# Best 1st paragraph 'Hook' that you remember?



## kchughez (Jun 29, 2011)

What's the best hook you've ever read.

ME? If Tomorrow Comes by Sydney Sheldon.

"She undressed slowly, dreamily, and when she was naked she selected a bright red negligee to wear so that the blood would not show."

I WAS HOOKED!!!!

~KC


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

'Describe, using diagrams where appropriate, the exact circumstances leading to your death.'

~ _Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers_, by Grant Naylor (Rob Grant and Doug Naylor)


----------



## MLPMom (Nov 27, 2009)

Deanna Raybourn's Lady Julia series has the best opening line ever.

I can't remember it exactly but I am sure someone here does.


----------



## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

When the office door opened suddenly I knew the game was up. It had been a money-maker—but it was all over. As the cop walked in I sat back in the chair and put on a happy grin. He had the same somber expression and heavy foot that they all have—and the same lack of humor. I almost knew to the word what he was going to say before he uttered a syllable.
“James Bolivar diGriz I arrest you on the charge—”
I was waiting for the word charge, I thought it made a nice touch that way. As he said it I pressed the button that set off the charge of black powder in the ceiling, the crossbeam buckled and the three ton safe dropped through right on the top of the cop’s head. He squashed very nicely, thank you. The cloud of plaster dust settled and all I could see of him was one hand, slightly crumpled. It twitched a bit and the index finger pointed at me accusingly. His voice was a little muffled by the safe and sounded a bit annoyed. In fact he repeated himself a bit.
“…On the charge of illegal entry, theft, forgery—”
He ran on like that for a while, it was an impressive list but I had heard it all before. I didn’t let it interfere with my stuffing all the money from the desk drawers into my suitcase. The list ended with a new charge and I would swear on a stack of thousand credit notes that high that there was a hurt tone in his voice.
“In addition the charge of assaulting a police robot will be added to your record. This was foolish since my brain and larynx are armored and in my midsection—”
“That I know well, George, but your little two-way radio is in the top of your pointed head and I don’t want you reporting to your friends just yet.”


Longer than you have in mind, but this is my favorite book opening ever!

The Stainless Steel Rat, by Harry Harrison.


----------



## Guest (Aug 14, 2011)

J.M. Coetzee's _Disgrace _had a killer first paragraph. No messing around there. Straight to business.


----------



## patrickt (Aug 28, 2010)

Here's a book you might enjoy:
http://www.amazon.com/First-Paragraphs-Inspired-Openings-Writers/dp/0805025979/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313356483&sr=1-2

I've had it for years and occasionally pick it up and read. It is "Inspired Openings for Writers and Readers." I'm the indispensible reader.


----------



## Julia444 (Feb 24, 2011)

Ruth Rendell has always been great at openers for her mystery/suspense novels, but the book that I read cover to cover because she snagged me with the first line started like this:

"Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write."  

The book is called A JUDGMENT IN STONE, and it is both chilling and fascinating (and fictional).  I've never forgotten it, and I read it years and years ago.

I also love the opening of THE STRANGER: "Maman died today."  So simple, and yet it encompasses the span of human existence, from birth/creation to death.

Julia


----------



## Stephen T. Harper (Dec 20, 2010)

"The Wrath of Achilles is my theme, that fatal wrath which, in fulfillment of the will of Zeus, brought the Achaeans so much suffering and sent the gallant souls of many noblemen to Hades, leaving their bodies as carrion for the dogs and passing birds."


----------



## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

"The seller of lightning-roads arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied."

Something Wicked This Way Comes -- Ray Bradbury.


----------



## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

Or how about:

"I wake up on a pile of smouldering garbage and leaves in the old Hollywood Forever cemetery behind the Paramount Studio lot on Melrose, though those last details don't come to me until later. Right now all I know is that I'm back in the world and I'm on fire."

Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey.


----------



## kchughez (Jun 29, 2011)

Tony Richards said:


> Or how about:
> 
> "I wake up on a pile of smouldering garbage and leaves in the old Hollywood Forever cemetery behind the Paramount Studio lot on Melrose, though those last details don't come to me until later. Right now all I know is that I'm back in the world and I'm on fire."
> 
> Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey.


