Great First Line — 1984

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

George Orwell, 1984

It seems funny when you first read it. Upon rereading, you realize just how much it says about how wrong things are and how they are codified into common culture.

Great First Line: Twelve Fair Kingdoms

I should have known something was very wrong when the Mules started flying erratically.

Twelve Fair Kingdoms by Suzette Haden Elgin

You've got to want to read this after that line, just to find out what it's talking about!

Great First Line: Equal Rites

This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn't pretend to answer all or any of these questions.

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

I don't love the book, but I do love that line.

Great First Line: Take My Camel

"Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.

Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond

This first line has made me try several times to read the book but, alas, I've just never been able to stick with it. That line though is so evocative. I can just see Aunt Dot and that camel! I believe she has a parasol.

Great First Line: Hogfather

Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

Pratchett can comment on so many levels with just one funny line of text.

Great First Line — Huckleberry Finn

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.

Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

He's right on both counts. But what a great, economical way to say "sequel" and also "this is completely different."

Great First Line — Blood Rites

The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Blood Rites by Jim Butcher

Do you think he makes those sorts of huge mistakes? Or gets blamed for them a lot?

Great First Line: Johnny and the Dead

Johnny never knew for certain why he started seeing the dead.

Johnny and the Dead by Terry Pratchett

A great first line from the Johnny Maxwell trilogy that almost no one has heard of or read. Except for me. Everyone go look for them and get reading!

Great First Line - Sky Coyote

You'll understand this story better if I tell you a lie.

Sky Coyote by Kage Baker

That tells you right there what the main character is like and the way the story is going to work. Of course, Coyote is a trickster character in Native American folklore so this works perfect.y

Great First Line - Chinaman's Chance

The pretender to the Emperor's throne was a fat thirty-seven-year-old Chinaman called Artie Wu who always jogged along Malibu Beach right after dawn even in summer, when dawn came round as early as 4:42.

Chinaman's Chance by Ross Thomas

The beginning of a great book full of scoundrels, villains, double-crossing, and a really twisty, fun plot ... just like all Ross Thomas books.

Great First Lines: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Great first lines from a mystery/horror novel that I haven't read in way too long a time.

Great First Lines — The Haunting of Hill House

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

The opening paragraph from the book I consider to be the best ghost story ever written. A bold claim but true.