Unforgettable Opening Paragraphs

[lucimay]

non-fiction

[danlo]

Mine was just a wild guess-I looked it up too: never read it, vaguely heard about it...sometime in the past year.

[Marv]

oh buggrit buggrit!!! i know the book cos i bought it not too long ago and i can sorta remember the title but cant for the life of me think of the author!! i have not read it all but i've tried, couldn't get into it at the time.

something like atom bomb making for idiots???? thats snot right.
the atomic bomb something something.... this is soooo frustrating...

[danlo]

my preeeeeeeeecious

[Marv]

"most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue."

[lucimay]

[Khaliban]

"It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them."

The only book of history I can immediately recall that I genuinely enjoyed. But it has a lot of physics in it and reads like an epic novel. That helped.

[Marv]

i cant find the book and i still cant remember the exact title. i have resigned myself to failure...........on this occasion.

[lucimay]

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes won a Pulizter Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award for this book!

[Dragonlily]

I thought you gave that book back to its owner, Khaliban. Did you buy one for yourself?

I read a piece of it over someone's shoulder. I can see Pulitzer, yes.

[Khaliban]

I thought you gave that book back to its owner, Khaliban. Did you buy one for yourself?

I did, but you can get the first paragraph off of Amazon, and the quote above, also from the book, is from Oppenheimer.

Saul Rubinek played Szilard in the Showtime movie Hiroshima. More perfect casting I could not imagine.

[Prom_STar]

edit: Recently I have become rather self-conscious of my own writing (now I see why SRD doesn't want people to read his "screw ups"). Maybe when I get that opening paragraph into something I actually like, I'll repost it.

[lucimay]

my favorite opening paragraph of all time....

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. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bircks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson

am quoting myself to call Avatar's attention to this paragraph as we were talking about it the other night in chat...

[Avatar]

No need to quote yourself LuciMay. I would have noticed anyway. (It was morning for me you know. )

In similar vein, I'll quote the opening paragraphs I was talking about, they've always been some of my favourite:

Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn onto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth.

And in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping, he climbed the hill without the city walls and looked seaward; and he beheld the ship coming with the mist.

Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul.

--A

[Sorus]

There were prodigies and portents enough, One-Eye says.
We must blame ourselves for misinterpreting them. One-
Eye's handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight.

Lightning from a clear sky smote the Necropolitan Hill.
One bolt struck the bronze plaque sealing the tomb of the
forvalaka, obliterating half the spell of confinement. It
rained stones, statues bled. Priests at several temples
reported sacrificial victims without hearts or livers. One
victim escaped after its bowels were opened and was not
recaptured. At the Fork Barracks, where the Urban
Cohorts were billeted, the image of Teux turned completely
around. For nine evening running, ten black vultures
circled the Bastion. Then one evicted the eagle which lived
atop the Paper Tower.

Astrologers refused readings, fearing for their lives. A
mad soothsayer wandered the streets proclaiming the
imminent end of the world. At the Bastion, the eagle not only
departed, the ivy on the outer ramparts withered and gave
way to a creeper which appeared black in all but the most
intense sunlight.

But that happens every year. Fools can make an omen
of anything in retrospect.

-Glen Cook, The Black Company

[Sorus]

Bump, because I like this thread.

Anyone up for some trivia?

There was once a young man who wished to gain his
Heart's Desire.

And while that is, as beginnings go, not entirely novel (for
every tale about every young man there ever was or will be
could start in a similar manner) there was much about this
young man and what happened to him that was unusual,
although even he never knew the whole of it.

Red Dorakeen was on a quiet section of the Road,
straight and still as death and faintly sparkling. A pair
of futuristic vehicles had passed him several hours
earlier, moving at fantastic speeds, and he had later
overtaken a coach-and-four and then a solitary horse-
man. He kept his blue Dodge pickup in the right-hand
lane and maintained a steady 65 mph. He chewed his
cigar and hummed.

Some two hundred miles to the north and east of
Adrilankha there lies a mountain, shaped as if by the hand of
a megalomaniacal sculptor into the form of a crouching grey
dzur.

You've seen it, I'm sure, in thousands of paintings and
psiprints from hundreds of angles, so you know as well as
I that the illusion of the great cat is as perfect as artifice or
nature could make it. What is most interesting is the left
ear. It is as fully feline as the other, but is known to have
been fabricated. We have our suspicions about the whole
place, but never mind that; we're sure about the left ear.

[I'm Murrin]

I'm almost certain I recognise that first one, Sorus, but I can't place it.

[Marv]

i know the third. its Steven Burst. errrr...the paths of the dead i think.

couldn't hack it i'm afraid. i thought the style was just too convoluted and muddled. i'm sure it would have gotten more clear had i carried on reading but it was giving me a headache.

[Sorus]

Steven Brust is correct. The title is actually Taltos. It's a fun (light!) series once you get into it.

Clues?

The first is an author probably best known for a series of graphic novels.

I cheated on the second one, a book that begins on chapter two. Chapter one is the second chapter, and that's where the quote is from.

[Sorus]

Okay, since I'm sure everyone is losing sleep over this, I'll post the answers.

It doesn't count as double posting if there are three months in between, right?

First one is Stardust, by Neil Gaiman. Second one is Roadmarks, by Roger Zelazny.