Tag: Opening Lines

Opening Lines – The Westing Game

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On July 10, 2014

In Blog Series, Currently Reading, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, News/Misc., Opening Lines, Quotations, YA/MG/Children's Books

We all know we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover (yet, publishing companies spend big bucks on cover design/art). But, the opening sentence(s)/paragraph(s) are fair game. So, when I stumble on a good opening (or remember one and pull it off the shelves), I’ll throw it up here. Dare you not to read the rest of the book.

—–

The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!

Sunset Towers faced east and had no towers. This glittery, glassy apartment house stood alone on the Lake Michigan shore five stories high. Five empty stories high.

Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy rode around town slipping letters under the doors of the chosen tenants-to-be. The letters were signed Barney Northrup.

The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northrup.

from The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Like any good novel (and this is a very good one), so much of the book is revealed in the opening paragraphs — not that we know that at the time, but in retrospect, it’s clear — we get the voice, we get themes, we get clues to the mystery (not that we know what the mystery is). As a kid, I got to that last line and was hooked. How could there not be such a person when the previous sentence said there was? What’s up with the Towers facing the wrong direction? What a strange book.

Opening Lines – Hot Lead, Cold Iron

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On May 28, 2014

In Blog Series, Currently Reading, News/Misc., Opening Lines, Quotations, Urban Fantasy

We all know we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover (yet, publishing companies spend big bucks on cover design/art). But, the opening sentence(s)/paragraph(s) are fair game. So, when I stumble on a good opening (or remember one and pull it off the shelves), I’ll throw it up here. Dare you not to read the rest of the book

—–

I really feel that fewer of modern society’s bits and pieces are sadder—more banal, I guess—than a big office. It’s kinda like, once mankind perfected the assembly line, there was nothing left to do but live on it. Desk after bulky desk, endless rows reaching into the distance like railroad tracks to nowhere; constant monotonous clacks and dings of typewriters and adding machines; tacky marble floors—and maybe columns, in the swankier joints—trying to echo the glories of ancient temples and libraries, and miserably failing at it. Honestly, I dunno if it’s more depressing or more boring.

Unless someone’s trying to rub you out in one of ’em. Then I’m pretty damn confident in telling you it’s a lot more depressing than it is boring.

Right that minute, I wasn’t looking at the desks, or the typewriters, or the pillars, because I was staring blearily at the growing puddle of red soaking into the piss-yellow carpet between my scuffed Oxfords. (Yeah, carpet. This was the second story, so no marble flooring here.) It wasn’t a whole lot of leakage, not yet, but the brick-fisted galoots flocking around me seemed right eager to help me add to it. We were having a friendly little get-together, me and the four of them, wherein I was helping them to relax by massaging their knuckles with my cheeks and my gut. Repeatedly; they musta been really tense. But hey, at least the coppery scent in my nose kept me from gagging on the mixed bouquet of old sweat, typewriter oil, and carpet shampoo.

from Hot Lead, Cold Iron by Ari Marmell

Opening Lines — Screwed by Eoin Colfer

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On January 28, 2014

In Blog Series, Currently Reading, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Opening Lines, Quotations

Been awhile since I’ve done one of these posts, but — nothing against most of the books I’ve read in the meantime — haven’t had a reason to until now.
We all know we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover (so why do publishing companies spend big bucks on cover design/art?). Opening sentence(s)/paragraph(s) are fair game, in my book. So, when I stumble on a good opening (or remember one and pull it off the shelves), I throw it up here. Dare you not to read the rest of the book

—–

The great Elmore Leonard once said that you should never start a story with weather. That’s all well and good for Mr. Leonard to say and for all his acolytes to scribble into their moleskin notebooks, but sometimes a story starts off with weather and does not give a damn about what some legendary genre guy recommends, even if it is the big EL. So if there’s a weather at the start then that’s where you better put it or the whole thing could unravel and you find yourself with the shavings of a tale swirling around your ankles and no idea how to glue them together again.
So expect some major meteorological conditions smack bang in the middle of Chapter One, and if there were kids and animals around they’d be in here too, screw that old-timey movie-star guy with the cigar and squint eye. The story is what it is.

