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Name the book from opening or closing line
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First paragraph I ever read . Most inspirational book iv ever read too ..inspired me to read everything I could get my hands on .
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.
OK technically 4 lines, but it's still the opening and no-one would get it from the first line. |
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"It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.
OK technically 4 lines, but it's still the opening and no-one would get it from the first line."
Good omens  |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"Ours is essentially a tragic age so we refuse to take it tragically.
It's DH Lawrence but I can't remember which. The Virgin and the Gypsy?"
Impressive!! It is DH Lawrence but not that one.  |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"This is great! The first line of a book draws you in, or not, these are making me want to read some of these books.
^^ that is not the first line of a book  "
Think it is. |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"I know far more first lines than last lines, and one of the few last lines I don't need to Google is:
"A last note from your narrator. I am haunted by humans""
The Book Thief |
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"Ours is essentially a tragic age so we refuse to take it tragically.
It's DH Lawrence but I can't remember which. The Virgin and the Gypsy?
Impressive!! It is DH Lawrence but not that one. "
LADY CHATTERLEYS LOVER |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"Ours is essentially a tragic age so we refuse to take it tragically.
It's DH Lawrence but I can't remember which. The Virgin and the Gypsy?
Impressive!! It is DH Lawrence but not that one.
LADY CHATTERLEYS LOVER "
Si! Correcto! |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"I know far more first lines than last lines, and one of the few last lines I don't need to Google is:
"A last note from your narrator. I am haunted by humans"
The Book Thief
It is! "
It made an impact on me too. |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"When shall we three meet again? In thunder lightning or in rain. "
"Well I can make next Tuesday..." - probably not the book you were thinking of, but... |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.
The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.
And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings.Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger.
And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap…
And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks; what a great friend I have in the eagle.
And then the eagle lets go.
And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There’s good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there’s much better eating on practically anything else. It’s simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises.
But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.
One day a tortoise will learn how to fly. |
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"Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.
The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.
And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings.Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger.
And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap…
And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks; what a great friend I have in the eagle.
And then the eagle lets go.
And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There’s good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there’s much better eating on practically anything else. It’s simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises.
But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.
One day a tortoise will learn how to fly."
Small Gods |
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"Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.
The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.
And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings.Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger.
And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap…
And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks; what a great friend I have in the eagle.
And then the eagle lets go.
And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There’s good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there’s much better eating on practically anything else. It’s simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises.
But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.
One day a tortoise will learn how to fly."
Think you've gone for more than the opening line of Small God's there |
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"Call me Ishmael
Moby dick
Si! Es correcto"
--The first line of Moby-Dick; or The Whale is, "The pale Usher - threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now." Whatever anyone else tells you, that's the first part and the first line of the book.-- |
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"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow...
Name that book!
To kill a mockingbird "
Very good... OK.. A bit more or a challenge...
All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way |
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"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow...
Name that book!
To kill a mockingbird
Very good... OK.. A bit more or a challenge...
All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way "
Anna Karenina, a favourite of mine! |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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""If you went too near the edge of the chalk-pit the ground would give way. Barney had been told this often enough."
Stig of the Dump.
Total flashback as I read that!"
Yeah, that and Under Milk Wood were the only books I remembered from my school days. |
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" “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”"
Pride and prejudice, too easy, wife has me brainwashed watching bloody Colin firth in it. |
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""I'd never given much thought to how I would die - though I'd had reason enough in the last few months - but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.""
I see no-one's guessed this modern day classic yet. No-one going to admit they've read it?  |
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By *dalisqueWoman
over a year ago
land of make believe |
" “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Pride and prejudice, too easy, wife has me brainwashed watching bloody Colin firth in it."
It's that rather than the book why most people know lol |
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By *ola xWoman
over a year ago
Oswestry Shropshire |
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading up to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred by a padlock and chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge keeper and had no answer. And peering closer through the spokes of the gate I saw the lodge was empty. |
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By *yronMan
over a year ago
grangemouth |
'I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house.' |
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By *dalisqueWoman
over a year ago
land of make believe |
"I have just returned from a visit to my landlord-the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with
Wuthering Heights."
Best line from the book
If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn’t love you as much as I do in a single day.
That is all I want !! |
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By *yronMan
over a year ago
grangemouth |
"I have just returned from a visit to my landlord-the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with
Wuthering Heights.
Best line from the book
If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn’t love you as much as I do in a single day.
That is all I want !! "
Me and all. |
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By *ad NannaWoman
over a year ago
East London |
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents
The Grinch?
Fraid not
It's Little women.
Well done "
I've read that, and a lot of the other books on this thread, but can't remember the opening sentences. |
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'From a little after two-o-clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that.' |
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"A few miles south of Soledad the Salinas river drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.
Steinbeck- Of Mice and Men (I think)
'We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.'"
Handmaids Tale |
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"'I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house.'"
Can't answer unless I want to put myself on the naughty step!
Robert Louis Stevenson though. |
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""Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.""
High Rise? |
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""Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months."
High Rise?"
Quintessentially Ballardian |
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""Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months."
High Rise?
Quintessentially Ballardian "
I've never heard of it, but that's a hell of a first line! |
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""Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months."
High Rise?
Quintessentially Ballardian
I've never heard of it, but that's a hell of a first line!"
Ballard's ideas are sometimes better than his writing but that one is hard to beat. |
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"Last line and first line:
a way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay
Finnegans Wake?"
Yes. And yes I have read it... Well the last paragraph and the first paragraph. One day I'll manage to penetrate to page two or three.
No takers for my other book? Which has a similar circular pattern of end leading back to beginning, but is a damn sight easier than Finnegan's Wake - possibly more at the level of Ullyses. |
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By *nnCeeWoman
over a year ago
East of Eden, West of Hell |
The terror that would not end for another 28 years, if it ever did, began so far as I can know or tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain. |
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By *osie xoWoman
over a year ago
East Yorkshire |
"The terror that would not end for another 28 years, if it ever did, began so far as I can know or tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain."
It? |
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By *nnCeeWoman
over a year ago
East of Eden, West of Hell |
"The terror that would not end for another 28 years, if it ever did, began so far as I can know or tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.
It? "
It is indeed |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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Cold curtains of November rain came drifting slowly up the valley like an endless procession of phantom mourners following an invisible hearse. From beneath an overhang of limestone a boy and an old man squatted side by side and gazed disconsolately out across the river to the dripping forest on the far bank.
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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"'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 ...'
 "
Catcher in the rye |
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