Category Archives: First Lines

First lines: Brisingr

Like it’s subtitle Brisingr —or— The Seven Promises of Eragon Shadeslayer and Saphira Bjartskular (Book Three of the Inheritance cycle by Christopher Paolini) could have benefited from an editor. Or at least, when Paolini said that he needed a fourth book to resolve all plot lines, his publisher should have insisted that there was no [...]

First lines: Secret Windows

Let’s see: a post about Jim Steinman, one about Meat Loaf, wouldn’t that mean that another Stephen King one should follow right about now? And by the needle work of Freyja, here it is!
Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing contains a wide range of short stories (mostly available in other volumes), [...]

First lines: The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. At the moment, it looks like he’s going to take two spots in my annual favorite book top five. And it’s very likely that his latest one, The Graveyard Book, will take take the top spot. It’s just that good.
The book opens with the boy [...]

First lines: Dolores Claiborne

You mustn’t read Dolores Claiborne, they say, ‘cus it’s just some old woman sittin’ with some coppers, tellin them the story of her life, and how she killed that no-good husband of hers. Just some fine advice that I’ve been given. But in my quest to read every book that Stephen King has written, it [...]

First lines: The Alchemyst

No, this is not that Paolo Coelho book about following your dreams. This is that book about twins in persuit of the Book of Abraham the Mage, which contains the secret to life everlasting and might just as well bring on the total destruction of the world if it falls in the wrong hands.
You could [...]

First lines: Gerald’s Game

A solitary cabin in the woods of western Maine. Gerald lies dead on the floor, which leaves his wife with a tiny problem, as she lies handcuffed to the bed. End of chapter one. Jessie has to find a way to escape, otherwise a certain death by dehydration (or perhaps, madness) awaits. During the remaining [...]

Two things

First lines: Philip en de anderen
Supposedly, this book is about a boy waking up to the real world. I thought it was mostly a incoherent snoozefest.

Cees Nooteboom — Philip en de anderen
Mijn oom Antonin Alexander was een vreemde man.

Tomorrow

First lines: Eclips

Suddenly, the left half of the world vanishes, and he is forced to make a right turn, straight into the canal. After just making it out alive, Kees Zomer walks away undamaged. Apart from his memory and speech, that is. For a week he wanders around, trying to find his way home, the memories he’s [...]

First lines: Once Upon a Time in the North

Back in 2006 I read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and I promply placed it at the top of my list of the best books I read that year. In March 2007 I spend a little while with a small book that ties into the same world. Today, I read another His Dark Materials [...]

First lines: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Big Brother (who is watching you). Room 101. Sending stuff down the memory hole. The Thought Police and Thoughtcrime. 1984. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has unleashed quite a few concepts upon the world. And just like with that other book of his, I don’t think there’s much I can say about this book that isn’t [...]