"'Where's Papa going with that axe?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."
E.B. White, --Charlotte’s Web, (1952)
E.B. White, --Charlotte’s Web, (1952)
"It was a dark and stormy night." :-)
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." —C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
"Claudia knew she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away." --E. L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1972)
"In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit." J. R. R. Tolkein, The Hobbit (1966) "When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping."
--Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (2008)
"First the colors.
Then the humans.
That’s usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try."
--Marcus Zusack, The Book Thief (2006)
What is it that makes you want to keep reading? An interesting protagonist, a bizarre situation? The hint of something unusual that's to come, or something that makes you laugh? What's your favorite first line? :-)
--Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (2008)
"First the colors.
Then the humans.
That’s usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try."
--Marcus Zusack, The Book Thief (2006)
What is it that makes you want to keep reading? An interesting protagonist, a bizarre situation? The hint of something unusual that's to come, or something that makes you laugh? What's your favorite first line? :-)
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." I had the whole first page memorized when I was in fifth grade. :)
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ReplyDeleteI love first lines too - or hate them. They set the tone, don't they?
ReplyDeleteAny English teacher would cringe at this one, and bleed red ink all over it, and yet who dares to correct Jane? Not me. It's perfect.
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who,
for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed.
Oh, how could I forget the first line of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone?" :-) Silly me!
ReplyDeleteI think you're right, Barbara, that the first line of Persuasion is a lot for modern readers to stomach, but is still perfect at the same time!
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