Book with best opening paragraph

[Wired Jokers]

Classic: Dickens, Tale of Two Cites (mentioned above)

Modern: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." - Steven King, The Gunslinger

I like brevity.

[Rev. Good Will]

Looks like I got to this before CMI

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistal and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quitely take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some tiem or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

[nomadtla]

[ QUOTE ]
Dickens, Steven King, I like brevity.

[/ QUOTE ]

Is it just me or is one of these things not like the other [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Forbin]

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

[Rev. Good Will]

[ QUOTE ]
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

[/ QUOTE ]

nh

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

[/ QUOTE ]

Meh. I've never been a fan.

[jason_t]

[ QUOTE ]
He's got wildly varying styles and he's great at all of them. If you liked that work, don't hesitate to try out his other stuff. Invisible Cities is one of my favorite books. The Baron in the Trees, Cosmicomics, and The Argentinian Ant are all good starting points. I think everyone should read Cosmicomics. It's a collection of short stories that is one of the most amazingly inventive things ever written. (And it's not a comic.)

He also did a fantastic collection of Italian fairy tales. He's kind of his country's Brothers Grimm. There's an incredible amount of pleasure to be had there, and even if you've read countless collections of folktales, you'll still find new, interesting fun there.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would like to add The Nonexistant Knight and the Cloven Viscount to your list.

[jakethebake]

This sucks. All my favorite books have crappy first paragraphs. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]
In memory it seems someone else, a boy in a glen plaid suit and a lime green shirt chewing gum with a cigarette behind his ear while he danced awkwardly with a girl who made his stomach buzz, and Frankie Laine sang "Black Lace" on the record player. But it wasn't someone else, it was me, or at least the beginning of me. It was the evening I was born: an embryonic kid with his hair slicked back, I danced, for the first time, with Jennifer Grayle; and the flowering of my soul was forever wed to a vision of the possibility so gorgeous and unspeakable that even now it seems a trick of time and memory. No child could have felt what I felt. And yet...the buzz in my stomach has buzzed for thirty years and buzzes still, an implacable thrill of passion and purpose that has galvanized me like the touch of God's finger on Adam's inert hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

[DrPublo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
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

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you, I was about to add this one, mainly because I love the first sentence (and the rest of the book).

[/ QUOTE ]

Except that the question was best paragraph...not paragraphs. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Fair enough except I think that the paradox of sorts in the 3rd paragraph is a great introduction to the rest of the book. And it only cost you two extra sentences of reading.

The Doc

[DrPublo]

I can't believe no one mentioned this one yet:

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Doc