from Screwed by Eoin Colfer

Opening lines – Blades of Winter by G.T. Almasi

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On November 26, 2013

In Blog Series, Currently Reading, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Opening Lines, Quotations, Science Fiction

We all know we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover (yet, publishing companies spend big bucks on cover design/art). But, the opening sentence(s)/paragraph(s) are fair game. So, when I stumble on a good opening (or remember one and pull it off the shelves), I’ll throw it up here. Dare you not to read the rest of the book

—–

Nothing pisses me off more than being shot at while I’m eating. It’s the midday rush here in my new favorite restaurant, a cozy Hungarian joint on East 82nd Street. I’m jammed into a small table by the kitchen, with a Redskins cap pulled low over my face. The charming old dining room is packed, and the paneled walls echo the Eastern European barks of the broad, buxom waitresses as they dominate the good-humored customers. The food here is spectacular, but right now I’m kind of distracted by that bullet hurtling straight at my left eye.

from Blades of Winter by G.T. Almasi

Opening Lines – Straight Man

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On November 6, 2013

In Blog Series, Fiction, General Fiction/Literature, News/Misc., Opening Lines, Quotations

We all know we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover (yet, publishing companies spend big bucks on cover design/art–and I love this cover). But, the opening sentence(s)/paragraph(s) are fair game. So, when I stumble on a good opening (or remember one and pull it off the shelves), I throw it up here. In this selection, we learn everything — practically everything, anyway — we that need to know about our narrator, the next 300+ pages is just filling in the details.
I love this kind of opening.

—–

Truth be told, I’m not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it’s been my experience that most people don’t want to be entertained. They want to be comforted. And, of course, my idea of entertaining might not be yours. I’m in complete agreement with all those people who say, regarding movies, “I just want to be entertained.” This populist position is much derided by my academic colleagues as simpleminded and unsophisticated, evidence of questionable analytical and critical acuity. But I agree with the premise, and I too just want to be entertained. That I am almost never entertained by what entertains other people who just want to be entertained doesn’t make us philosophically incompatible. It just means we shouldn’t go to movies together.
The kind of man I am, according to those who know me best, is exasperating. According to my parents, I was an exasperating child as well. They divorced when I was in junior high school, and they agree on little except that I was an impossible child.

from Straight Man by Richard Russo

Opening Lines – The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

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On August 6, 2013

In Blog Series, News/Misc., Opening Lines, Quotations

We all know we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover (yet, publishing companies spend big bucks on cover design/art). But, the opening sentence(s)/paragraph(s) are fair game. So, when I stumble on a good opening (or remember one and pull it off the shelves), I’ll throw it up here. Dare you not to read the rest of the book

—–

Prince Charming is afraid of old ladies. Didn’t know that, did you?
Don’t worry. There’s a lot you don’t know about Prince Charming: Prince Charming has no idea how to use a sword; Prince Charming has no patience for dwarfs; Prince Charming has an irrational hatred of capes.
Some of you may not even realize that there’s more than one Prince Charming. And that none of them are actually named Charming. No one is. Charming isn’t a name; it’s an adjective.
But don’t blame yourself for your lack of Prince Charming-based knowledge; blame the lazy bards.

from The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy

Opening Lines – Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

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On July 13, 2013

In Blog Series, News/Misc., Opening Lines, Quotations

We all know we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover (yet, publishing companies spend big bucks on cover design/art). But, the opening sentence(s)/paragraph(s) are fair game. So, when I stumble on a good opening (or remember one and pull it off the shelves), I’ll throw it up here. Dare you not to read the rest of the book

—–

Lost in the shadows of the shelves, I almost fall off the ladder. I am exactly halfway up. The floor of the bookstore is far below me, the surface of a planet I’ve left behind. The tops of the shelves loom high above, and it’s dark up there — the books are packed in close, and they don’t let any light through. The air might be thinner, too. I think I see a bat.

I am holding on for dear life, one hand on the ladder, the other on the lip of a shelf, fingers pressed white. My eyes trace a line above my knuckles, searching the spines — and there, I spot it. The book I’m looking for.

But let me back up.

from Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

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