A propos of nothing, my own favorite first line is a dead tie.
Yeah, sure, Absalom, Absalom! is there. But, Bill’s sprawling opener runs neck-and-neck with a crowd favorite and the model of the hook, One Hundred Years of Solitude:
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.
Truly, magic.
This was nearly next on my reading list but I’ve decided to wait for summer. Something about the Florida heat and slow pace and heat.
Reading now: Into the Great Wide Open by Kevin Canty and The Taking by Dean Koontz. One is pretty good, the other makes me apoplectic.
I’ll have to think about some great first sentences and see what I come up with as possible favorites.
