# Best Book Opening **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 27, 2002, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163 "2002-11-27T18:10:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/1 "2002-11-27T18:10:45Z")
I hope this hasn’t been done before, I did a search and found nothing so here goes: What do you think is the best opening line or lines to a book? My favorite is: V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River.: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.” Though I do have a soft spot in my heart for L’etranger; “Ma mere est mort” ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/2 "2002-11-27T18:26:14Z")
The opening to Philip K. Dick’s _Valis_ is fantastic. Unfortunately, my copy of Valis is in German, and the opening exposition is a bit long, so I’m hestitant to put any of it here, copyright and translation problems and all. ---
**Author:** ![Realhoops](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8dc957/32.png) [@Realhoops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Realhoops)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/3 "2002-11-27T18:31:02Z")
I’m partial to the following, mostly because it is the opening to one of my favorite books of all time, \* Crossing to Safety \* by Wallace Stegner: “Floating upward through a confusion of dreams and memory, curving like a trout through the rings of previous risings, I surface. My eyes are open. I am awake.” Oh, and I’d second \* The Stranger \* as a very haunting start to a great piece of literature. ---
**Author:** ![OfBlinkingThings](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ebca7d/32.png) [@OfBlinkingThings](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OfBlinkingThings)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/4 "2002-11-27T18:39:32Z")
Cannery Row has one of the most amazing openings I have ever read. It has perfect flow and is almost lyrical. Nabokovs Lolita has a very poetic first chapter and almost lulls you into a trance with the repetition of his muses name. Vonnegut usually has strong openings, and Sarte manages to make me nhilistic within in the first few pages, Nausea being the best example. My favorite opening sentance would be from Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye. “The first thing I remember is being under something.” For some reason that just does it for me. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/5 "2002-11-27T19:31:17Z")
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” –Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830) _::: runs away :::_ ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Maximino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e95f7d/32.png) [@Mighty\_Maximino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Maximino)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/6 "2002-11-27T19:35:26Z")
The first page of **Snow Crash** , which describes the Deliverator, his cargo, his weapons, and his car, is possibly the best set of opening sentences in all of SF. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/7 "2002-11-27T19:38:56Z")
“I hadn’t meant to kill the cat.”–_Telempath,_ by Spider Robinson. ---
**Author:** ![Briny\_Deep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/briny_deep/32/17188_2.png) [@Briny\_Deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Briny_Deep)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/8 "2002-11-27T19:43:08Z")
Jane Eyre: “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” Sets the scene, the mood, essentially gives you the entire novel in a sentence. If only the weather had been decent, Jane could have taken her walk and not wound up married to a blind man with a crazy wife in the attic. ---
**Author:** ![Ol\_Gaffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Ol\_Gaffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ol_Gaffer)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/9 "2002-11-27T19:56:31Z")
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” - Tolkien Honorable mention: The beginning of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The book is okay, but the summary of the the two primaries running around LA loading up on various “treats” is brilliant. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/10 "2002-11-27T21:27:33Z")
The opening of Alfred Bester’s **The Stars my Destination** – not the opening sentence, but the opening sequence – is a superb hook. I’d love to see it done – properly-- as a movie. ---
**Author:** ![mug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/779978/32.png) [@mug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mug)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/11 "2002-11-27T21:37:43Z")
From “Life, the Universe and Everything” by Douglas Adams: The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was." I miss Douglas Adams ☹ ---
**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/12 "2002-11-27T22:01:58Z")
“Harrison Begernon” - a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. Can’t remember the exact date but : “It was the year 2035 and everyone was finally equal.” ---
**Author:** ![Junior\_Spaceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Junior\_Spaceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Junior_Spaceman)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/13 "2002-11-27T23:00:36Z")
Two come to mind - the most paranoid openings that I can think of 😉 **William Burroughs** - _Naked Lunch_ > [@](#): > > I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I threw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train …" and **Franz Kafka’s** _The Trial_ > [@](#): > > Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. There are ones that I think are _better_, but these are the ones that are most vivid and powerful for me personally. ---
**Author:** ![Broodha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@Broodha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broodha)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/14 "2002-11-27T23:02:07Z")
"I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. " \*Notes from Underground \* by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/15 "2002-11-27T23:28:30Z")
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live in a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” H. P. Lovecraft, _The Call of Cthulhu_ (OK, it’s a short story, not a book. So sue me. ;)) ---
**Author:** ![RadioWave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/91b2a8/32.png) [@RadioWave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadioWave)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/16 "2002-11-27T23:30:49Z")
**HenrySpicer** reminded me of the all time classic opening lines. “When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” - Franz Karka, The Metamorphosis The endnotes discussing this single sentence are several pages long. ---
**Author:** ![D18](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@D18](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D18)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/17 "2002-11-27T23:44:53Z")
“Take my camel, dear,” said Aunt Dot as she returned from High Mass. Towers of Trebizond. Rose Macauley [From memory, so may be slightly off.] ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/18 "2002-11-27T23:52:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by KidCharlemagne \* > \*\*“Harrison Begernon” - a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. Can’t remember the exact date but : > > “It was the year 2035 and everyone was finally equal.” \*\* “The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal ever which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking that anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United State Handicapper General.” ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2002, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/19 "2002-11-27T23:52:24Z")
“In five years, the penis will be obsolete,” said the salesman. - Steel Beach - John Varley ---
**Author:** ![K364](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k364/32/5_2.png) [@K364](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/K364)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2002, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163/20 "2002-11-28T00:33:30Z")
“Call me Ishmael.” - _Moby Dick_ by Herman Melville “Call me Jonah.” - _Cat’s Cradle_ by Kurt Vonnegut [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-book-opening/139163.md?page=2)