 That is a good hook!
~KC


----------



## scottnicholson (Jan 31, 2010)

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill house, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for 80 years and might for 80 more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."
--The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson


----------



## Guest (Aug 15, 2011)

Starship Troopers: "I always get the shakes before a drop," is another good one.

_--- edited... no self-promotion outside the Book Bazaar forum. please read our Forum Decorum thread._


----------



## William F (Jul 31, 2011)

"The sun dropped on the far side of the Hudson River like it knew what was coming."

Blossom, by Andrew Vachss


----------



## Doug DePew (Mar 26, 2011)

"I can still see him burning." 

Aztec Autumn by Gary Jennings


----------



## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

Laura Kasischke, Suspicious River: "The first time I had sex with a man for money ..."


----------



## Stanford Squirrel (Jul 21, 2011)

This is George.
He lived with his friend, the man with the yellow hat.  He was a good little monkey - and always very curious.

-- H.A. Rey


----------



## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

"Veldt to scrub to fields to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from the earth. It has been night for a long time. The hovels that encrust the river's edge have grown like mushrooms around me in the dark."

_Perdido Street Station_, China Mieville


----------



## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

"The last camel collapsed at noon." _The Key To Rebecca,_ Ken Follett


----------



## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

**** friendly reminder:  authors, we're in the Book Corner so please don't use your own first paragraph/line as an example.  Surely you can think of something else. . . .  ****


----------



## Susan Brassfield Cogan (Mar 25, 2011)

"The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault." Jim Butcher. I am so envious I didn't write that!


----------



## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

_Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried._

Still in love with Richard III... I wasn't taught Shakespeare in school, so I had the pleasure of discovering him entirely on my own.


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Lying, left hand for a pillow, on the shingled slant of the roof, there in the shade of the gable, staring at the cloud-curdles in afternoon's blue pool, I seemed to see, between blinks, above the campus and myself, an instant piece of sky-writing.

DO YOU SMELL ME DED? I read.

~ Roger Zelazny: _Doorways in the Sand_


----------



## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

_To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor._

From Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raburn.


----------



## djgross (May 24, 2011)

Ann in Arlington said:


> _To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor._
> 
> From Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raburn.


I was just about to pull out my copy of Silent in the Grave to get the exact wording when I saw your post


----------



## Tony Rabig (Oct 11, 2010)

Seems to me there was a similar thread not long ago (Rendell's A JUDGMENT IN STONE and Jackson's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE were cited there too if memory serves).

A couple more:

"This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it." -- William Goldman's THE PRINCESS BRIDE.

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

And finally:

  "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." -- Stanley Ellin's THE VALENTINE ESTATE


----------



## Harry Shannon (Jul 30, 2010)

Another vote for Ray Bradury and "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

"Call me Ishmael" wasn't bad either


----------



## Vagueness (Jan 27, 2011)

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."  Neuromancer, William Gibson. I still love that line.


----------



## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson


----------



## kchughez (Jun 29, 2011)

Jon Olson said:


> Laura Kasischke, Suspicious River: "The first time I had sex with a man for money ..."


 Hey Jon, that's definitely a HOOKER. lol pun on words.

~KC


----------



## J.L. McPherson (Mar 20, 2011)

_It was Hell's Season and the air smelled of burning children. _ - Robert McCammon, Gone South.


----------



## Richard Raley (May 23, 2011)

"Coming back from the dead can be rough." --Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon.


----------



## Tripp (May 28, 2009)

"The summer I turned thirteen, I thought I killed a man.", Fireflies in December by Jennifer Erin Valent.


----------



## kenwalt (Aug 17, 2011)

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." or "Call me Ishmael."


----------



## Elizabeth Black (Apr 8, 2011)

scottnicholson said:


> "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill house, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for 80 years and might for 80 more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."
> --The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson


That's the one I was going to choose.


----------



## Elizabeth Black (Apr 8, 2011)

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." - The Catcher In The Rye


----------



## ashel (May 29, 2011)

I love this thread. That is all for now.


