- Apr 15, 2019

Favourite First Lines of Favourite Books

So turns out it’s very dangerous to read the first page of all your favourite books… I kept continuing to read and each time had to firmly shut the book on my fingers before I got completely caught up! I did have a lovely time searching through my old books, my new books and online to remind myself of my old favourites though. How to choose my favourite first lines though?

My criteria

- I have to have read the whole book.

- the line has to entice me to read it again

- but also has to be enticing for a first time reader

(- if it makes me giggle, then bonus points)

There's a few classics that many of you will recognise, but hopefully there are a few that might surprise you and even encourage you to read the book!

‘Even before he got electrocuted, Jason was having a rotten day.’

Heroes of Olympus ‘The Lost Hero’ by Rick Riordan

'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.'

- Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

‘Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the windscreen of his car and hadn’t bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces.’

- Pyramids by Terry Pratchett

'In the beginning she was a thought so unformed that he was aware only of something which once was not.'

- Crossing the Lines by Sulari Gentill

‘Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love…. It did not end well.’

- Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.'

- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

'My Dear Reader Chum, a very hearty hello to you.'

- Is it Just Me by Miranda Hart (I can only hear this line in her voice)

'There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.'

- Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

'There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.'

- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

'I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.'

- Robert Graves, I, Claudius

And the best one for me because I ended up reading three pages before I stopped….