Friday, February 15, 2008

Opening Lines

The opening lines of a book can make or break its success. Either they catch you and draw you in, or well, they don't. See if you recognize some of these famous opening lines:

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

"My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip."

"Call me Ishmael."

"Marley is dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that."

Twitterlit.com is a fun website that will email you opening lines from books. It's fun to see if you can guess any of them. My favorite so far has been:

"There are two kinds of people in this world: Greeks and those who wish they were Greek." from Sofie Metropolis by Tori Carrington.

2 comments:

dhamel said...

Thanks for the mention of TwitterLit, Melissa!

-- Debra of TwitterLit

MissMcGyver said...

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

A Christmas Carol by Dickens

Those were fun and easy--can't wait to check out twitterlit!! Thanks!