----------



## Iain Manson (Apr 3, 2011)

A kind of snobbery makes it easy to assume that famous novels must have great beginnings. The following opening sentences (not paragraphs, I admit) have all been called great by someone or other:

"It was love at first sight." Joseph Heller, _Catch-22_

"Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." Virginia Woolf, _Mrs Dalloway_

"Elmer Gantry was drunk." Sinclair Lewis, _Elmer Gantry_

(If Shakespeare had ever left a note for the milkman, then people would be solemnly intoning "Two pints tomorrow, please", to this day.)

I want to make a plea for the most ridiculed opening ever:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, _Paul Clifford_

Since 1982 there has been a Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest to honour the worst possible opening sentence for a novel. Not fair. If we try to free our jaded minds of prejudice, B-L didn't do badly.


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Iain Manson said:


> A kind of snobbery makes it easy to assume that famous novels must have great beginnings. The following opening sentences (not paragraphs, I admit) have all been called great by someone or other:
> 
> "It was love at first sight." Joseph Heller, _Catch-22_
> 
> ...


Along with "Call me Ishmael," I think such famous first sentences are memorable not because they are themselves intrinsically great, but because (a) the books are great, and (b) the opening lines are _easy to remember_. The fact that they are memorable does not necessarily mean they are great "hooks," however. For me, it's the paragraph of text that immediately follows "Ishmael" that hooks me into _Moby Dick_, even if it's not easily memorized and not something I can type here off the top of my head.


----------



## BRONZEAGE (Jun 25, 2011)

Great posts above -- not sure which would be my favorite of hundreds read (thousands?)

But for contrast, there is the opening of Grapes Of Wrath with a turtle crossing a hot dusty road and the inch by inch progress;

in stark contrast there is the trendy "Grab And Startle" opening of The Devil Wears Prada, a successful name-dropping novel if ever there was such a novel,
describing a designer coffee spilled on designer leather pants while the heroine is driving a Porsche wearing Jimmy Choos. The hyperconsumerism Hook? See how passe that would be now, given our dire economy...But that schtick was probably good while it lasted and selling the film rights didn't hurt either.


----------



## JETaylor (Jan 25, 2011)

This is not only the first paragraph - it's actually the first Chapter...

"When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there's either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. 
And there's nothing wrong with my skills." 

— Joe Ledger in Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry


----------



## Michelle Muto (Feb 1, 2011)

it's a tie:

"The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." From Stephen King's The Gunslinger, book 1 in the Dark Tower series. 
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." From Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.


----------



## Spitzbub (Jul 4, 2011)

Oh yes, this one was worth looking for on the Internet.  The first line of Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away:

Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a ***** named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.


John


----------



## B Regan Asher (Jun 14, 2011)

I don't know that I've ever been hooked by a first paragraph, though it can certainly turn me off.  Many of the novels I've enjoyed the most did not really grab me for a chapter or two.


----------



## jen meyers (Jul 28, 2011)

"To: Headmaster Richmond and the Board of Directors,
Alabaster Preparatory Academy

"I, Frankie Landau-Banks, hereby confess that I was the sole mastermind behind the mal-doings of the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds... I and I alone....No matter what Porter Welsh told you in his statement....I am not asking that you indulge my behavior; merely that you do not dulge it without considering its context."

from The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

I was totally sucked in and loved the whole book. It's one of my favorites.


----------



## Tommie Lyn (Dec 7, 2009)

Here's my favorite:

Tuesday was a fine California day, full of sunshine and promise, until Harry Lyon had to shoot someone at lunch.

-*Dragon Tears* by Dean Koontz


----------



## AnnetteL (Jul 14, 2010)

"It was my aunt's idea to feed me to the dragon." 

Brilliant first line of a MG fantasy, Dragon Slippers, by Jessica Day George. Read it years ago and still remember it.


----------



## Jason Kristopher (Jun 1, 2011)

William F said:


> "The sun dropped on the far side of the Hudson River like it knew what was coming."
> 
> Blossom, by Andrew Vachss


I like this one.


