Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

This year, a category can be a little difficult to decide, as you need to have a look at the book or at citations to find which one could fit. It's "49. A book with a great opening line".

Tell us the best opening lines you encountered and the one you've chosen for week 49.

I chose

Ooh yes, Jennifer! Moby-Dick has a brilliant opening line.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle has a great opening paragraph:

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.”

I've chosen Anna Karenina for this week, with the opening line of "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - I'm so looking forward to reading it!

Jody these 2 are really great. I want to read them now :D

Castle is really great, and short too - I'd definitely recommend it!

Right now I'm planning on reading Paradise by Toni Morrison. That may change once I see the other lines posted in this thread ;)

They shoot the white girls first. With the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are seventeen miles from a town which has ninety miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the Convent, but there is time and the day has just begun.

That's a pretty powerful first line, Laura. Wowzers.

From 2015, The Magicians had a good opening line (I totally NOT recommend the book):
Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed.

My goal with challenges is always to whittle down my TBR list, so I had fun finding a book to fit this one. I went through the titles that were the oldest on the list, used google books to see a preview of each, and chose based on that.

I decided on Sea Change by Karen White
"Storms bring the detritus of other people's lives into our own, a reminder that we are not alone, and how truly insignificant we all are."

That was a great idea, Joann! I took the easy way out and just searched for "greatest opening lines" :p

It's a great line that you came up with though!

Laura wrote: "Right now I'm planning on reading Paradise by Toni Morrison. That may change once I see the other lines posted in this thread ;)

They shoot the white girls first. With the rest they ca..."
Wow, Laura. That is a dramatic beginning! I just read Song of Solomon, my first book by Toni Morrison and loved it. Wanted to read more by her, I should add Paradise to the list!

Jody wrote: "Ooh yes, Jennifer! Moby-Dick has a brilliant opening line.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle has a great opening paragraph:

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years..."

Jody, I love We Have Always Lived in The Castle. Classic Shirley Jackson!

Zaz wrote: "From 2015, The Magicians had a good opening line (I totally NOT recommend the book):
Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed."

So true. Such a great start, such a rubbish book.

I picked Middlesex for my great opening line:

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

Some of my favorites though ...

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

Slaughterhouse-Five: "All this happened, more or less." (though I did not really care for the book as a whole).

The Catcher in the Rye: "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 Debut: "Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature."

Cat's Eye: "Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space."



This site has a good listing of 100 different opening lines of novels: 100 Best Opening Lines

This topic caused me to do some shuffling round but I think it also helped me to fit all my books into my list. I was really stuck with this one but I had 1984 on my list for my dystopia so I moved that so it will be my book for a great opening line and switched around some other books to make them all fit in.

If I hadn't picked 1984, I probably would have gone with Middlesex but I have that listed for my identity book.

Manda wrote: "I picked Middlesex for my great opening line:

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an..."

I picked The Debut solely for that opening line! What book-lover could pass that up ;)

I think that I am going with The Book Thief
"Here is a small fact: You are going to die."

I changed mine. I'm not using 1984 anymore instead I've gone with The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso : 'At one point midway on our path in life'.

I'm reading Middlesex for the identity week, so instead I picked Mrs. Dalloway:

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

I like her already.

And just like that, Mrs. Dalloway has been added to my to-read list!

Jody wrote: "Ooh yes, Jennifer! Moby-Dick has a brilliant opening line.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle has a great opening paragraph:

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years..."

I'm reading Anna Karenina as well.

Francesca wrote: "And just like that, Mrs. Dalloway has been added to my to-read list!"

Heh sorry. Not. This place is dangerous at least for my TBR shelf :D

I read Mrs Dalloway a month ago and loved it. A bit hard to get into the style but if you do, it is an amazing book. I hope you'll enjoy it! I loved Middlesex, too.

Manda wrote: "Zaz wrote: "From 2015, The Magicians had a good opening line (I totally NOT recommend the book):
Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed."

So true. Such a great start, such a rubb..."

Thanks for that link :) Many great openings, most classics... so this one stood out to me because it was so different: "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,” Papa would say, “she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.” I think I am in Geek Love!

Marta wrote: "Laura wrote: "Right now I'm planning on reading Paradise by Toni Morrison. That may change once I see the other lines posted in this thread ;)

They shoot the white girls first. With th..."

I love Toni Morrison. I took a Toni Morrison literature course in college, so I have read the majority of her books. I plan on reading her latest book, God Help the Child, for the challenge this year.

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York."

