topic Re: Titles or First Lines? in Book Club

Titles or First Lines?

Honeybit — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:20:05 GMT

Do you have any favorite book titles or first lines? Not that they're particularly your favorite books, just that you find the titles or the first lines particularly striking.

My all-time favorite titles are the two volumes of Isaac Asimos's autobiography:

IN MEMORY YET GREEN (1920-1954)

IN JOY STILL FELT (1954-1978)

The first line that has stuck with me ever since I first read it years ago is :

They rode at a footpace, side by side, threading a way among the scuppernongs.

(From "The Unconquered" by Ben Ames Williams -- it gave me such a vivid mental picture of a particular place and time in only a handful of words.)

Re: Titles or First Lines?

Group 5 minus 1 — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:28:35 GMT

It was the best of times.......

Re: Titles or First Lines?

Kachina624 — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:32:37 GMT

Men to Match My Mountains Irving Stone's book about the settlement and exploration of the American West. A great read.

Re: Titles or First Lines?

QVCkitty1 — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 21:35:34 GMT

First line of Pride and Prejudice

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,

Favorite line, favorite book, favorite author.

Re: Titles or First Lines?

DJP — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 22:03:49 GMT

It was a dark and stormy night..........

Re: Titles or First Lines?

tobes — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 22:39:48 GMT

Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas ...Hunter Thompson, "it was somewhere in Barstow when the drugs kicked in"

Re: Titles or First Lines?

I am still oxox — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 22:49:22 GMT

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,

Not a book but a poem
Charge of the Light Brigade

I learned it with my Moms help in 5th grade

Re: Titles or First Lines?

GingerPeach — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 23:18:05 GMT

@DJPwrote:
It was a dark and stormy night..........

Snoopy's novel - I love the idea of Snoopy writing!

ETA: I should have added that Snoopy did steal that line.

Re: Titles or First Lines?

Sooner — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 23:50:18 GMT

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Re: Titles or First Lines?

kelsey17 — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 00:27:13 GMT

I always remembered this first storyline....

"Last night i dreamt i went to Manderley again"

from REBECCA

Re: Titles or First Lines?

OKPrincess — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 03:02:30 GMT

@Soonerwrote:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Same for me.

Re: Titles or First Lines?

LoriLori — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 13:02:21 GMT

This is practically a cliche already but I'll never stop loving it, Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina":

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Re: Titles or First Lines?

LoriLori — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 13:08:28 GMT

And Marcel Proust in "In Search of Lost Time" (because it was/is the longest novel ever written, for publication it had to be broken into books, so this is the first sentence of the first book, "Swann's Way"):

"For a long time, I went to bed early."

Re: Titles or First Lines?

Group 5 minus 1 — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 13:33:29 GMT

Favorite closing lines:

He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

Re: Titles or First Lines?

songbird — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 11:06:31 GMT

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board.....

I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith

Re: Titles or First Lines?

nyc1 — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 11:17:16 GMT

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Re: Titles or First Lines?

LoriLori — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 16:16:47 GMT

@songbirdwrote:
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board.....

I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith

@songbird, if you don't mind, I'm curious why that person is sitting like that. If you wouldn't mind explaining? That line certainly got my attention, and I never heard of the book!

Re: Titles or First Lines?

teganslaw — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 16:56:31 GMT

The begining sentence of an H.P. Lovecraft story:

"When Randolph was thirty he lost the key to the gate of dreams."

Re: Titles or First Lines?

smoky22 — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 18:09:12 GMT

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

Re: Titles or First Lines?

alliswell — Sat, 31 Mar 2018 01:54:11 GMT

"You better not never tell nobody but God." —Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)