----------



## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

**** friendly reminder:  authors, we're in the Book Corner so please refrain from mentioning your own books but, rather, address the question from the point of view of yourself as 'reader'.  Surely you've read something besides your own books that hooked you.  ****


----------



## jen meyers (Jul 28, 2011)

AnnetteL said:


> "It was my aunt's idea to feed me to the dragon."
> 
> Brilliant first line of a MG fantasy, Dragon Slippers, by Jessica Day George. Read it years ago and still remember it.


I LOVE this. Now, I'm going to have to go see if my library has it so I can read it. What a great first line!


----------



## kchughez (Jun 29, 2011)

Elizabeth Black said:


> "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." - The Catcher In The Rye


 Absolutely a grabber! That darn Holden has a mind of his own.


----------



## Richardcrasta (Jul 29, 2010)

The opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude?


----------



## Cheryl Bradshaw Author (Apr 13, 2011)

"It was one hell of a night to throw away a baby." 

In the Bleak Midwinter


----------



## suzieq (Mar 19, 2011)

The best? That's easy. From Barbara Hambly's The Silicone Mage.

The worst thing about knowing that Gary Fairchild had been dead for a month was seeing him every day at work.


----------



## ToniD (May 3, 2011)

I've seen some familiar hooks in here (that sure hooked me) and some new ones that sound intriguing.

The one that jumped to my mind for this thread is:

’’It was a cold October morning in Paris and even colder for a man about to be executed by the firing squad’’.

It's from DAY OF THE JACKAL by Frederick Forsyth, about a failed assassination attempt on Charles DeGaulle. What grabs me is that when a reader starts this book, s/he already knows that (1) DeGaulle survived and, (2) that the assassin will be executed. And yet the book is masterful in building suspense.


----------



## GerrieFerrisFinger (Jun 1, 2011)

kchughez said:


> What's the best hook you've ever read.
> 
> ME? If Tomorrow Comes by Sydney Sheldon.
> 
> ...


Here's mine:
"Late afternoon Chloe and Kelly were having cocktails at the Rattlesnake Club, the two seated on the far side of the dining room by themselves: Chloe talking, Kelly listening, Chloe trying to get Kelly to help her entertain Anthony Paradiso, an eighty-four-year-old guy who was paying her five thousand a week to be his girlfriend."
Bet you can guess.
Elmore Leonard MR. PARADISE
Side-splitter


----------



## GerrieFerrisFinger (Jun 1, 2011)

Julia444 said:


> Ruth Rendell has always been great at openers for her mystery/suspense novels, but the book that I read cover to cover because she snagged me with the first line started like this:
> 
> "Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write."
> 
> ...


I've read every novel except the latest, but all hers have simple, dynamic opening sentences.


----------



## RhondaRN (Dec 27, 2009)

Like someone else has mentioned, the first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House.  Best intro paragraph in the world, and lets you know just how good the rest of the book is!!


----------



## gsjohnston (Jun 29, 2011)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

the whole Pride and Prejudice novel is in the first line - well done Jane.


----------



## Isabella (Aug 11, 2011)

'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.'

_Rebecca_ by Daphne Du Maurier. The first paragraph beautifully sets up the mood for a house and life the heroine feels excluded from.


----------



## mistyd107 (May 22, 2009)

"Momma left her red satin shoes in the middle of the road.  That's what three eyewitnesses told the police" 
-Saving Ceecee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman


----------



## BarbraAnnino (Jan 27, 2011)

My name is Salmon. Like the fish. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6th, 1973.

The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold


----------



## GerrieFerrisFinger (Jun 1, 2011)

jackz4000 said:


> "The last camel collapsed at noon." _The Key To Rebecca,_ Ken Follett


One of the all time greats. Thanks for reminding...


----------



## mfstewart (Jun 23, 2009)

It's not the first paragraph, but on the cover copy of JT Ellison's next book Where All the Dead Lie, she has:

The headshot didn't kill Taylor Jackson. But it will haunt.

I found it really intriguing and, by the rest of the copy, seems to foreshadow what follows.

MFS


----------



## drenfrow (Jan 27, 2010)

A recent read that had me hooked right at the beginning was _The Android's Dream_ by John Scalzi.