Reading The Bell Jar for this one!

The outsiders: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
"I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen."

Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee
"They say death aims only once and never misses, but I doubt Ty Yorkshire thought it would strike with a scrubbing brush."

I was deciding between those two. Ultimately I went with Miss Peregrine.

Miss Peregrine is a nice, easy read - good choice!

Great suggestions, all. Keep them coming! I had a really hard time with this category for 2015 and ended up with a book that I didn't love (Murphy by Samuel Beckett - I will stick to his plays thankyouverymuch).

This is so funny but I even picked Moby Dick to read for a book great line opening .Its also kind of funny that even though I really love old black and white movies from the 20's,30's,40's,50's and 60's that I can't stand the original Moby Dick movie .but I love the book.

"You ain't gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway."

Karen Memory. Sorry I can't make the live link right now, will edit later when on desktop.

Started reading this one last night and really like it.

Good Aglea, it's on my to-read-next, I'm looking forward to your opinion :)

I went the comedic route when picking my great opening line book. Taken from The Lightning-Struck Heart:


"And now, I will tell you of my plans to take over the Kingdom," the evil wizard and total douchebag Lartin the Dark Leaf said with a cackle.

My favourite opening line must be the one from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."

Zaz wrote: "Good Aglea, it's on my to-read-next, I'm looking forward to your opinion :)"

I posted my review yesterday :)

Karen Memory

The 2 in my plan (I'll read both if I've time or just Legion if not):

- Legion
“My name is Stephen Leeds, and I am perfectly sane. My hallucinations, however, are all quite mad.”

- Monster Hunter International
“On one otherwise ordinary Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth story window.”

I didn't decide yet! My options are:

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Neuromancer

“Today was the day a thousand dreams would die and a single dream would be born.” The Kiss of Deception

But I also liked Karen Memory and Legion opening lines! So both are now in my endless want to read list =)

"My mother named me Gabriela after my grandmother who - coincidentally - didn't want to meet me when I was born because my mother was not married and therefore living in sin. "
Gabi, a Girl in Pieces
Got this book from the library. My daughter read it in two hours and loved it. I am going to read it soon, too. I just thought it fits because that opening line is quite a set-up.

I also love the opening line for the Bell Jar, I was planning to read it for the mental illness week but since I have several good candidates for that week, I might move it...

For me, the two books that first came to mind were Pride and Prejudice, and Anna Karenina. I decided against Pride and Prejudice because I've already read it twice...still on the fence about Anna Karenina. I would love to read it, but the size is intimidating!

"I’m pretty much f****d. That’s my considered opinion. F****d." And thus begins a most excellent adventure, from . This books is full of witty lines and some had me laughing out loud!

I loved how the narrative voice removes a bit of the drama of the story. If the writing was serious, this book would definitely be less good!

Sophie wrote: "I loved how the narrative voice removes a bit of the drama of the story. If the writing was serious, this book would definitely be less good!"

Agree! I thought it was going to be a serious drama, Like Apollo 13, but instead it's full of humor and is just a great adventure story :)

From Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee:

It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song. Even the act of remembrance creases the truth.

Another user posted this in a review, so can't tell if it's true or not, but hopefully it is. Sounds promising.

I just read A Christmas Carol, which had a great first line: "Marley was dead, to begin with.". I love a good first line!

The opening line of Sabatini's Scaramouche is among my, if not my most, favorite.

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”

The one that came most immediately to my mind was

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there" (The Go Between

I read A Death in the Family last year for another challenge. It's a tremendously sad book, but beautifully written and very moving. I loved the book and it has a wonderful opening line:

“We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.”

Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins has a marvelous first page:

The beet is the most intense of vegetables.

The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip…

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial’s plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The beet was Rasputin’s favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.

In Europe there is grown widely a large beet they call the mangel-wurzel. Perhaps it is mangel-wurzel that we see in Rasputin. Certainly there is mangel-wurzel in the music of Wagner, although it is another composer whose name begins, B-e-e-t—.

Of course, there are white beets, beets that ooze sugar water instead of blood, but it is the red beet with which we are concerned; the variety that blushes and swells like a hemorrhoid for which there is no cure. (Actually, there is one remedy: commission a potter to make you a ceramic asshole – and when you aren’t sitting on it, you can use it as a bowl for borscht.)

An old Ukrainian proverb warns, “A tale that begins with a beet will end with the devil.”

That is a risk we have to take.

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One of my favorite books; I wish I could read it for the first time again.