Best First Lines
- Descripción
- Novels that have excellent or memorable first lines. Started from American Book Review's 100 Best First Lines from Novels (http://americanbookreview.org/100bestlines.asp)
1
por Jane Austen
80,503 miembros
1,366 reseñas
½ 4.4
Ranking Global 1
Puntuacion 16.02
Añadido 2022-06-15, 12:07 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
2
por C. S. Lewis
25,324 miembros
256 reseñas
4
Ranking Global 2
Puntuacion 14.23
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:25 PM
- 6 Members
- Aquila, hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it
3
por J. R. R. Tolkien
94,188 miembros
1,187 reseñas
½ 4.3
Ranking Global 3
Puntuacion 13.63
Añadido 2022-06-17, 01:24 PM
4
por Dodie Smith
9,187 miembros
294 reseñas
4.1
Ranking Global 4
Puntuacion 11.75
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:45 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
5
por George Orwell
81,827 miembros
1,268 reseñas
4.2
Ranking Global 5
Puntuacion 11.2
Añadido 2022-06-15, 12:10 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
6
por Charles Dickens
36,598 miembros
455 reseñas
3.9
Ranking Global 6
Puntuacion 10.98
Añadido 2022-06-15, 12:10 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: 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.
7
por Ray Bradbury
53,810 miembros
994 reseñas
4
Ranking Global 7
Puntuacion 10.35
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:28 PM
- 5 Members
- hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: It was a pleasure to burn.
8
por William Goldman
24,786 miembros
530 reseñas
½ 4.3
Ranking Global 8
Puntuacion 9.16
Añadido 2022-06-17, 01:22 PM
9
por Charles Dickens
24,627 miembros
523 reseñas
4.1
Ranking Global 9
Puntuacion 8.87
Añadido 2022-06-17, 01:21 PM
10
por Mark Twain
42,901 miembros
518 reseñas
3.9
Ranking Global 10
Puntuacion 8.53
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:09 PM
- 4 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: 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.
11
por Kurt Vonnegut
43,966 miembros
704 reseñas
4.1
Ranking Global 11
Puntuacion 8.07
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:21 PM
- 4 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: All this happened, more or less.
12
20,666 miembros
609 reseñas
4.2
Ranking Global 12
Puntuacion 7.65
Añadido 2022-06-17, 01:21 PM
13
19,075 miembros
345 reseñas
4
Ranking Global 13
Puntuacion 7.51
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:24 PM
- 4 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.
14
44,372 miembros
688 reseñas
4.2
Ranking Global 14
Puntuacion 6.7
Añadido 2022-06-15, 12:08 PM
- 3 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
15
por Shirley Jackson
9,702 miembros
430 reseñas
3.9
Ranking Global 17
Puntuacion 6.03
Añadido 2022-06-16, 10:51 AM
- 2 Members
- ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- ManWithAnAgenda: 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.
16
por J. D. Salinger
69,477 miembros
1,078 reseñas
3.8
Ranking Global 18
Puntuacion 5.97
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:11 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: 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, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
17
por Sylvia Plath
28,056 miembros
498 reseñas
4
Ranking Global 19
Puntuacion 5.92
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:38 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
18
por Laurence Sterne
7,661 miembros
112 reseñas
3.9
Ranking Global 21
Puntuacion 5.75
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:13 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.
19
72,032 miembros
1,164 reseñas
3.8
Ranking Global 22
Puntuacion 5.71
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:37 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
20
por James Joyce
21,202 miembros
216 reseñas
½ 3.7
Ranking Global 23
Puntuacion 5.67
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:12 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
21
por Charles Dickens
20,653 miembros
273 reseñas
4.1
Ranking Global 24
Puntuacion 5.61
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:14 PM
- 3 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: 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.
22
por Toni Morrison
22,795 miembros
405 reseñas
3.9
Ranking Global 26
Puntuacion 5.49
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:17 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: 124 was spiteful.
23
por J. M. Barrie
18,869 miembros
324 reseñas
3.9
Ranking Global 27
Puntuacion 5.47
Añadido 2022-06-17, 11:29 PM
24
por Albert Camus
35,459 miembros
501 reseñas
3.9
Ranking Global 28
Puntuacion 5.34
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:17 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: Mother died today.