"Dirk Moeller didn't know if he could really fart his way into a major diplomatic incident. But he was ready to find out.

Moeller nodded absentmindedly at his assistant, who placed the schedule of today's negotiations in front of him, and shifted again in his chair. The tissue surrounding the apparatus itched, but there's no getting around the fact that a ten centimeter tube of metal and electronics positioned inside your colon, a mere inch or two inside your rectum, is going to cause some discomfort."


----------



## PatriciaEimer (Aug 29, 2011)

Jonathon Tropper's Book of Joe. Where he talks about the day he walked in on his brother and future Sister in law going at it in his parent's garage. Then decided that should be the opening scene in his first book. And the blockbuster movie that came after. 

I started laughing then and couldn't put the book down after that.


----------



## leep (Aug 25, 2011)

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve:



> It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.


How can you fail to love that?


----------



## ashel (May 29, 2011)

leep said:


> Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve:
> 
> How can you fail to love that?


OOOOH, is this the dude who did the short story about feral, phantom streets that would show up in a city and fight, and then disappear? And the society that tracked them? Because that story is AWESOME, and I haven't been able to remember enough about it to find it again.


----------



## leep (Aug 25, 2011)

genevieveaclark said:


> OOOOH, is this the dude who did the short story about feral, phantom streets that would show up in a city and fight, and then disappear? And the society that tracked them? Because that story is AWESOME, and I haven't been able to remember enough about it to find it again.


I fear not (at least, not that I've heard), but that sounds awesome, Philip Reeve writes about tracked cities who travel around the dried-out seabeds of the world consuming one another in what he calls Municipal Darwinism.


----------



## R. M. Reed (Nov 11, 2009)

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."  Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford
---

I never thought this is as bad as people say. Except for the parenthetical bit, which was a more common style in the 19th century, it's a pretty good description that sets the mood.


----------



## Perennial Reader (Nov 30, 2009)

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens—four dowager and three regnant—and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.	

The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman


----------



## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

"The man who was not Terrance O'Grady had come quietly." 

Steve Miller & Sharon Lee: "Agent Of Change".


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

It's interesting that almost every sentence/paragraph submitted involves violence and/or death.

I'll add one more, from "The Meaning of Night" by Michael Cox.

_"After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an Oyster Supper."_


----------



## Iain Edward Henn (Jan 29, 2011)

Two of the novels I read as a teenager (yes damn long time ago) had opening lines that have never left me. Love them:

from John Wyndham's The Day of The Triffids : "When a day that you know is Wednesday stars off sounding like a Sunday then you know that there is something seriously wrong somewhere..."

and Agatha Christie's Endless Night: "In the end is my beginning...that's a quote I've often heard people say, but what does it actually mean?"

http://www.amazon.com/Triffids-Penguin-Modern-Classics-ebook/dp/B002RI9YOG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1316058765&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Endless-Agatha-Christie-Collection-ebook/dp/B0046A9N26/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_ke?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316058685&sr=1-1

The Christie novel is a little dated by today's atandards but will appeal to fans of Britich cozy mysteries
the Wyndham book, like HG Wells works, is of another era but has a timelessness to it


----------



## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

"Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth--A fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self."

from  "The Lost World" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I reread this for the first time in years and years, and really liked the opening line above.


----------



## Steverino (Jan 5, 2011)

Here are first sentences I've liked enough to find that I've memorized them:

"It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

"It was a pleasure to burn."

No death in either of those, interestingly.

(That's 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.)


----------



## bjscript (Oct 26, 2011)

The Outsider

by Albert Camus

Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I had a telegram from the home: 'Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.' That doesn't mean anything. It may have been yesterday.

Great introduction to a story about alienation, with a main character who is an outsider both to his own feelings and the outside world.

The old people's home is at Marengo, fifty miles from Algiers. I'll catch the two o'clock bus and get there in the afternoon. Then I can keep the vigil and I'll come back tomorrow night. I asked me boss for two days off and he couldn't refuse under the circumstances. But he didn't seem pleased. I even said, 'It's not my fault.' He didn't answer. Then I thought maybe I shouldn't have said that. After all, it wasn't for me to apologize. It was more up to him to offer me his condolences. But he probably will do that after tomorrow, when he sees me in mourning. For the moment it's almost as if mother were still alive. After the funeral though, the death will be a classified fact and the whole thing will have assumed a more official aura.

