ONTD

I need to read High-Rise!!! won't someone give me a job ffs

- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

STUPID HOLDEN CAULFIELD!!!!

The Graveyard Book is a bit inconsistent but I really liked it. I hope it becomes a film.

Good list pretty much, I like that they included writers that are poc and a decent mix of genders.
Need to check out some of these books.

Idk if I have a favourite opening line *kanye voice* OF ALL TIME but I liked the opening of Camus' The Stranger

“Today, Maman died.”

and

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin"

from Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Metamorphosis made me so uneasy. Guess I'm just not a fan of the idea of giant cockroaches. Or the idea that I could actually feel sympathy for a giant cockroach.

I was about to say that this post is invalid without Anna Karenina.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair"

—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

"Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen."

Fav books, great opener.

I actually went to Oxford specifically to visit that bench. /dork

here for A Tale of Two Cities. i always feel bad for Sydney Carton.

"Mother died today."

...Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: Your mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Deep sympathy. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.

I think I need to read more books.

Fear and Loathing's opening is my favorite.

"You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings."

-- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Edited at 2012-11-21 08:48 pm (UTC)

Of all of the books I've read (and I've read a lot), the only opening line I can remember vividly is from Toni Morrison's Beloved (to be fair though, I did just finish rereading this book for the fifth or sixth time for one of my classes). "124 was spiteful. Full of baby venom."

My mom bought me the first Harry Potter before I had ever heard of them (I think it was around the time the fourth one came out) and I wasn't really interested but started it anyway. I still vividly remember reading the very first chapter, having no idea what it was going to be about, and being sucked riiiight in.

fucking "catcher in the rye." doesn't deserve to be on this list.

it's more than just one sentence, but "the haunting of hill house":

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

it's THE classic haunted house story. i'd definitely recommend it, it's very chilling in a subtle way.

It was love at first sight-Catch 22