: First line of The Lovely Bones was great - but not so great that I can quote it without a copy of the book. 'Martha was surrounded by death' is the first line of The Dead Beat by Doug Johnstone. He's written a few good books. " My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." ("The Lovely Bones"). Aye, it's a cracker of an opening right enough. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdevoy Posted November 19, 2018 Report Share Posted November 19, 2018 They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kessy (1962). It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Catch-22, Joseph Heller: (1961) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathematics Posted November 20, 2018 Report Share Posted November 20, 2018 21 hours ago, gdevoy said: They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kessy (1962). What a book! Good call @gdevoy. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuncanEwart Posted December 1, 2018 Report Share Posted December 1, 2018 I had never read anything by Carl Hiaasen until this week. I found "Nature Girl" on my Dad's bookshelf, read the first line, and was hooked immediately: "On the second day of January, windswept and bright, a half-blood Seminole named Sammy Tigertail dumped a dead body in the Lostmans River." The rest of the novel lived up to the opening. A writer I will definitely read more of. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayrshire Killie Posted January 23, 2019 Report Share Posted January 23, 2019 Late to the party as a newbie member. I would have gone for the Earthly Powers line, but I also love: “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.” Quite a lot of subtext packed into one sentence. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Travis Posted March 8, 2019 Report Share Posted March 8, 2019 "It was the day my grandmother exploded." The Crow Road, by the thoroughly brilliant Iain Banks. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathematics Posted March 8, 2019 Report Share Posted March 8, 2019 I was searching for the opening line of a particular book when I found this: https://www.theguardian.com/books/quiz/2011/oct/31/1 I got 6/10. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathematics Posted March 8, 2019 Report Share Posted March 8, 2019 Inhale. Take in as much air as your can. This story should last about as long as you can hold your breath, and then just a little bit longer. So listen as fast as you can. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lroy Posted March 8, 2019 Report Share Posted March 8, 2019 The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathematics Posted March 8, 2019 Report Share Posted March 8, 2019 It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
historyman Posted March 10, 2019 Report Share Posted March 10, 2019 On 3/8/2019 at 11:36 AM, mathematics said: I was searching for the opening line of a particular book when I found this: https://www.theguardian.com/books/quiz/2011/oct/31/1 I got 6/10. I got 6 as well, there are some real spinetinglers in there. To be read in the house on your own at night when the wind and rain are howling outside. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stumack Posted March 11, 2019 Report Share Posted March 11, 2019 "This time there would be no witnesses." That fairly grabbed me when i read it. Dirk Gently 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KFC_Macca Posted June 2, 2019 Report Share Posted June 2, 2019 Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. 100 years of solitude 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuncanEwart Posted November 2, 2019 Report Share Posted November 2, 2019 Opened up Dennis Lehane's "Live By Night" yesterday morning to be met with this cracker- "Some years later, on a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico, Joe Coughlin's feet were placed in a tub of cement". 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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