Book with best opening paragraph

[diebitter]

No, not really. Sorry [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[Dominic]

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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.

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Good call Jason -- because nobody has posted this yet. You're on the ball with it! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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hell, I even put "Lolita" in the subject line!

[SeaSiren]

"Prince of Tides" by Pat Conroy has an opening that's an example of dramatic truth, I love reading it out loud... I read much of that book aloud, his words are delicious. Here's the opening ... and thanks for this topic (a little cerebral for OOT don't ya think?? good!)

"My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call. I grew up slowly beside the tides and marshes of Colleton; my arms were tawny and strong from working long days on the shrimp boat in the blazing South Carolina heat. Because I was a Wingo, I worked as soon as I could walk; I could pick a blue crab dean when I was five. I had killed my first deer by the age of seven, and at nine was regularly putting meat on my family´s table. I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low-country, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders. As a boy I was happy above the channels, navigating a small boat between the sandbars with their quiet nation of oysters exposed on the brown flats at the low watermark. I knew every shrimper by name, and they knew me and sounded their horns when they passed me fishing in the river. <font color="brown"> </font>

[TheWorstPlayer]

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Eunoia. [censored] infuriating.

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Infuriating? I am SOOOOOO happy that someone spent 7 years of their life writing that thing. It is SOOOOOO awesome. Where did you encounter it?

[MyTurn2Raise]

Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland

I believe that what seperates humanity from everything else in the world - spaghetti, binder paper, deep-sea creatures, edelweiss and Mount McKinley - is that humanity alone has the capacity at any given monet to commit all possible sins. Even those of us who try to live a good and true life remain as far away from grace as the Hillside Strangler or any demon who ever tried to poison the village well. What happened that morning only confirms this.

[MyTurn2Raise]

"Who is John Galt?" in Atlas Shrugged

"Howard Roark laughed." in The Fountainhead

so simple, but set up the books so well

[trojanrabbit]

I don't know about the first paragraph, but I've always said that Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash has the best first 10 pages of any book I've read. Totally bad-ass. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[incognito]

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony.

[Rick Nebiolo]

"WHAT MAKES IAGO EVIL? Some people ask. I never ask."

Joan Didion - "Play It As It Lays"

I'm not sure it's the best but it's the one I remember word for word.

~ Rick

[B Dids]

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Did you mean "Joke?" That's what he is.

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is this your attempt at humor?

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It was my attempt at a statement of opinion.

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I haven't read anything beyond "Guts" and the paragraph that PJ posted, but I like the style of both a lot.