Fabulous First Lines

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

They say that you should not judge a book by its cover and you probably cannot judge it by its beginning either.

I personally don’t notice book covers and as a result have often bought the same book because it has been published with different covers.

I do, however, like to see how a book starts and if it will draw me in and bind me there. These books, with great beginnings, will keep you spellbound to the very last word. They certainly had me trapped.

Abarat by Clive Barker – RM17.90
The storm came up out of the southwest like a fiend, stalking its prey on legs of lightning. The wind it brought with it was as foul as the devil’s own breath and It stirred up the peaceful waters of the sea. By the time the little red boat that the three women had chosen for their perilous voyage had emerged from the shelter of the islands, and was out in the open waters, the waves were steep as cliffs, twenty-five, thirty feet tall.

Letter to D: A Love Story by Andre Gorz – RM17.90
You’re 82 years old. You’ve shrunk six centimeters, you only weigh 45 kilos yet you’re still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We’ve lived together now for 58 years and I love you more than ever. I once more feel a gnawing emptiness in the hollow of my chest that is only filled when your body is pressed next to mine.

Barnaby Grimes: Curse of the Night Wolf by Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell – RM17.90
Have you ever felt your skin being peeled slowly away from your arms and legs? Your muscles being torn and shredded as every bone in your body fights to burst through your flesh? Have you ever felt every tendon and sinew stretched to breaking point as your skeleton attempts to rip itself apart from the inside? I have and I’ll never forget it.

The Carnival Master by Craig Russell – RM17.90
Madness. Everywhere she looked was insanity. She ran through crowds of the demented. She stared around wildly, seeking an asylum: somewhere she could find refuge amongst the sane. The music thudded and screamed mercilessly. The crowd was denser now. More people, more madness. She pushed through them. Always away from the two massive spires that thrust up from the mayhem of the streets, black and menacing into the night. Always away from the clown.

Jacky Daydream by Jacqueline Wilson – RM19.90
I was more than a fortnight late for my own birth. I was due at the beginning of December and I didn’t arrive until the seventeenth. I don’t know why. It isn’t at all like me. I’m always very speedy and I can’t stand being late for anything.

The First Emperor of China by Jonathan Clements – RM29.90
Confucius said: ‘Those who do not think ahead will find their troubles close at hand.’ It did not take a wise man to see that Ying Zheng wanted to rule the entire world. … Ying Zheng was 33 years old, presiding over a nation that struck fear into the hearts of its neighbours. His country was a machine of war, a state run on military lines, its citizenry regimented and harshly disciple. Such an environment created a people bred for conquest, and the state of Qin was steadily eating up its rival nations.

Sky Burial by Xinran – RM24.90
When I was five years old, I heard a snatch of conversation on a Beijing street that lodged in my mind and would not leave. “The Tibetans cut his body into a thousand pieces and fed it to the vultures.” What? Just for killing a vulture? One of our soldiers paid for a vulture’s death with his life.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – RM19.90
Here is a small fact… you are going to die. I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that’s only the A’s. Just don’t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

Painting Mona Lisa by Jeanne Kalogridis – RM19.90
My name is Lisa di Antonio Gherardini Giocondo, though to acquaintances I am known simply as Madonna Lisa, and to those of the common class, Mona Lisa. My likeness has been recorded on wood, with boiled linseed oil and pigments dug from the earth or crushed from semi-precious stones, and applied with brushes made from the feathers of birds and the silken fur of animals. I have seen the painting. It does not look like me. I stare at it and see instead the faces of my father and mother. I listen and hear their voices. I feel their love and their sorrow, and I witness again and again, the crime that bound them together; the crime that bound them to me. For my story began not with my birth but a murder, committed the year before I was born.

Which of these first lines appeal to you? Or share a book’s first line which you were hooked on.

Text by BookXcess staff Nesa

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