Book First Lines

 "On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed façade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach."

Tender is The Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1933

"In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul."

Dune, Frank Herbert, 1965

“When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventyifirst birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”

The Fellowship of The Ring, Tolkien, 1954

"THE SNOW in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation."

The Secret History, Donna Tartt, 1992

"THE EMPIRE GRILL was long and low-slung, with windows that ran its entire length, and since the building next door, a Rexall drugstore, had been condemned and razed, it was now possible to sit at the lunch counter and see straight down Empire Avenue all the way to the old textile mill and its adjacent shirt factory."

Empire Falls, Richard Russo, 2001

"The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended."

2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clark  1968

"Hapcomb's Texaco sat on number 93, just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston."

The Stand, Stephen King 1978

"A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment."

Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy 1878

"I am a very old man; how old I do not know."

A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912

"A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories." Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932

"Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy." The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, C.S.Lewis, 1950