I have been giving quite a bit of through to first sentences… I love opening sentences to books and many of the great 
ones stick with lovers of literature for life:
Call me Ishmael. ~ Moby Dick
Marley was dead: to begin with. ~ A Christmas Carol
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. ~ A Tale Of Two Cities
“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.” ~ The Lovely Bones
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. ~ Voyage Of The Dawn Treader
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. ~Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone
Do you have any favorite first sentences? What do you think of the first sentence you read in a book, or does that first line not stay with you and you relate more to the first chapter? At what point does the book stick with you or does it vary book to book?
Book Journey 
Yes! The way a book starts is extremely important – even if it is not something I would usually read, I will be more enthused about a book if it gets me hooked, or gets me thinking, at the very beginning.
Here is my personal favorite:
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”
-Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway.
Good one Nikola…. I think opening lines are exciting!
No way I can think of one…but agree about an opening line or at the very least, an opening page is important.
I love opening lines. The book I’m reading now starts like this:
“This is like the moment between heartbeats. The space where nothing happens. Where the blood slows in your veins, your breath catches and your mind spins out into the huge blank space of unreality.”
This is the prologue for “Marshmallows for Breakfast,” and the opening continues in this vein, leaving a lot for the reader to wonder about.
And then we go into Chapter 1, and we don’t have the answers yet, but we’re sure that we will.
One of my favorites:
“In their thirteenth summer, beneath a sky thickening with summer thunderclouds, four friends rode their bikes to Lafayette Cemetery where the dead are buried above ground.” –A Density of Souls, by Christopher Rice
So atmospheric. Yum!
I love that I was able to pick out these lines 🙂 This made me happy!
I have to admit, I very rarely remember first lines. Maybe I should do something to change that….
The first line is something I have always used to assess a book . I give a book more or else 10 pages to pull me in but sometimes a good opening is all that is needed.
Someof my favorite classics have really good opening lines.
” Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley ,again” from Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
Sheila-thanks for the compliments-things always read better when they are from the heart.
xo E.
Can’t beat P and P!
“It is a truth univerally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Great post–I find first lines important!