Okay, so here’s this week’s Booking Through Thursday theme:
What are your favorite first sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its first sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the first line?
I think one of my favorite first lines belongs to my favorite novel, Pride and Prejudice (of course!) as Jane Austen sets the stage in humorous understatement:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
I also dearly loved Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, with the memorable opening line encapsulating the best and worst of times (as well as Dickens’ typical use of language, lots of it):
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.
I also loved Marianne Robinson’s beautiful prose in her novel Gilead expressed in her first line, though the story itself was somber and slow:
I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, to be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old.
Finally, a first line that speaks of Life and Eternity found in a God who speaks and acts…
In the beginning, God… (Gen. 1:1)
What about you? Any first lines you love? Hate? Let us know! And check out other responses over at the Booking Through Thursday site.
Wife and mother, Bible teacher and blogger, Lisa loves Jesus, coffee, dark chocolate and, of course, books. Read more of her reflections at Lisa writes….
I love all of these.
A first line really can get you hooked, and then looking back after you’ve read the whole novel, it speaks volumes.
I wrote about the line in Water for Elephants that hooked me this winter on my blog: Sometimes I pick my books, and sometimes they pick me.
I’m with you on the Bible, as well as P&P. I haven’t read the others.
I love the opening sentences of the Hobbit:
“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.”
I still hear it read in my father’s voice.
I am unfamiliar with Gilead, but your other choices were classic!
Good choices! I have to go root around in my stash to find my picks.
Of course the Bible is the best book, so it must be the best first line. However, I did not think of that when I posted!
I have never remembered first sentences. The only sentence that I have ever remembered from a book is from Anne of Green Gables and, I believe, it’s chapter 2, Rachel Lynde is Surprised.
“She thought in exclamation points.”
I thought that was memorable and something I very much identified with. =)
I never thought to pick the Bible. Good one!
I love the opening line to Rebecca: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.” It stands out to you, but you don’t realize how signigicant it is until the end of the book.
oops..I meant to type “significant”
Easy – the opening phrase from Gone with the Wind: “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful….” My beloved grandmother introduced me to that book as a young teenager, and she often quoted that line in reference to many things. Whenever I think about Scarlett and the lessons that book taught me about human nature and character, I remember my grandma and her love of that story.
Runner up: Cat in the Hat: “The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day.” What imagination of mischief that opening line inspires!