There was a poll that stated—Rowling’s opening line in the HP series is one of best in the world. Someone posted about how there are a bunch of other opening statements that are better.
Here’s one of my personal favorites, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez (English translated):
“It is inevitable. The scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
@DocCarms@bookstodon "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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way– in short, the period was so far like the present period..."
@DocCarms@bookstodon “It was a pleasure to burn” from Fahrenheit 451 has got to be up there. But for sheer comfort value my very favorite is “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
@DocCarms@bookstodon "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." from Anna Karenina, of course.
And the one from The restaurant at the end of the universe: "In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." :blobcatcoffee:
@arisu_m@DocCarms@bookstodon I love that the Restaurant line evokes the intro to the Book of Genesis but without mentioning God.
A side thought: it would be totally on-brand for the Douglas Adams universe to have God be a cranky old immortal who lives on an isolated planet and had nothing to do with creating the universe, but took credit for it one time like 3 billion years ago and now can't shake the reputation
@bookstodon@DocCarms
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I can’t be sure - Camus, The Outsider
124 was spiteful. Full of baby’s venom - Morrison, Beloved
The story so far: In the beginning, the earth was created. This has made a lot of people angry and is widely regarded as a bad move - Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide
I decided that Orion Lake needed to die the second time he saved my life - Novik, Deadly Education
I’m pretty much fucked. That’s my considered opinion - Weir, Martian
@ukaunz@bookstodon@DocCarms
Thank you! I thought of it bc it’s a much, much more interesting, darker and more nuanced portrayal of a school for students with magic than the HP series. The first paragraph is really what hooked me, more than the first sentence.
I’m not really doing the book justice with this description. If you don’t mind a little YA feel to a novel, it’s a creative, fun, engrossing book of its genre. Worth a shot, maybe
For bonus points, how many of you have been to Vancouver in the fall? Bc that's what the sky looks like here! An endless expanse of rolling, textured grey. (I honestly love it. Blue is so boring. It's all the same.)
@BashStKid@negative12dollarbill@DocCarms@bookstodon He seems quite content to let it have multiple interpretations. I don’t think any of them harms the reader’s mental image of Chiba City but they do change it a little in interesting ways. Slightly different flavors of desperate and dysfunctional.
“It was a nice day.
All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.”
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman #books#bookstodon “OpeningLines #GoodOmens
@DocCarms@bookstodon honorable mention ( because it’s the second sentence from Prisoner of Zenda) “My dear Rose,” I answered, laying down my egg-spoon, “why in the world should I do anything?
@DocCarms@bookstodon it's on so many lists that it's nearly a cliche at this point, but "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning."
@seav@DocCarms@bookstodon That might be my favorite as well. Or at least I'd put it above the HP opening line, not so much because of how intrinsically good it is, but because of how it gets reused in every book (with the location swapped out). It really sets the right tone for epic fantasy.
@bookstodon He was a newspaper guy, he knew how to grab you on the first line. There are better first lines than anything he wrote but at the core it gets to the problem of HP fans which is that they only read one book. Twenty years ago I used to argue with people who said "Harry Potter is getting kids to read" with "Then why havent any of them read a real book yet?"
@Montaagge@bookstodon I have a couple of thoughts.
One of my fave opening lines is “The building was on fire but it wasn’t his fault”. Not the best literature but fun IMO. Also I don’t care what gets you reading, anything is a “real” book even comics, just read. And keep reading.
Also kids who grew up with HP are, according to research, more accepting. Definitely more accepting than the author. I guess they missed her promotion of bigotry in the books. #Ableism.
@DarkMatterZine buddy, the Sorceror's Stone came out when I was in 7th grade and I read it because my beloved English Teacher gifted it to me but I never made it past Goblet because they were bad, boring books. I argued about them not being real literature while they were still coming out. Comics are cool, most comics are real literature. Harry Potter is not. Harry Potter was always a cynical, racist, bunch of trash from day one.