We learn a great deal about this character's alienation just hearing him recite his story. Camus took an alienated character and mated that with an event, the death of the character's mother, to show the depth of his alienation.


----------



## JetJammer (Jan 18, 2009)

Hmm, interestingly enough, I can't think of an opening paragraph that grabbed me, although I'm sure over the years there have been many.  I do, however, remember the LAST line of several novels, most notably:

"I--I myself--was in love--with--Priscilla!"

The Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthrone

I was never much of a Hawthrone fan, but I first read that one at age 14 or so, and 30+ years (and thousands of books) later, still recall it vividly.


----------



## wordsmithjts (Nov 14, 2011)

The best would have to be the opening paragraph to "The Tale Tell Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. Absolutely perfect.


----------



## James Conway (Jul 7, 2011)

While it is not the first paragraph of a novel it is the first paragraph of "The Dreamers" which is one of Isaak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales. It is a magnetic paragraph that takes place in the middle of the night on the deck of a dhow on the Arabian Sea as a noseless story teller tells spins yarns. I highly recommend it!


----------



## Chris Strange (Apr 4, 2011)

Steverino said:


> Here are first sentences I've liked enough to find that I've memorized them:
> 
> "It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
> 
> ...


Two of my favorites as well.

And since I was just thinking about Raymond Chandler's _The Big Sleep_:

_It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved, and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars._

Or how about Mickey Spillane's _Kiss Me Deadly_ (yeah, more than a paragraph, but the whole thing's fantastic):

_All I saw was the dame standing there in the glare of the headlights waving her arms like a huge puppet and the curse I spit out filled the car and my own ears. I wrenched the wheel over, felt the rear end start to slide, brought it out with a splash of power and almost ran up the side of a cliff as the car fishtailed. The brakes bit in, gouging a furrow in the shoulder, then jumped to the pavement and held.

Somehow I had managed a sweeping curve around the babe. For a few seconds she had been living on stolen time because instead of getting out of the way she had tried to stay in the beam of the headlights. I sat there and let myself shake. The butt that had fallen out of my mouth had burned a hole in the leg of my pants and I flipped it out the window. The stink of burned rubber and brake lining hung in the air like smoke and I was thinking of every damn thing I ever wanted to say to a hairbrained woman so I could have it ready when I got my hands on her.

That was as far as I got. She was there in the car beside me, the door slammed shut and she said, "Thanks, mister."_


----------



## J.I.Greco (Apr 10, 2011)

The first Fletch opens with the best dialog hook ever... a man asking Fletch to kill him. That right there hooked me for five books.


----------



## GerrieFerrisFinger (Jun 1, 2011)

I had to look  up the exact wording, but I'll always think of this opening when I hear about Santa Ana winds, as we have recently:


There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."
—Raymond Chandler, "Red Wind"


----------



## drenfrow (Jan 27, 2010)

GerrieFerrisFinger said:


> I had to look up the exact wording, but I'll always think of this opening when I hear about Santa Ana winds, as we have recently:
> 
> There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."
> -Raymond Chandler, "Red Wind"


That's a great paragraph!


----------



## Cindy416 (May 2, 2009)

gsjohnston said:


> It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
> 
> the whole Pride and Prejudice novel is in the first line - well done Jane.


I agree with you wholeheartedly! I also love "Call me Ishmael," which is, of course, far removed from _Pride and Prejudice_. 

Another favorite of mine is from Nelson DeMille's _Plum Island_.

"Through my binoculars, I could see this nice forty-something-foot cabin cruiser anchored a few hundred yards offshore. There were two thirtyish couples aboard, having a merry old time, sunbathing, banging down brews and whatever. The women had on teensy-weensy little bottoms and no tops, and one of the guys was standing on the bow, and he slipped off his trunks and stood there a minute hanging hog, then jumped in the bay and swam around the boat. What a great country. I put down my binoculars and popped a Budweiser."

