Geni wants to know what your favorite first line from a book is! Any book, first line only.

Some opening sentences that have already gotten a nod include:

“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.” (David Copperfield)

“A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.” (A Confederacy of Dunces)

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

“Once in a while you find yourself in an odd situation.” (Kon-Tiki)

So what’s your favorite first line? Share it in Questionland!

(Update: Now with comments turned OFF since you’re supposed to tell Geni in Questionland what your favorite first line is. Not Slog. Slog doesn’t care.)

Megan Seling is The Stranger's managing editor. She mostly writes about hockey, snacks, and music. And sometimes her dog, Johnny Waffles.

4 replies on ““What’s your favorite first line from a book?””

  2. Two candidates, both Melville, one so oft-cited I hesitated, at first, to mention it:

    “Call me Ishmael.”–Moby Dick

    “At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream-colors, at the water-side in the city of St. Louis.”–The Confidence Man

  3. “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”

    — “The Last Good Kiss” by James Crumley

  4. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

    “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

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