Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

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How can that be the best? I don't even want to read the second paragraph.

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then you're an idiot.

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

Catch-22 by Heller.

"It was love at first sight.
"The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
"Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn't become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused them."

The Doc

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

Actually this (the Jackson graf) is one of my favorite book openings. Good choice.

Another favorite:

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
—William Gibson, Neuromancer

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where i was born, and what my lousy childhood was like..." etc

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

Dickens - Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

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Maman died yesterday. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours." That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

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Camus, "The Stranger"

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

I don't think it would be hard at all to find a better opening paragraph than that.

Re: Lolita
 

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Nabakov - in his first novel using English:(!)

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.

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Definitely a good one. I think everyone fell in love with Nabokov at least a little when they first read those lines. I've known a couple of people who had it memorized and loved to recite it.

Re: Lolita
 

[ QUOTE ]
Nabakov - in his first novel using English:(!)

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.

[/ QUOTE ]

This book sounds really interesting. What is the name of it?

Re: Book with best opening paragraph
 

I love the writing in The Haunting of Hill House, too. She was wonderful in noting the terrifying effect of geometries that don't seem to work right and make sense, the sort of eeriness merging into horror of ordinary things that are just somehow not quite right. Lovecraft had a similar sense of the pure terror of the merely familiar somehow quietly violating ordinary laws.