# What's the first sentence of your favorite book?



## AnnaBSearles (Jul 17, 2014)

There are lots of posts about your favorite first sentence, but I thought I'd change it up and ask what the first sentence of your favorite book is.

Here's mine:

    Enoch rounds the corner just as the executioner raises the noose above the woman's head.


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## Tony Rabig (Oct 11, 2010)

"Favorite book" changes from one nanosecond to the next, but William Goldman's opener for THE PRINCESS BRIDE is nice.  As I recall --

"This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it."


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## Daniel Harvell (Jun 21, 2013)

Is there any better opening than "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ..."? Or is it just me?


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Sorry, but I have to give you a paragraph so you get the full flavor.

"I was in London when I first heard of Dinah Slade. She was broke and looking for a millionaire, while I was rich and looking for a mistress. From the start we were deeply compatible."

The Rich are Different; Susan Howatch. I have the hard back, paperback, ebook, and I happen to be listening to the audio right now.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

There's not any one (or a dozen) book I could point to as my one favorite book. At the moment, I can think of two:

_The noise was ended now._ (from Way Station by Clifford Simak)

or

_It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me. _(from Nine Princes in Amber, by Roger Zelazny)

Neither of which is much of an indication of what is to follow.

Mike


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## ruecole (Jun 13, 2012)

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 by Jane Austen

Rue


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## Tony Rabig (Oct 11, 2010)

A few more goodies:

"Lovely as it was, with the blood and all, Render could sense that it was about to end."  -- Roger Zelazny's THE DREAM MASTER.

"Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write."  -- Ruth Rendell's A JUDGMENT IN STONE.

"He had a name, but it doesn't matter.  Call him The Psycho." -- Fredric Brown's KNOCK THREE-ONE-TWO.

The opening of Dickens' A TALE OF TWO CITIES has already been cited, the opening of Shirley Jackson's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE usually gets quoted in these first line threads, and here's part one of Stanley Ellin's THE VALENTINE ESTATE:

    At eleven o'clock that sultry April night, Christopher Shaw Monte, age twenty-eight and dead broke as ever, was in the tennis shop of Cobia Isle Spa on Miami Beach restringing a racket and daydreaming of fifty thousand dollars when in walked this girl and apologetically offered him fifty thousand dollars to marry her.
    And in so doing, activated the carefully-drawn plans for his murder.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

jmiked said:


> _It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me. _(from Nine Princes in Amber, by Roger Zelazny)


Yep.  (I've read the original "Amber" series at least 30 times, and that's a conservative estimate.)

And a reminder to other would-be responders, this is not another "favorite/best first lines" thread: it's "What's the first sentence of _your favorite book_" (my emphasis) -- and I'm highly cynical that more than 1 in 1000 readers here (if that many) can honestly claim _Moby Dick_ or _A Tale of Two Cities_ is their _favorite book_.


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## Groggy1 (Jun 21, 2010)

Favorite Book? only one you crazy!!!!   

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."  ~Tolkien


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## ScottS (Jul 3, 2012)

Daniel Harvell said:


> Is there any better opening than "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ..."? Or is it just me?


That was the first one that came to mind with me too.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

ScottS said:


> That was the first one that came to mind with me too.


Sure (though I personally don't like it), but is that your favorite _book_?

(Just doing my totally unsolicited job to keep the thread on track with the OP's original intent.  )


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

And since Mike already posted the opening line of my favorite book(s), I'll add something by posting the opening of my 2nd favorite novel:

"Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but he finished shaving before he did anything about it."

~ _Night Watch_, by Sir Terry Pratchett


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## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

"Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight - an upper middle-class family in full plumage."

The Forsyte Saga


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## AJStewart (May 10, 2014)

Well, probably my favorite book right now (its changes, you know) is One Shot, by Lee Child, but the first sentence is:

"Friday."

So that's not all that inspiring - the opening is good though. So I'll give Lee a second chance, from his first book, the excellent Killing Floor:

"I was arrested in Eno's Diner."

To paraphrase Cameron Crowe, you had me at Eno's.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

"It was Wang Lung's marriage day."  -- The Good Earth by Pearl Buck.


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## Carrie Rubin (Nov 19, 2012)

It's always difficult to name my favorite book, so I usually mention the one that moved me the most, and it certainly ranks in my top five. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry's first line is:

"The morning express bloated with passengers slowed to a crawl, then lurched forward suddenly, as though to resume full speed."


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## Guest (Jul 22, 2014)

We are talking about *the* favorite book, right? I certainly have several favorites but nothing beats _Possession_ by A.S. Byatt. Anyway, first sentence of ´Possession´.

_The book was thick and black and covered with dust._


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## Jash (Apr 4, 2013)

AnnaBSearles said:


> There are lots of posts about your favorite first sentence, but I thought I'd change it up and ask what the first sentence of your favorite book is.
> 
> Here's mine:
> 
> Enoch rounds the corner just as the executioner raises the noose above the woman's head.


I didn't know it by heart so I had to go look it up. Turns out the first sentence of my favourite book is "Enoch rounds the corner just as the executioner raises the noose above the woman's head"

*fist-bump*


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## lmroth12 (Nov 15, 2012)

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

Yes, it's the opening line to *The Hobbit*, but as it's really the prequel to *The Lord of the Rings * I am counting it as the first line to the series, which is my favorite book!


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## musclehead (Dec 29, 2010)

On the 24th of February, 1815, the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples.

Alexandre Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo (Kindle Locations 149-150). Little, Brown.


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## noname758 (Mar 15, 2013)

"I write of what has just occurred." 
- Latro in the Mist

Always difficult to choose 1 favorite!


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## Paul Reid (Nov 18, 2010)

"Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened upon a trail of recent footprints."

from "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell.


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## Emm Oh (Jul 4, 2014)

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

"The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm" -- Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury.

Analyze that one, people. In one way, it's so quiet, yet it's a brilliant opening sentence, arousing instant questions and suspicions in the reader's mind.


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## Kindlemojodotcom_Tom (Jul 6, 2011)

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since." - The Great Gatsby


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## israelsanchez (Jul 18, 2014)

"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." - One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez


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## mysterygal (Aug 7, 2014)

Glue sniffing jockeys don't win the Derby. -- Dick Francis.


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## bobbic (Apr 4, 2011)

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.

bobbi c.


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## karendawn (Aug 4, 2014)

My favorite book opens with a cliched and overused line, but what follows is something incredibly wonderful. And that reminds me that it's been a couple of years since I've done a reread of this book so I should do that soon.

"It was a dark and stormy night." from _A Wrinkle in Time_ by Madeleine L'Engle


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## PandorasParanormalBox (Aug 10, 2014)

Abby Reynolds braked her truck on the icy highway, startled by what she imagined she saw off to the side of the road. 

-The Virgin of Small Plains, by Nancy Pickard


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