Before bed last night, I was desperate to read something, but couldn't figure out what. I ended up over by the keeper shelf. Still, I couldn't even settle on a favorite. I did, however, read a lot of absolutely fantastic opening lines. Pretty soon, that's all I was doing, reading the openers, smiling a lot, remembering why I wanted to read these books in the first place.That first sentence can tell you so much about a book. Here were some of my favorites from last night:
"Looking back, I guess my first mistake was to assume that a rookie reporter could pursue both a hot story and a hot sex life."
Bubbles Ablaze by Sarah Strohmeyer
"The day I died started out bad and got worse in a hurry."
Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson
"The blackened shell of the house still stands on the edge of the moor."
Greygallows by Barbara Michaels
"My philosophy is pretty simple - any day nobody's trying to kill me is a good day."
Dark Fever by Karen Marie Moning
"Two blocks from the restaurant, Zoe Tarleton knew she was screwed."
Gone with the Nerd by Vicki Lewis Thompson
"Captain Crosbie came out of the bank with the pleased air of one who has cashed a cheque and has discovered that there is just a little more in his account than he though there was."
They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie
"Falling out of Heaven is the easy part. It's landing that's difficult."
Angel with Attitude by Michelle Rowen
"Sometimes, it seems like all I ever do is lie."
The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
"If you ever touch me again, I'll pull off your ears and stuff them up your nose."
The Royal Treatment by MaryJanice Davidson
There were even more, but darned if I'm going to type them all. It was fun to get drawn into my favorite books all over again. So what about you? Do you have any favorite opening lines? Post yours and I'll buy you a brand new copy of any of the books above. Winner's choice.
Posts
26 comments:
"I'd never given much thought to how I would die---though I'd had reason enough in the last few months---but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this. Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved"
Margay
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
Go Austen :D
That's from Twilight, isn't it Margay?
And I can't believe I left Pride & Prejudice off my list. You know, I just read a really good sequel to P&P called Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife.
Yes, it is! I don't care what anyone says, I loved that book! I can't believe I forgot Pride and Prejudice, too. Shamefaced.
Oh, and how about, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
Margay
Okay, it's more of a favorite opening graph, from Jonathan Barnes' "The Somnambulist":
Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and willfully bizarre. Needless to say, I doubt you’ll believe a word of it.
It's called nyctophobia. I looked it up once. It's the official term for an abnormal and persistent fear of the dark. I've had it ever since my parents and sister were murdered during an in-home burglary and I hid under the bed.
- Countdown, Michelle Maddox. [love the book]
"I've seen weirder things than a haunted show, but not many."
"Blood had its own scent. Metallic, sharp. Faintly sweet."
Yes, that's a classic line - although I have no Dickens on my keeper shelf. I'm not that classy. I do have Pride and Prejudice, though. Mmmmm...Darcy.
Love it, Suzanne. Makes me want to read more!
What book the "haunted show" line from, Wendy?
I have Countdown on my TBR shelf. Isn't Michelle Rowen/Michelle Maddox great?
"The way I see it, life is a jelly doughnut."
Janet Evanovich "Ten Big Ones"
Since I love doughnuts, this one really speaks to me.
Lisa
Another good one is....
"I'd been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar."
Charlaine Harris "Dead until Dark"
Lisa
"The bloody handprint was gone, wiped from Kisten's window but not from my memory, and it ticked me off that someone had cleaned it, as if they were trying to steal what little recollection I retained about the night he'd died" from "White Witch, Black Curse" by Kim Harrison
"Hold on while I get out my thesaurus; this review is going to require more words than my paltry vocabulary contains. Ah, here we go: junk, dross, rubbish, detritus(oh, that's a good one), baloney, claptrap, drivel..."
The Damsel in This Dress by Marianne Stillings
"Sophie Dempsey didn't like Temptation even before the Garveys smashed into her '86 Civic, broke her sister's sunglasses, and confirmed all her worse suspicions about people from small towns who drove beige Cadillacs."
- 'Welcome to Temptation' by Jennifer Crusie
"Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, often violently, just like love."
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
"Lacey Smithsonian looked down at the unfortunate woman in the coffin and thought,Oh my God, that is the worst haircut I've ever seen."
Killer Hair by Ellen Byerrum
"I little thought, when I came to beg shelter at Kelgarran Hall one rainy night, that I should take part in its downfall."
THE EYE OF NIGHT, Pauline J. Alama
If ghosts and monsters had someone else to harass, my life would have been a lot quieter, like it was before I died.
Underground by Kat Richardson
Elena Michaels, from the Bitten, book 1 of the Women of the Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong
"I have to.
I’ve been fighting it all night. I’m going to lose. My battle is as futile as a woman feeling the first pangs of labor and deciding it’s an inconvenient time to give birth. Nature wins out. It always does."
Charlaine Harris' Dead Until Dark (Lisa D's suggestion) was my other favorite. :-)
These are great! So good that I had to have Jim help me pick the winner (I couldn't decide). He couldn't stop chuckling at macbeaner's entry, so macbeaner - you win! Just email me at angie @angiefox and tell me which book you'd like. I'll send it out to you via Amazon.
Thanks for playing, everybody. This was a lot of fun.
Its really more of an opening paragraph but I loved it, even though it wasn't from a paranormal based book.
"Your job will be to separate the white thumbtacks from the colored ones. Be sure to throw the colored ones away. They must leave the building. If they don't, then you will. The president, Daniel Rosen, likes only white thumbtacks at The Agency. Also, should you ever serve him a drink, he has just four ice cubes in his Diet Coke. If you put in more, he will throw the surplus ice cubes at you. If you put in three, he'll throw the entire drunk at you."
It's from The Second Assistant: A Tale from the Bottom of the Hollywood Ladder by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare
"To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor."
Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn.
Angie, it's actually supposed to say SHOE. My bad! It's from Richelle Mead's Storm Born.
LOL donnas - that makes me feel better about some of the jobs I've held.
Marg, is Silent in the Grave a cozy mystery? I can't tell from the title.
And a haunted shoe, Wendy? That's even funnier. :)
"The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault."
Angie, it is a mystery, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a cozy. It is a historical mystery - set in Victorian times.
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