Love it. The book is one of my favorites.


----------



## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

A gruesome but arresting one here:

_On the night after the day she had stained the louvered window shutters of her new apartment on East 52nd Street, Beth saw a woman slowly and hideously knifed to death in the courtyard of her building. She was one of twenty-six witnesses to the ghoulish scene, and, like them, she did nothing to stop it._

'The Whimper of Whipped Dogs' from 'Deathbird Stories' by Harlan Ellison.


----------



## Darlene Jones (Nov 1, 2011)

The Venetian's Wife 

I don't have the book with me so I can't quote, but the first paragraph had me hooked.


----------



## Steverino (Jan 5, 2011)

Just remembered the opening of _House of Leaves_, which goes:

#

This is not for you.

#

That's one way to start a very surreal book!


----------



## jimbronyaur (Feb 9, 2011)

King's Dark Tower... the opening line... gave me chills reading it and once you finish the 7 book series, you'll have chills again...

-jb


----------



## James Conway (Jul 7, 2011)

Geoffrey said:


> "Veldt to scrub to fields to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from the earth. It has been night for a long time. The hovels that encrust the river's edge have grown like mushrooms around me in the dark."
> 
> _Perdido Street Station_, China Mieville


I like this.


----------



## Ernie Lindsey (Jul 6, 2010)

The opening to Tim O'Brien's "Tomcat in Love" has always stuck with me. If you haven't read it, the main character is a linguistics professor, and the story is told through first person, so the things O'Brien does with language in that book still make me jealous, several readings later.

_I begin with the ridiculous, in June 1952, middle-century Minnesota, on that silvery-hot morning when Herbie Zylstra and I nailed two plywood boards together and called it an airplane. "What we need," said Herbie, "is an engine."_


----------



## brianjanuary (Oct 18, 2011)

The first line from Richard Stark's (Donald Westlake) _Firebreak_: "When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man."

Brian January


----------



## Brad Murgen (Oct 17, 2011)

The opening paragraph or two in any Neal Stephenson or Salman Rushdie novel is usually pretty good.

One of my faves is the opening for _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ by Douglas Adams... great opening:

__________________

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.


----------



## LilianaHart (Jun 20, 2011)

"She woke in the body of a dead friend." -Nora Roberts, Carolina Moon

That line will always stay with me. Gave me chills.


----------



## ZiKehimkar (Dec 10, 2011)

I was going to say The Hitchhiker's Guide, guess I was a little late. But here's one that no one mentioned yet, from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

"First the colors. 
Then the humans. 
That's usually how I see things. 
Or at least, how I try.

HERE IS A SMALL FACT
You are going to die."

The rest of that opening is brilliant too, and I ended up buying and loving the book.


----------



## Ken Magee (Nov 17, 2011)

My favorite opening line to date is from The Stranger by Camus - "My mother died today, or perhaps it was yesterday." You just have to read on after that.

I also very much liked how Terry Pratchett opened The Light Fantastic... "The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth all the effort." That made me smile and gave an immediate flavor of the tone of the book.

I stole these two from my blog which has a short article on opening lines... http://kenmagee.blogspot.com/


----------



## deckard (Jan 13, 2011)

"Hello, ship," Jake Holman said under his breath.

The ship was asleep and did not hear him. He lowered his big canvas thirty-year bag to the ground and stood there in the moon shadow of a brick wall and had his first long look at her.

The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna


----------



## Tony Rabig (Oct 11, 2010)

deckard said:


> "Hello, ship," Jake Holman said under his breath.
> 
> The ship was asleep and did not hear him. He lowered his big canvas thirty-year bag to the ground and stood there in the moon shadow of a brick wall and had his first long look at her.
> 
> The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna


God, McKenna was a terrific writer. And the opening of his short story, "Casey Agonistes," is another fine first line:
"You can't just plain die. You got to do it by the book."


----------



## DH_Sayer (Dec 20, 2011)

I was pretty hooked by the opening of The Fermata by Nicholson Baker. The narrator just launches right into it, saying he can freeze time with no preamble, and it was pretty fascinating right off the bat. Read that book in one day, something I rarely do.


----------

