Bookworms:What are the best first lines you've read?

[mobertol]

The other bookworm thread had me going upstairs and checking out the titles of books to recommend to others. Picked out a few and started to read the odd one again and it reminded me of an article I read in the Guardian on-line recently with a pole of then ten best ever first lines in fiction.
I can't remember the whole list but it featured Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, A Tale of Two Cities among others. I wonder what the Accywebbers bookworms will come up with as memorable openings to a book.

I will begin with the opening lines of "The Horse Whisperer" by Nicholas Evans:
"There was death at it's beginning as there would be death again at it's end. "
it continues:
"Though whether it was some fleeting shadow of this that passed across the girl's dreams and woke her on that least likely of mornings she would never know. All she knew, when she opened her eyes, was that the world was somehow altered."

Not one of the great classics of literature but still a great start.

[susie123]

How about 1984:
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Or Kafka's Metamorphosis, which paints an image that has always stayed with me:

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.

[Eric]

"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking"

Also like "Mad Magazine's" opening for "Moby Dick": "Call me Fishmeal"

[mobertol]

Originally Posted by susie123

How about 1984:
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Or Kafka's Metamorphosis, which paints an image that has always stayed with me:

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.

Nice one - don't like insects though so am not drawn to read Metamorphosis from this.

[Eric]

This one is bound to come up; so ... "It was a dark and stormy night ... " Poor Bulwer-Lytton.

[mobertol]

Originally Posted by Eric

"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking"

Also like "Mad Magazine's" opening for "Moby Dick": "Call me Fishmeal"

Haven't read I am a Camera - interesting start though...

How about: "I will not drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week"
From Bridget Jones Diary

[Margaret Pilkington]

I consume the book and then forget it - It always gives me a chance to re-read again almost as if it was new....so I cannot give you any memorable first lines.

Do any of you re-read books?

I don't mind re-reading a book by choice, but I do hate it when publishers change their book covers, and I think I have got my hands on something new to find that I have been duped.

[DaveinGermany]

Not the best as such, but certainly intriguing.

In my late teens, I was introduced to malt whisky by a fellow journalist in Edinburgh.

Michael Jackson, "Malt Whisky companion 5th edition"

It's more a reference book than a sit down & read.

[Eric]

Originally Posted by susie123

How about 1984:
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Or Kafka's Metamorphosis, which paints an image that has always stayed with me:

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.

Mmmm ... that's an image that stayed with you Far be it from me to suggest some serious psychiatric help; but .....

[susie123]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

I consume the book and then forget it - It always gives me a chance to re-read again almost as if it was new....so I cannot give you any memorable first lines.

Do any of you re-read books?

I don't mind re-reading a book by choice, but I do hate it when publishers change their book covers, and I think I have got my hands on something new to find that I have been duped.

That could have been me writing that post, though I very rarely re-read books, too many new ones to go at.

Totally agree about changing book covers... it's a menace!

[susie123]

Originally Posted by mobertol

Haven't read I am a Camera - interesting start though...

Think the quote is from Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood... which became the stage play I am a Camera... which became the musical Cabaret.

[susie123]

Originally Posted by DaveinGermany

Not the best as such, but certainly intriguing.

In my late teens, I was introduced to malt whisky by a fellow journalist in Edinburgh.

Michael Jackson, "Malt Whisky companion 5th edition"

It's more a reference book than a sit down & read.

Don't know if you're lowering or raising the tone with that

[mobertol]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

I consume the book and then forget it - It always gives me a chance to re-read again almost as if it was new....so I cannot give you any memorable first lines.

Do any of you re-read books?

I don't mind re-reading a book by choice, but I do hate it when publishers change their book covers, and I think I have got my hands on something new to find that I have been duped.

I forget them too Margaret which is why I'm up and down to my bookshelves now! The Horse Whisperer I just remember gripping me from the start -the first chapter and the accident with the horses is brilliantly described.

I re-read a lot of favourites -my all time favourite romantic re-read is September by Rosamund Pilcher I regularly read it in that month it follows on the story of one of the characters from the Shell-seekers. I also read another of hers around Christmas called Winter Solstice -both are what i consider to be "Comfort reading"!! They all live happily ever after...

[mobertol]

"The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn."

Beauty from the start - hint of menace in the thorn! (O.W.'s Dorian Gray)

[DaveinGermany]

I often re-read books, usually after a long enough interlude. Another evocative introduction is :-

In a hole in the ground 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.

J.R.R Tolkien "The hobbit"