This Book’s First Sentence Blew Me Away

Just finished Lion and the last two pages – wow – hit me. And then how they tie to the first two pages. Wow. The one who stayed stays is staying. Thank you for this recommendation. <3

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed – The dark Tower #1, Stephen King. Loved him for going on forty years. Also, strange (and great!) to see that two of my historical crushes (I believe you need one from every century) are mentioned in books here: Alexander von Humboldt (absolutely fascinating book by Andrea Wulf) and Graham Gore (from the Franklin expedition – real! – and the fictional novel The ministry of Time). Look up his photo and I dare you to not be charmed.

I cannot believe that the term “incipit” – which means exactly the opening word, phrase, or sentence of a text, manuscript, or musical composition – has not surfaced in this blog main text or any of the comments. So here you go – when you talk about the opening phrase, you can now use the actual word for it! Historically, it was used as an identifying label to catalog or refer to untitled works. In ancient and medieval manuscripts, texts rarely had title pages. Scribes and catalogers identified works by their opening words.

“I saw a whole generation of boys fall like irredeemable angels… The first time I fell in love it was with one of those angels. He came flying from the window of his parent’s apartment, a hypodermic needle planted in his foot.” Alana Portero – Bad habit

“I had no children. I transmitted to no creature the legacy of our misery.” – from The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cuba written by Machado de Assis. “We tell ourselves stories in love to live.” Joan Didion ( The White Album) ♥️

This is my favorite game! “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera. My all time fovorite book opening ever is Nabokov in Lolita “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”

If I ever get re-married his vows must include “I will comb out at least half the head lice.”

I am so SO excited to see Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy on your favorite list. I just finished it last week and am still thinking about it. Incredible writing and the story is so complex and deep. I want to read her other novels ASAP.

“She begins with a lullaby that sends coyotes fleeing up mountains. Honeybees abandon their hives to the shrill calls of songbirds and barking dogs. Beneath the seafloor, the tectonic plates loosen and rearrange.” First lines from The Wild Beneath – an amazing debut novel by Dr. Kelly Anderson. In bookstores August 4th!

An opener about openers: “ You are about to begin reading a new book, and to be honest, you are a little tense. The beginning of a novel is like a first date. You hope that from the first lines an urgent magic will take hold, and you will sink into the story like a hot bath, giving yourself over entirely. But this hope is tempered by the expectation that, in reality, you are about to have to learn a bunch of people’s names and follow along politely like you are attending the baby shower of a woman you hardly know. And that’s fine, goodness knows you’ve fallen in love with books that didn’t grab you in the first paragraph. But that doesn’t stop you from wishing they would, from wishing they would come right up to you in the dark of your mind and kiss you on the throat.” Margot’s got money troubles

Somehow I made it to 44 years of life and nearly nine years of parenting without headlice. It finally happened last month. The combing out the lice comment, over and over, hit me. I thought it would be a big deal but I just added it the to do list. My own mother asked about it a week later and I said “that?, it was hardly a thing“. Mostly because the stomach flu went through my house the exact same weekend.

Not the first line, but the last line of Euphoria, by Lily King. I just read it, then re-read the last line several times. I set it down and re-read it again the next morning. Pure perfection (don’t want to write it out because its impact comes from knowing the entire story!).

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” – Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size.” From Red Sister, by Mark Lawrence, a book about warrior nuns in a dystopian/fantastical setting. I love a starting sentence that has intrigue and world-building from the jump.

That Lion paragraph should be under the Merriam Webster definition for “invisible labor.” Stunning string of sentences. I love the repetition of “combed the lice” lol.

“ I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before, and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me.” From Anne Frank- The dairy of a young girl. So haunting…

“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, Gabriel García Márquez “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”

“Except for the Marabar Caves—and they are twenty miles off—the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary.” A Passage to India.. my mom loved that book and would bust this opening line out periodically.

“Everything within takes place after Jack died, and before my Mom and I drowned in a burning ferry in the cool tannin-tinted Guaviare River, in East-Central Colombia, with forty-two locals we hadn’t yet met”.– You Shall Know our Velocity by Dave Eggers. I always think A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is my favorite Eggers and the I read this line and fall in love all over again…

Joanna, this is only somewhat related, but I’d love a post on books to read aloud to our kids, starting from young kids like kindergarten age (Charlotte’s Web, Winnie the Pooh, Dragon Masters type of thing) up to pre-teen or whenever people stop reading aloud to their children. I have a 2 and 5 year old and I’m always looking for books to begin reading to my oldest beyond picture books.

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.“ Speak, Memory, by Nabokov. This one blew me away in my 20s and has stuck with me for decades.

Gentlemen: Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books.

The P&P opening really is iconic. I think a good first sentence can really hook you into a book (even a bad on -haha!).

From Anne of Green Gables, the book I’ve re-read the most in my life: Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

“”It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” – The Bell Jar. I remember having to do a ‘favorite first line’ essay in high school and this is what I picked! I stand by my choice :)

Would you ever start a cup of Jo book club? I think it would be so fun and interesting!

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person.” Anne Tyler–Back When We Were Grownups

So thrilled to find my book here on the pages of a blog I have read and loved for so many, many years! Honored. Thank you, Jo.

Not a first line, but a last line “If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave” by Mo Willems in Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs. I’m a children’s librarian and am always finding beautiful lines in picture books. I’ve shared that line often, because it’s very very important.

I was looking for the iconic Anna Karenina! “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.” I’ve never read a more intriguing, unforgettable first sentence than the start of Canada by Richard Ford. What a hook from a first-rate storyteller!

