Best First Lines in Books

"Where's Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.                                                                E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.                                                                        Lemony Snickett, Series of Unfortunate Events

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.                                               Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis 

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.                                                                                                                       C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Call me Ismael.                                                          Herman Melville, Moby Dick

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.                                                                                                     Robert Graves, I, Claudius

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.                                            Sylvia Plath,The Bell Jar

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.   Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.                                                                                                                                George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.                           Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

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