One
of the most prevalent pieces of writing advice I’ve heard for those of us who
wish to be published is to pull your reader into the story immediately. I am
still working on learning how to do that, so I skimmed through some of the
first lines of books that I’ve read. Can you match the first line or phrase
below with the correct book?
1) “Christmas
won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
2) In the
second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the
fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
3) It is
a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good
fortune, must be in want of a wife.
4) As I
walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where
was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed
a dream.
5) In a
hole in a ground, there lived a hobbit.
6) When
Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his
eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much
talk and excitement in Hobbiton.
7) There
was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
8) 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, we had everything before us,
we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going
direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good
or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
9) It was
five o'clock on a winter's morning in Syria.
10) In my
younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been
turning over in my mind ever since.
11) One
summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary Bishop from
America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills,
overlooking Rome.
12) On the
first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which
the author of Romance of the Rose was born, appeared to be in as perfect a
state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of
it.
13) The
Jebel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow
that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from
the south to the north.
14) In the
corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired
from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political
news in the Times.
15) Petronius
woke only about midday, and as usual greatly wearied.
How
do you think you did? What is your
favorite first line of a book?
A) Jane
Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
B) The Pilgrim’s
Progress by John Bunyan
C) The
Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
D) Pride
and Prejudice by Jane Austen
E) Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace
F) Little
Women by Louisa May Alcott
G) The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
H) The
Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
I) And
Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
J) Death
Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
K) Quo
Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
L) The
Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
M) A
Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
N) Murder
on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
O) The
Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Answers: 1) F,
2) G. 3) D, 4) B, 5) H, 6) L, 7) A, 8) M, 9) N, 10) O, 11) J, 12) C, 13) E, 14)
I, 15) K.
