What Is The Best Ever Opening Line Of A Book You Have Read?

[Stargazer]

It was the best of times; it ws the worst of times.

[jno]

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

That one about a single man inpossession of a good fortune is quite popular too.

[Stargazer]

What is the second one you meniont jno?

[Brinjal]

I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong hills.

[jno]

Pride and Prejudice - 200 years old this year.

[jno]

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

[toalisi]

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again

[Brinjal]

I liked that book as well toalisi

[Stargazer]

I agree, toalisi. I don't know why it is such a memorable opening line but for whatever reason it is one of mine as well.

[The Builder]

I have an idea I might have put this up before, on a similar thread. No matter though. Any excuse for some Steinbeck...... opening to Cannery Row...

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and *** houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches,' by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing."

[paddywak]

Call me Ismael.

[Brinjal]

The past is a foreign country they do things differently there.

[shaneystar2]

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

[chrisgel]

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

[Mojo-Jo-Jo]

Damn you Chrisgel I was gonna do that one :))

[Spoonboy]

"This book is intended to fill a gap" - The Persians by J.M. Cook.

[chrisgel]

Sorry mojo, I waited ages.

[Peter Pedant]

Ivan Ivanovitch was a Stakhanovite !


Actually that was an entry for a book one would least wish to read

[VHG]

Catch 22

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

[SeaJayPea]

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow".

Absolute classic novel.

But I'm a huge fan of Steinbeck, Builder. I'll have to get that down and give it another go. Haven't read it for some years.

[LazyGun]

One of the best, from probably my favourite author,sadly just died of cancer.

"'It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach."

The Crow Road, Iain Banks