@Montaagge Goblet saw the end of Rowling being edited IMO. However, research shows the kids who love the books weren’t brainwashed by the author’s bad ideology. And I didn’t say “keep reading rowling”, I said “keep reading”.
@DarkMatterZine@bookstodon but people didnt "keep reading." There is no world where David Foster Wallace, Amy Hempel and Lois Lowry are ignored in favor of the Hogwarts books where people read "other books"
I enjoyed the Hunger Games books, but no one, not even "YA fans" will talk to me about them. I hated Twiight but one of my exes got me to read those and I find each respective fandom less self important and full of shit than the HP fandom and the Twilight fandom produced EL James.
@Montaagge@bookstodon Fifty shades of excrement, yeah I get it. I think you’re underestimating people though. Sure, some are too fixated to broaden their horizons but try going to a cosplay event eg supanova, see the HP cosplayers asking different authors to sign other books.
@Montaagge@bookstodon
I read an article once which said research showed that Harry Potter books had kids reading LESS. They would read one, then wait a year for the next one.
@negative12dollarbill@Montaagge@bookstodon Yes and No. We read book one in the Potter series to our kid. This was before JKR went evil. Subsequently our kid read the rest of the series in ten days. It was a thing.
These days the kid - now an adult - mainly reads online so not as many actual books.
Other kids moved on to other books and other series. Finding the next book is important.
Hunger games final book was so disappointing- there were some amazing moments but so much illogical crap in between.
Having the trek though the capital basically be another hunger game style battle made no sense at all. The hunger games were meant to be won by one the the tributes, it makes no sense to set up the cities defenses the same way.
Also my kids read HP, hunger games, Percy Jackson and never stopped.
@negative12dollarbill@Montaagge@bookstodon That's how it works for other series of books just as well. Do you expect the next book in the series to spawn just on the predecessor's publication date? Consequentially, you'd have to say, kids shouldn't read book series that are not finished yet. Writing a book takes time. That's only natural.
@shaedrich@Montaagge@bookstodon I think you're missing the point a little? If you want kids to eat fruit and they love only one type — they will only eat mangoes when they're in season — your kids eat less fruit overall.
@negative12dollarbill@Montaagge@bookstodon I'm not sure if I'm the one missing the point here. Your observation is right - and so is what I said about book series, however, as I said, this is about J. K. Rowling. And at least in that point, she's not that special and for once, it's not her fault but ist how things work
@shaedrich@negative12dollarbill@bookstodon when I was little and even today if I'm reading a series and the next book isnt out yet I read other books in the meanwhile but thanks for explaining why people are so mad about Winds of Winter. I cant imagine getting so tunnel visioned that I had to wait for George to finish before I reax anything else but I guess some people do live that way.
@DocCarms@bookstodon
"Wir starteten in La Guardia, New York, mit dreistündiger Verspätung infolge Schneestürmen. Unsere Maschine war, wie üblich auf dieser Strecke, eine Super-Constellation."
@DocCarms@bookstodon
This article is great. It's neither a first line nor a novel, but it argues for one single comma being the author's "favorite comma in all of literature".
There had been something loose about the station dock all morning, skulking in amongst the gantries and the lines and the canisters which were waiting to be moved, lurking wherever shadows fell among the rampway accesses of the many ships at dock at Meetpoint.
-CJ Cherryh, Pride of Chanur
@DocCarms@bookstodon lots of good ones already, but one of my all time faves is probably from Nescio (Dutch writer), which translated goes: "Boys, we were. But nice boys. If I say so myself. "
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
@DocCarms@bookstodon "I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other." - Burroughs, being quite direct for the late Edwardian / early Georgian era.
@DocCarms@bookstodon Not a religious person but I like “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”.
“The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide.” - romance of the three kingdoms
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
"‘To be born again,’ sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, ‘first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly. Tat-taa! Taka-thun! How to ever smile again, if first you won’t cry? How to win the darling’s love, mister, without a sigh?"
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