Openings

[qos]

dancingchaplain posted her all-time favorite first page of a book, which got me thinking about my all-time favorite first sentence (which I think I may have posted here before, but probably long before most of you were on my Friends list).


"Elizabeth Middleton, twenty-nine years old and unmarried, overly educated and excessively rational, knowing right from wrong and fancy from fact, woke in a nest of marten and fox pelts to the sight of an eagle circling overhead, and saw at once that it could not be far to Paradise."

From Into the Wilderness, by Sara Donati


The first time I read this sentence, I didn't get any farther. I set the book down very carefully, thought about the sentence for a long time, picked the book up, read the sentence again, set the book down, picked it up, read the sentence a third time, and resisted the urge to throw the book across the room and never again presume to call myself a writer.

Shall we meme this? Which are your favorite first sentence/paragraph/pages?

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And now I'm just itching to know what Elizabeth Middleton did next.

[qos.livejournal.com]

It's worth reading!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm tempted.

But there are so many books in the world.

I've just started The Life and Death of Peter Sellers- and it's enormous....

I wish I could speed-read, but I can't.

[kateri-thinks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, okay, and then what happened???!?!?!!!

[qos.livejournal.com]

Read the book!
It's long and very satisfying.

some of my favorites

[quietearthling.livejournal.com]

That is an excellent beginning... I am still smiling. :-)

Here is one of my favorites:

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." (C.S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Re: some of my favorites

[aerden.livejournal.com]

...and he almost deserved it... heh--That's good!

Chantal

Re: some of my favorites

[qos.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes!

Although I always remember the line as "and he deserved it."

Favorite first line of a novel:

[aerden.livejournal.com]

From Pigs Will Fly

"My mother was the village whore, and I loved her very much."

I found this an eye-opener. And after reading the book and learning more about the main character's mother, it said some interesting things about the character.

Chantal

Re: Favorite first line of a novel:

[qos.livejournal.com]

What an intriguing beginning!
I'll have to look for the book!

[toesontheground.livejournal.com]

Ah! I'd play, but my memory just doesn't work like that :)

[athenian-abroad.livejournal.com]

Favorite opening sentence ever:

"I am going to start out by assuming that you are approximately as unhappy as I am."

-- Walter Kerr, The Decline of Pleasure (1962)