From the Salmon

"What kind of reader are you?”

That’s the question that I’d really like to answer. But ever since Kristen asked it, I haven’t had the time or energy to do the answer justice. Maybe I’ll get the chance to answer it properly in a few days. In the meantime, I’ll take on another thread from her post, one that is a little more my speed at the moment.

In a previous post and later in a comment, Kristen lists several of her favorite opening sentences to books that she’s read and loved. In the past, I’ve shared some pretty brilliantly horrible worst opening lines. So it’s only fitting that I atone by playing along with this one. Besides, it’s easier right now to think of others’ words than my own. (One caveat: I’ve repeated a few of her favorites, only because I can’t quite surrender them, even if she did get to them first. Sorry.)

Let’s start with what may be my favorite opening line ever and then see what other beauties I have within easy reach....

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice — not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

A Prayer for Owen Meany — John Irving

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy

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

1984 — George Orwell

My father had a face that could stop a clock.

The Eyre Affair — Jasper Fforde

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, “The first step to eternal life is you have to die.”

Fight Club — Chuck Palahniuk

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression “as pretty as an airport.”

The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul — Douglas Adams

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.

The Catcher in the Rye — J.D. Salinger

I am a sick man… I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts.

Notes from Underground — Fyodor Dostoevsky

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

The Princess Bride — William Goldman

In that spirit of that last one, these might be my current favorite opening lines from a book I’ve never read:

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.

The Lovely Bones — Alice Sebold

Here are my favorite opening lines from a movie based on a beloved book — lines that were great when they appeared later in the novel but that became devastating in the lead-off role:

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

High Fidelity — Nick Hornby
(Screenplay: D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, John Cusack, Scott Rosenberg)

And finally, I have to include one more set of lines. These aren’t technically the opening lines to this novel, but they involve the author telling us what he considers the opening lines to be. In any event, I think they’re brilliant, maybe even more brilliant than my opening Irving line:

It begins like this:
Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

It ends like this:
Poo-tee-weet?

Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut

I almost hesitate to ask this, because I know I’ll kick myself for forgetting something, but what are your favorite opening lines?