First lines from the books I read in 2018
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd: Thus is 1711, the ninth year of the reign of Queen Anne, an Act of Parliament was passed to erect seven new Parish Churches in the Cities of London and Westminster, which commission was delivered to Her Majesty’s Office of Works in Scotland Yard.
Métamorphose en bord de ciel by Mathias Malzieu: Les oiseaux, ça s'enterre en plein ciel.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex.
Le plus petit baiser jamais recensé by Mathias Malzieu: Le plus petit baiser jamais recensé.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll: One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it -it was the black kitten’s fault entirely.
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson: Ba-room, ba-room, ba-room, baripity, baripity, baripity, baripity-Good.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin: Dear James: I had begun this letter five times and torn it up five times.
The Secret in Their Eyes by Eduardo Sacheri: Benjamín Miguel Chaparro stops short and decides he’s not going.
At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why.
The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes: This books is the factual account of the life, up to now, of William Stanley Milligan, the first person in U.S. history to be found not guilty of major crimes, by reason of unsanity, because he possessed multiple personalities.
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket: If you are interested in stories in happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.
Puckoon by Spike Milligan: Several and a half metric miles North East of Sligo, split by a cascading stream, her body on earth, her feet in water, dwells the microcephalic community of Puckoon.
Piercing by Ryu Murakami: A small living creature asleep in its crib.
The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket: The stretch of the road that leads out of this city, past Hazy Harbor and into the town of Tedia, is perhaps the most unpleasant in the world.
And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini: So, then.
The Shape of Water by Guillermo Del Toro and Daniel Kraus: Richard Strickland reads the brief from General Hoyt.
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell: He’d stopped trying to bring her back.
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell: The Rue du Coq d’Or, Paris, seven in the morning.
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart: Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusack: First the colors. Then the humans. That’s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try.
The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket: If you didn’t know much about the Baudelaire orphans, and you saw them sitting on their suitcases at Damocles Dock, you might think they were bound for an exciting adventure.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: 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.
Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco: I remember, I don’t remember.
The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket: Sometime during your lifetime -in fact, very soon- you may find yourself reading a book, and you may notice that a book’s first sentence can often tell you what sort of story your book contains.
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby: The word is everywhere, a plague spread by the President of the United States, television anchors, radio talk show hosts, preachers in megachurches, self-help gurus, and anyone else attempting to demostrate his or her identification with ordinary, presumably wholesome American values.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare: Theseus, duke of Athens, is planning the festivities for his upcoming wedding to the newly captured Amazon, Hippolyta.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: We were in study hall when the headmaster walked in, followed by a new boy not wearing a school uniform, and by a janitor carrying a large desk.
The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket: If you were going to give a gold medal to the last delightful person on Earth, you would have to give that medal to a person named Carmelita Spats, and if you didn’t give it to her, Carmelita Spats was the sort of person who would snatch it from your hands anyway.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding: The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: Christopher Sly, a drunken beggar, is driven out of an alehouse by its hostess.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: My name is Katy H.
Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami: “There’s no such thing as a perfect piece of writing.”
The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket: The book you are holding in your two hands right now -assuming that you are, in fact, holding this book, and that you have only two hands- is one of two books in the world that will show you the difference between the words “nervous” and the word “anxious.”
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: Two households, both alike in dignity, (In fair Verona, where we lay our scene), From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
Adventure Time: The Enchiridion & Marcy’s Super Secret Scrapbook!!!: My Devoted Evil Daighter, Marceline, I admit we’ve had a somewhat volatile father-daughter relantionship ever since the regrettable Fry Incident.
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin: Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with desinterest.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami: I used to love listening to stories about faraway places.
The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket: No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don’t read is often as important as what you do read.
Dracula by Bram Stoker: 3 May. Bistritz. –Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:43, but train was an hour late.
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare: I know this hartred mocks all Christian virtue, but They I loathe: their very sight abhors me.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac: I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up.
A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami: It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition.
The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket: There are two reasons why a writer would end a sentence with the word “stop” written in entirely in capital letters STOP.
The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince by Mayte Garcia: The chain-link fence around Praisley Park is woven with purple ribbons and roses, love notes, tributes, and prayers for peace.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: Who’s there?
A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin: The comet’s tail spread across the dawn, a red slash that bled above the crags of Dragonstone like a wound in the pink and purple sky.
Out of Africa by Isak Dinensen: I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of Ngong Hills.
Carrie by Stephen King: News item from the Westover (Me.) weekly enterprise, August 19, 1966: RAIN OF STONES REPORTED.
The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket: When my workday is over, and I have closed my notebook, hidden my pen and sawed holes in my rented canoe so it cannot be found, I often like to spend the evening in conversation with my few surviving friends.
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick: The P-38 WWII Nazi handgun looks comical lying on the breakfast table next to a boal of outmeal.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve on an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only tale he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.
Carmilla by Sheridan J. Le Fanu: Upon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor Hesselius has written a rather elaborated note, which he accompanies with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject which the MS. illuminates.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: No one has ever suffered as I have.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski: I still get nightmares.
Othello by William Shakespeare: In the streets of Venice, Iago tells Roderigo of his hatred for Othello, who has given Cassio the lieutenancy that Iago wanted and has made Iago a mere ensign.
Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami: I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel.
The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket: A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called “The Road Less Traveled,” describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: “What you looking at me for? I didn’t come to stay…”
A Most Haunted House by G. L. Davies: The house first came to my attention a few years ago.
Ghost Sex, The Violation by G. L. Davies: I met with Lisa at her home in Pembroke Dock.
Any Man by Amber Tamblyn: Am I in a body?
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay: “This must be so difficult for you, Meredith.”
A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin: The day was grey and bitter cold, and the dogs would not take the scent.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare: When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
You by Caroline Kepnes: You walk into the bookstore and you keep your hand on the door to make sure it doesn’t slam.
The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket: After a great deal of examining oceans, investigating rainstorms and staring very hard at several drinking fountains, the scientists of the worlds developed a theory regarding how water is distributed around our planet, which they have named “the water cycle.”
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys: They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: About thirthy years ago, Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the country of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet’s lady, with all the comforts and consequences of a handsome house and a large income.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë: My name is Gilbert Markham, and my story begings in October 1827, when I was twenty-four years old.
The Tempest by William Shakespeare: Boatswain!
Lucky by Alice Sebold: In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheather, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered.
The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket: Certain people had said that the world is like a calm pond, and that anytime a person does even the smallest thing, it is as if a stone has dropped into the pond, spreading circles of ripples further and further out, until the entire world has been changed by one tiny action.
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