I have been obsessed with Ann Patchett lately, and although this is not technically the first line because there is a short chapter that is kind of a preamble, I think this is an amazing introduction to the main character’s voice: “I was somewhere outside of Ludlow, California, headed due east toward Kentucky, when I realized that I would be a liar for the rest of my life.” – from The Patron Saint of Liars

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

That is suuuch a very enjoyable summer post (summer means more time to read for me). “Tell me about a complicated man.” The Odyssey, in the mind blowing translation of Emily Wilson. She gave Homer a new life and I love her decisions. Love from Paris

Not a first sentence but loved this from The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley: He was an anachronism, a puzzle, a piss-take, a problem, but he was, above all things, a charming man. In every century, they make themselves at home.’ Loving these comments & adding so many books to my ‘to read’ list.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Anna Karenina.

Love this!! I think I’ve enjoyed nearly every book rec from CoJ. It makes me wish there was a local CoJ book club where we can all gather and eventually read through the CoJ book list together. Anybody else in Portland, OR interested??

I recognize this is more than one line, but the start of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy: “May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.”

Omg YES. Every time I think about writing a book about my Dad, I think of my mom, who stayed. That opener IS THE BUSINESS. YES.

Wow. My Mom is the one who left. As a mother now I know how hard it is to be the one who stayed, and I try to give her grace, but…Thank you to all of us who stay. You’re their hope, their future, their everything, keep staying. Xo

“My mother is a fish” from Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying wrecked me. Oh my heart, the grief of a child.

“Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” I think of it every time I host- just captures the feeling of preparation and anticipation perfectly. Also this line from Lion! Next on my list for sure. In the midst of divorcing a recovering cocaine addict who is, in sobriety, a fun and loving dad who is nonetheless still not the parent who does all the lice combing. When the kids say I’m boring but also demonstrate how much they know I will always always be here, I will think of this. Thank you!

“The Swede.” First sentence of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, somehow just perfect.

My favourite, always, from A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I think of this book all the time, so I guess I, too, am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice! If you haven’t read it before, I hope this hooks you as much as it did me — and if it does, and you read it, I’m envious that you get to experience this wonderful book for the first time! “ I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure.” The Stranger by Albert Camus Read it as a tenth grader in high school. Recommended by a summer school French teacher. I’m sure he doubted anyone would read it yet I remember it fifty years later.

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for.” -Tuck Everlasting God, so gorgeous. The words! The blistering descriptions!

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

“Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human.“ From the middle of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

What beautiful and joyous photos of you!! <3

Last line of the book Olivers Story the sequel to The Love Story: “I wonder where I would be if Jenny were alive, and then I answer – I would also be alive.” sighhhhhhh

“When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” – Madeline Miller

Scored a copy of The Count of Monte Christo on a bike ride this weekend, passing a Little Free Library. Crammed it into my hip pack and it made it home generally unblemished. It’s a summer monster that I hope to get through by autumn.

I loved the book and the first line of Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy: “I leave my youngest safe and warm in bed; he is too little to be taken out into a storm, though he’d rather not be left behind.” It sets the tone perfectly for the harsh, isolated setting of Shearwater island near Antarctica, where the Salt family serves as the final caretakers of a global seed bank.

I love this so much and how timely: I am about to finish Lion, which I read on your recommendation Joanna and all I can say is wow: what a story, but more importantly, what a phenomenal writer!

Not a first line, but a comment on “combed the lice”. I recently found out that a friend’s sister was employed in Southern California as a paid lice comber. She’s now has plans to start her own business. Wow.

This is how I feel about my mom, who was a single mother. Staying is everything.

From Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, written in 1970 and first read and loved by me in 1987: “What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask. Another example, one that springs to mind because Mrs. Burstein saw a pygmy rattler in the artichoke garden this morning and has been intractable ever since: I never ask about snakes. Why should Shalimar attract kraits. Why should a coral snake need two glands of neurotoxic poison to survive while a king snake, so similarly marked, needs none. You might ask that. I never would, not any more.”

Not a first line, but the last line of The Book Thief…”I am haunted by humans.”

“It was a dark and stormy night.” from a Wrinkle in Time

Not a first line but this passage has stayed with me, and I often find myself thinking about it and how true it rings. It is from Catherine Newmans novel Wreck. “Your heart, though. I once read a story about a saint so holy and devoted that after she died they autopsied her and found that her heart had carved itself into the likeness of Jesus on the cross. Find me a mother whose heart is not carved into the likeness of her children.”

Most people seem to connect with Donna Tartt’s ‘The Secret History’ a bit more than I did- but this first line absolutely FLOORED me: “The snow in the mountains was melting; and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”

Single moms, actually ALL moms (because moms keep the earth spinning) everywhere, rejoice at your words, thank for sharing!

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” IYKYK

Not the first line of a book, but of a chapter. When reading Stuart Little to my younger son, I took a picture of this page so I could later marvel at the perfect sentences of E.B. White. Reading aloud to my kids (now teens) every night was truly, truly one of the great joys of my life. “In the loveliest of town of all, where the houses were white and high and the elm trees were green and higher than the houses, where the front yards were wide and pleasant and the back yards were bushy and worth finding out about, where the streets sloped down to the stream and the stream flowed quietly under the bridge, where the lawns ended in orchards and the orchards ended in fields and the fields ended in pastures and the pastures climbed the hill and disappeared over the top toward the wonderful wide sky, in the this the loveliest of all towns Stuart stopped to get a drink of sarsaparilla.” (Chapter XIII, Ames’ Crossing)

This list!!!! Things are always popping up ready on my Libby app and I assume they come from CoJ but now I can check. :)))))

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.” – Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale resonates again, and again!

That line reminds me of one from Jessi Klein’s “I’ll Show Myself Out”: “A mother’s heroic journey is not about how she leaves but how she stays.”

The first line of Beloved always gets me: “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.” And another brilliant one of Toni Morrison’s, from The Bluest Eye: “Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.”