25
por Jean Rhys
8,444 miembros
254 reseñas
½ 3.5
Ranking Global 30
Puntuacion 5.25
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:54 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
26
por Edith Wharton
9,481 miembros
214 reseñas
½ 3.6
Ranking Global 31
Puntuacion 5.21
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:24 PM
- 3 Members
- Aquila, aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
27
por Carson McCullers
10,702 miembros
243 reseñas
4
Ranking Global 33
Puntuacion 5.19
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:52 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together.
28
por Pat Conroy
5,819 miembros
108 reseñas
4.1
Ranking Global 34
Puntuacion 5.1
Añadido 2022-06-16, 10:51 AM
- 2 Members
- ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- ManWithAnAgenda: My wound is geography.
29
por Alice Walker
19,687 miembros
334 reseñas
4.1
Ranking Global 35
Puntuacion 5.07
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:37 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: You better not never tell nobody but God.
30
por Virginia Woolf
20,599 miembros
329 reseñas
3.9
Ranking Global 36
Puntuacion 5.03
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:21 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
31
6,218 miembros
115 reseñas
4.1
Ranking Global 37
Puntuacion 4.97
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:31 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.
32
por Daniel Defoe
24,823 miembros
321 reseñas
½ 3.6
Ranking Global 39
Puntuacion 4.9
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:29 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me.
33
por George Eliot
17,693 miembros
330 reseñas
4.2
Ranking Global 40
Puntuacion 4.86
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:30 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
34
por Salman Rushdie
12,034 miembros
138 reseñas
½ 3.7
Ranking Global 41
Puntuacion 4.67
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:37 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."
35
26,388 miembros
398 reseñas
4
Ranking Global 45
Puntuacion 4.32
Añadido 2022-06-17, 11:01 PM
36
por James Joyce
5,324 miembros
58 reseñas
3.9
Ranking Global 47
Puntuacion 4.09
Añadido 2022-06-15, 12:09 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
37
por Geoffrey Chaucer
21,957 miembros
168 reseñas
½ 3.7
Ranking Global 51
Puntuacion 3.77
Añadido 2022-06-17, 01:22 PM
38
por H. G. Wells
18,370 miembros
308 reseñas
3.8
Ranking Global 52
Puntuacion 3.68
Añadido 2022-06-17, 01:23 PM
- 2 Members
- hipdeep, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- hipdeep: No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
39
por Italo Calvino
12,502 miembros
257 reseñas
4.1
Ranking Global 53
Puntuacion 3.67
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:11 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.
40
por Lloyd Alexander
7,873 miembros
167 reseñas
4
Ranking Global 32
Puntuacion 5.19
Añadido 2022-06-17, 01:23 PM
- 3 Members
- hipdeep, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Explicaciones
- hipdeep: Taran wanted to make a sword, but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes.
41
2,333 miembros
78 reseñas
½ 4.3
Ranking Global 56
Puntuacion 3.5
Añadido 2022-06-17, 01:23 PM
42
por James Joyce
24,075 miembros
376 reseñas
4
Ranking Global 58
Puntuacion 3.44
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:14 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
43
por Paul Auster
1,448 miembros
35 reseñas
½ 3.7
Ranking Global 60
Puntuacion 3.37
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:16 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
44
por William Faulkner
17,264 miembros
225 reseñas
4
Ranking Global 61
Puntuacion 3.34
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:16 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
45
14,391 miembros
192 reseñas
4
Ranking Global 62
Puntuacion 3.28
Añadido 2022-06-17, 01:22 PM
46
por Franz Kafka
12,438 miembros
218 reseñas
3.9
Ranking Global 63
Puntuacion 3.26
Añadido 2022-06-17, 01:32 PM
47
por Ernest Hemingway
30,686 miembros
505 reseñas
3.8
Ranking Global 65
Puntuacion 3.05
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:26 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
48
27,122 miembros
630 reseñas
4.1
Ranking Global 68
Puntuacion 3.02
Añadido 2022-06-15, 01:26 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Explicaciones
- aethercowboy: I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.