Listing a little to the left
There's a list online of the 100 best first lines of novels. Some of these books I've never even heard of. They must be important to have made this list, but I can't for the life of me imagine where they came from. Aside from the books, of course. They're identified at the end of the quotes.
I can't help but feel that reading this list is a lot like listening to the BBC, in that while I understand what I'm reading / hearing, and understand the importance, I can't quite put it into my personal frame of reference.
And my favorite opening line is one that (of course) did not make the list:
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."
H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds (1898)
I've had just enough rum to make me witty, but not enough to put me to sleep.
I can't help but feel that reading this list is a lot like listening to the BBC, in that while I understand what I'm reading / hearing, and understand the importance, I can't quite put it into my personal frame of reference.
And my favorite opening line is one that (of course) did not make the list:
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."
H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds (1898)
I've had just enough rum to make me witty, but not enough to put me to sleep.