Best First Lines
- Descrizione
- 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
di Jane Austen
80,583 utenti
1,368 recensioni
½ 4.4
Classifica globale 1
Punteggio 16.02
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 12:07 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- 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
di C. S. Lewis
25,372 utenti
257 recensioni
4
Classifica globale 2
Punteggio 14.23
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:25 PM
- 6 Members
- Aquila, hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it
3
94,302 utenti
1,189 recensioni
½ 4.3
Classifica globale 3
Punteggio 13.63
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 01:24 PM
4
di Dodie Smith
9,200 utenti
294 recensioni
4.1
Classifica globale 4
Punteggio 11.75
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:45 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
5
81,916 utenti
1,270 recensioni
4.2
Classifica globale 5
Punteggio 11.2
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 12:10 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
6
36,627 utenti
456 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 6
Punteggio 10.98
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 12:10 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- 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
di Ray Bradbury
53,880 utenti
997 recensioni
4
Classifica globale 7
Punteggio 10.35
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:28 PM
- 5 Members
- hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: It was a pleasure to burn.
8
24,820 utenti
530 recensioni
½ 4.3
Classifica globale 8
Punteggio 9.16
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 01:22 PM
9
24,660 utenti
525 recensioni
4.1
Classifica globale 9
Punteggio 8.87
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 01:21 PM
10
di Mark Twain
42,934 utenti
518 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 10
Punteggio 8.53
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:09 PM
- 4 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- 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
43,996 utenti
704 recensioni
4.1
Classifica globale 11
Punteggio 8.07
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:21 PM
- 4 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: All this happened, more or less.
12
20,709 utenti
611 recensioni
4.2
Classifica globale 12
Punteggio 7.65
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 01:21 PM
13
19,105 utenti
345 recensioni
4
Classifica globale 13
Punteggio 7.51
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:24 PM
- 4 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.
14
44,417 utenti
693 recensioni
4.2
Classifica globale 14
Punteggio 6.7
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 12:08 PM
- 3 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- 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
9,731 utenti
431 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 17
Punteggio 6.03
Aggiunto 2022-06-16, 10:51 AM
- 2 Members
- ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- 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
69,523 utenti
1,078 recensioni
3.8
Classifica globale 18
Punteggio 5.97
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:11 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- 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
di Sylvia Plath
28,088 utenti
501 recensioni
4
Classifica globale 19
Punteggio 5.92
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:38 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- 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
7,663 utenti
113 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 21
Punteggio 5.75
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:13 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- 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
72,105 utenti
1,169 recensioni
3.8
Classifica globale 22
Punteggio 5.71
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:37 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- 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
di James Joyce
21,203 utenti
217 recensioni
½ 3.7
Classifica globale 23
Punteggio 5.67
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:12 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- 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
20,665 utenti
275 recensioni
4.1
Classifica globale 24
Punteggio 5.61
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:14 PM
- 3 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- 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
22,821 utenti
405 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 26
Punteggio 5.49
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:17 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: 124 was spiteful.
23
di J. M. Barrie
18,909 utenti
326 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 27
Punteggio 5.47
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 11:29 PM
24
di Albert Camus
35,504 utenti
507 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 28
Punteggio 5.34
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:17 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: Mother died today.
25
di Jean Rhys
8,454 utenti
254 recensioni
½ 3.5
Classifica globale 30
Punteggio 5.25
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:54 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
26
9,493 utenti
214 recensioni
½ 3.6
Classifica globale 31
Punteggio 5.21
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:24 PM
- 3 Members
- Aquila, aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- 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
10,717 utenti
243 recensioni
4
Classifica globale 33
Punteggio 5.19
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:52 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together.
28
di Pat Conroy
5,820 utenti
108 recensioni
4.1
Classifica globale 34
Punteggio 5.1
Aggiunto 2022-06-16, 10:51 AM
- 2 Members
- ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- ManWithAnAgenda: My wound is geography.
29
di Alice Walker
19,714 utenti
335 recensioni
4.1
Classifica globale 35
Punteggio 5.07
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:37 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: You better not never tell nobody but God.
30
20,622 utenti
329 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 36
Punteggio 5.03
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:21 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
31
6,222 utenti
115 recensioni
4.1
Classifica globale 37
Punteggio 4.97
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:31 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.
32
di Daniel Defoe
24,860 utenti
322 recensioni
½ 3.6
Classifica globale 39
Punteggio 4.9
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:29 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- 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
di George Eliot
17,706 utenti
330 recensioni
4.2
Classifica globale 40
Punteggio 4.86
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:30 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
34
12,042 utenti
138 recensioni
½ 3.7
Classifica globale 41
Punteggio 4.67
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:37 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."
35
26,425 utenti
399 recensioni
4
Classifica globale 45
Punteggio 4.32
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 11:01 PM
36
di James Joyce
5,333 utenti
58 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 47
Punteggio 4.09
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 12:09 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- 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
21,964 utenti
168 recensioni
½ 3.7
Classifica globale 51
Punteggio 3.77
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 01:22 PM
38
di H. G. Wells
18,383 utenti
309 recensioni
3.8
Classifica globale 52
Punteggio 3.68
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 01:23 PM
- 2 Members
- hipdeep, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- 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
12,515 utenti
258 recensioni
4.1
Classifica globale 53
Punteggio 3.67
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:11 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.
40
7,889 utenti
168 recensioni
4
Classifica globale 32
Punteggio 5.19
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 01:23 PM
- 3 Members
- hipdeep, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Spiegazioni
- hipdeep: Taran wanted to make a sword, but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes.
41
2,337 utenti
78 recensioni
½ 4.3
Classifica globale 56
Punteggio 3.5
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 01:23 PM
42
di James Joyce
24,068 utenti
377 recensioni
4
Classifica globale 58
Punteggio 3.44
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:14 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
43
di Paul Auster
1,450 utenti
35 recensioni
½ 3.7
Classifica globale 60
Punteggio 3.37
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:16 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- 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
17,266 utenti
226 recensioni
4
Classifica globale 61
Punteggio 3.34
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:16 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
45
14,399 utenti
192 recensioni
4
Classifica globale 62
Punteggio 3.28
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 01:22 PM
46
di Franz Kafka
12,450 utenti
219 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 63
Punteggio 3.26
Aggiunto 2022-06-17, 01:32 PM
47
30,700 utenti
505 recensioni
3.8
Classifica globale 65
Punteggio 3.05
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:26 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- 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
27,135 utenti
631 recensioni
4.1
Classifica globale 68
Punteggio 3.02
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:26 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- 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.
49
22,392 utenti
243 recensioni
½ 3.7
Classifica globale 70
Punteggio 2.87
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:42 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
50
3,545 utenti
77 recensioni
½ 3.5
Classifica globale 71
Punteggio 2.84
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:45 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash.
51
9,178 utenti
168 recensioni
4.2
Classifica globale 73
Punteggio 2.81
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:48 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.
52
9,110 utenti
163 recensioni
3.9
Classifica globale 74
Punteggio 2.77
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:53 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space
53
11,143 utenti
128 recensioni
½ 3.4
Classifica globale 75
Punteggio 2.75
Aggiunto 2022-06-15, 01:55 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963
- Spiegazioni
- aethercowboy: The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.