Tag: Opening Lines Page 6 of 7

Opening Lines – Morning Star

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On February 25, 2016

In Authors, Blog Series, Currently Reading, Fiction, News/Misc., Opening Lines, Pierce Brown, Quotations, Red Rising, 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.

Deep in darkness, far from warmth and sun and moons, I lie, quiet as the stone that surrounds me, imprisoning my hunched body in a dreadful womb. I cannot stand. Cannot stretch. I can only curl in a ball, a withered fossil of the man that was. Hands cuffed behind my back. Naked on cold rock.

All alone with the dark.

It seems months, years, millennia since my knees have unbent, since my spine has straightened from its crooked pose. The ache is madness. My joints fuse like rusted iron. How much time has passed since I saw my Golden friends bleeding out into the grass? Since I felt gentle Roque kiss my cheek as he broke my heart?

Time is no river.

Not here.

In this tomb, time is the stone. It is the darkness, permanent and unyielding, its only measure the twin pendulums of life — breath and the beating of my heart.

In. Buh . . . bump. Buh . . . bump.

Out. Buh . . . bump. Buh . . . bump.

In. Buh . . . bump. Buh . . . bump.

And forever it repeats.

from Morning Star by Pierce Brown

Opening Lines – Staked by Kevin Hearne

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On January 27, 2016

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

Head & Shoulders used to tell us that, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” That’s true for wearing dark shirts, and it’s especially true for books. Sometimes the characters will hook the reader, sometimes the premise, sometimes it’s just knowing the author — but nothing beats a great opening for getting a reader to commit. This is one of the better openings I’ve read recently. Would it make you commit?

I didn’t have time to pull off the heist with a proper sense of theatre. I didn’t even have a cool pair of shades. All I had was a soundtrack curated by Tarantino playing in my head, one of those songs with horns and a fat bass track and a guitar going waka-chaka-waka-chaka as I padded on asphalt with the uncomfortable feeling that someone was enjoying a voyeuristic close-up of my feet.

from Staked by Kevin Hearne

Opening Lines – My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry

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On November 20, 2015

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

Head & Shoulders used to tell us that, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” That’s true for wearing dark shirts, and it’s especially true for books. Sometimes the characters will hook the reader, sometimes the premise, sometimes it’s just knowing the author — but nothing beats a great opening for getting a reader to commit. This is one of the better openings I’ve read recently. Would it make you commit?

Every seven-year-old deserves a superhero. That’s just how it is. Anyone who doesn’t agree needs their head examined.

That’s what Elsa’s granny says, at least.

Elsa is seven, going on eight. She knows she isn’t especially good at being seven. She knows she’s different. Her headmaster says she needs to “fall into line” in order to achieve “a better fit with her peers.” Other adults describe her as “very grown-up for her age.” Elsa knows this is just another way of saying “massively annoying for her age,” because they only tend to say this when she corrects them for mispronouncing “déjà vu” or not being able to tell the difference between “me” and “I” at the end of a sentence. Smart-asses usually can’t, hence the “grown-up for her age” comment, generally said with a strained smile at her parents. As if she has a mental impairment, as if Elsa has shown them up by not being totally thick just because she’s seven. And that’s why she doesn’t have any friends except Granny. Because all the other seven-year-olds in her school are as idiotic as seven-year-olds tend to be, but Elsa is different.

She shouldn’t take any notice of what those muppets think, says Granny. Because all the best people are different–look at superheroes. After all, if superpowers were normal, everyone would have them.

from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

It was really hard to stop where I did, I wanted to use the first three pages, but am pretty sure that it’d get me in copyright trouble.

Opening Lines – If I Fall, If I Die

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On October 20, 2015

In Blog Series, Currently Reading, 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). 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 boy stepped Outside, and he did not die.

He was not riddled with arrows, his hair did not spring into flame, and his breath did not crush his lungs like spent grocery bags. His eyeballs did not sizzle in their sockets, and his heart’s pistons did not seize. No barbarian lopped his head into a blood-soggy wicker basket, and no glinting ninja stars were zinged into his throat.

Actually, incredibly: nothing happened–no immolation, no blood-bath, no spontaneous asphyxiation, no tide of shivery terror crashing upon the shore of his heart–not even a trace of his mother’s Black Lagoon in his breath.

Somehow Will was calm.

from If I Fall, If I Die by Michael Christie

Opening Lines – Kickback

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On May 20, 2015

In Ace Atkins, Authors, Blog Series, Currently Reading, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, News/Misc., Opening Lines, Quotations, Robert B. Parker, Spenser

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

On the first day of February, the coldest day of the year so far, I took it as a very good omen that a woman I’d never met brought be a sandwich. I had my pair of steel-toed Red Wings kicked up on the corner of my desk, thawing out, when she arrived. My morning coffee and two corn muffins were a distant memory.

She laid down the sandwich wrapped in wax paper and asked if my name was Spenser.

“Depends on the sandwich.”

“A grinder from Coppa in the South End,” she said. “Extra provolone and pickled cherry peppers.”

“Then my name is Spenser,” I said. “With an S like the English poet.”

“Rita said you were easy.”

“If you mean Rita Fiore, she’s not one to judge.”

from Kickback by Ace Atkins


(technically, not the opening lines, but this is the beginning of Chapter 1, so it sorta counts)

Opening Lines – Near Enemy

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On January 15, 2015

In Blog Series, Currently Reading, News/Misc., 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. Technically, I’m cheating here — I skipped the first eight lines (Chapter 1), this is from Chapter 2, but it’s my blog so I can ignore my own rules, right?

Dare you not to read the rest of the book

—–

This used to be a city of locks.
Every home, at least five, down the door, like a vault.
Chain lock.
Rim lock.
Fox lock.
Knob lock.
Deadbolt.
Funny name, that last one.
Dead. Bolt.
Neither word exactly conjures security.
But no one bothers with that many locks in New York anymore. City’s safer. Or at least emptier. No end of vacancies. And no one bothers to burgle anymore. Nothing left to burgle. Everything’s picked clean, and anyone who still lives in Manhattan and has something of real value to protect — family, dignity, vintage baseball-card collection — does it with a shotgun, not a deadbolt. So the real problem, for the burglar, isn’t getting in. It’s getting back out.
After all, if you apply enough force, deadbolts give.
Shotguns take.

from Near Enemy by Adam Sternbergh

Opening Lines – Pickles and Ponies: A Fairy-Tale

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On October 31, 2014

In Blog Series, Currently Reading, Fantasy, 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.

Yeah, yeah, I know…another modern fairy-tale intro. What can I say, I’m a sucker for ’em?

Once upon a time, in a land far away, a prince was in rather a pickle. Not a literal pickle, of course— prince-sized pickles are rather hard to come by. No, the type of pickle this prince was in was a thoroughly metaphorical one. To be honest, he might have preferred the vegetable.

from Pickles and Ponies: A Fairy-Tale by Laura May

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

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