# Great Openers in Latter-Day Lit **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 28, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653 "2009-04-28T18:33:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Torgo\_ate\_my\_hamster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/71c47a/32.png) [@Torgo\_ate\_my\_hamster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Torgo_ate_my_hamster)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/21 "2009-04-29T02:36:39Z")
“It was the day before yesterday and I was dead.” **Robert Rankin** : _The Brightonomicon_ It makes you wonder how the narrator is brought back to life (unless you’re expecting some Desperate Housewives-like narration). ---
**Author:** ![thirdwarning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecccb3/32.png) [@thirdwarning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdwarning)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/22 "2009-04-29T02:46:47Z")
“The day I died started out bad and got worse in a hurry.” _Undead and Unwed_, by Mary Janice Davidson. Not really a good book, but I love that line. It was enough to make me want to read more. ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/23 "2009-04-29T04:10:51Z")
“Dinnie, an overweight enemy of humanity, was the worst violinist in New York, but was practicing gamely when two cute little fairies stumbled through his fourth-floor window and vomited on the carpet.” _The Good Fairies of New York_, by Martin Millar ---
**Author:** ![DadWagonDriver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/edb3f5/32.png) [@DadWagonDriver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DadWagonDriver)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/24 "2009-04-29T05:05:37Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > The second line is "Nancy Grace woke screaming saying “It’s only a dream, it’s only a dream.” I’m glad I wasn’t drinking anything when I read this! I think I just woke my wife up by laughing at this, though. ---
**Author:** ![Coriolanus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coriolanus/32/18769_2.png) [@Coriolanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coriolanus)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/25 "2009-04-29T05:19:13Z")
Henry Huggins was in the third grade. His hair looked like a scrubbing brush and most of his grown-up full teeth were in. Except for having his tonsils out when he was six and breaking his arm falling out of a cherry tree when he was seven, nothing much happened to Henry. I wish something exciting would happen, Henry often thought. _Henry Huggins_, by Beverly Cleary ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/26 "2009-04-29T11:36:30Z")
I was going to quote _Little, Big_, but that’s been done… I want to be famous. Really famous. I want to be so famous that movie stars hang out with me and talk about what a bummer their lives are. I want to beat up photographers who catch me in hotel lobbies with Winona Ryder. I want to be implicated in vicious rumours about Drew Barrymore’s sex parties. And, finally, I want to be pronounced DOA in a small, tired, LA hospital after doing speedballs with Matt Damon. I want it all. I want the American Dream. _Syrup_, by **Max Berry** Or Monday morning and there’s one less donut than there should be. _Company_, by **Max Berry** Two great books. ---
**Author:** ![Monkey\_Chews](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/65b543/32.png) [@Monkey\_Chews](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monkey_Chews)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/27 "2009-04-29T13:04:55Z")
> [@Estilicon](#): > > “Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo” **Cien Años de Soledad** by Gabriel García Marquez\*\*\*\* > > I don´t know how it sounds translated but that is one of the best lines ever… another one is the ending of the same book Well that was the one I came in to suggest, so I think it translates pretty well… “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.” - **One Hundred Years of Solitude** by **Gabriel Garcia Marquez** I also quite like… “Long before we knew that the price of the wisdom and immortaility we sought would be almost beyond our means to pay, when man - what was left of man - was still like a child playing with pebbles and shells by the seashore, in the time of the quest for the mystery knows as the Elder Eddas, I heard the call of the stars and prepare to leave the city of my birth and death.” - **Neverness** by **David Zindell** ---
**Author:** ![Elysium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3be4f8/32.png) [@Elysium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elysium)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/28 "2009-04-29T14:44:24Z")
**This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.** The Princess Bride. Great start to a great satire. **The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.** Hyperion. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/29 "2009-04-29T14:46:34Z")
> [@Meurglys](#): > > I was going to quote _Little, Big_, but that’s been done… > > I want to be famous. Really famous. > I want to be so famous that movie stars hang out with me and talk about what a bummer their lives are. I want to beat up photographers who catch me in hotel lobbies with Winona Ryder. I want to be implicated in vicious rumours about Drew Barrymore’s sex parties. And, finally, I want to be pronounced DOA in a small, tired, LA hospital after doing speedballs with Matt Damon. > I want it all. I want the American Dream. > > _Syrup_, by **Max Berry** Take a look at post #13. ---
**Author:** ![Chez\_Guevara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/aeb1de/32.png) [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/30 "2009-04-29T15:26:53Z")
_It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me._ Anthony Burgess, _Earthly Powers_. ---
**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/31 "2009-04-29T16:24:55Z")
Ooh, yes, that’s a good one, **Chez Guevara**! I recall thinking “Oh, right then, Mr. Burgess/Mr. Wilson, so I might as well read this with a dictionary by my side? I see.” ---
**Author:** ![TWDuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/32 "2009-04-29T16:49:06Z")
I like the first line of _1984_: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Perfectly ordinary, maybe even mundane way of setting a scene until the very last word lets you know something’s a little bit… off. An earlier draft had “It was a cold day in early April, and a million radios were striking thirteen.” Hurray for editing! The million radios steal the focus and make “thirteen” less, uh, striking. It also obscures the POV, since one man couldn’t be hearing a million radios. ---
**Author:** ![Reno\_Nevada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Reno\_Nevada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/33 "2009-04-29T20:28:02Z")
_He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead._ Stars My Destination (aka Tyger! Tyger!) by Alfred Bester. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/34 "2009-04-29T20:51:46Z")
“Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.” –_Fight Club_ “Who is John Galt?” –_Atlas Shrugged_ “Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.” –_Watchmen_ “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.” –_Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ “It was a nice day.” –_Good Omens_ ---
**Author:** ![thwartme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@thwartme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thwartme)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/35 "2009-04-29T23:25:16Z")
_“In five years, the penis will be obsolete,” said the salesman._ - “Steel Beach” by John Varley. And, on the theme of penis-related literature… \*Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar’s own figuring, hardly human at all. \* - “Dirty White Boys” by Stephen Hunter. I’ll try to think of some that don’t involve genitalia… thwartme ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2009, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/36 "2009-04-30T11:34:47Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > Take a look at post #13. Jesus, how did I miss that? Sorry, **Cisco**! In my defense, I do get interrupted a lot, so my posts can take a long time to compose… But it is a good book! ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2009, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/37 "2009-04-30T12:10:22Z")
I don’t have my Bukowski books handy, and I’m sure this is not his best opening but it’s pretty good: “I was 50 years old and hadn’t been to bed with a woman for four years. I had no women friends. I looked at them as I passed them on the streets or wherever I saw them, but I looked at them without yearning and with a sense of futility. I masturbated regularly, but the idea of having a relationship with a woman—even on non-sexual terms—was beyond my imagination.” - Women, Charles Bukowski ---
**Author:** ![I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Am_The_Lorax)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2009, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653/38 "2009-04-30T14:07:52Z")
It was a bright, defrosted, pussy-willow day at the onset of spring, and the newlyweds were driving cross-country in a large roast turkey. -Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-openers-in-latter-day-lit/494653.md?page=1)